Tango and the Catholic Church

No, I’m not going to somehow tie the dance that originated in slum brothels to the Church. Sorry to get your hopes up. But tango and the cathedrals of the Catholic Church are the two things that struck me most about Argentina.

First, tango. Me encanta. This dance is the signature of the Rio de la Plata region. It’s beautiful, provocative, complicated, elegant, emotional, intense…it’s powerful to watch and very hard to dance, even if you’re only trying the most basic of steps. It’s strange to me that I would like this dance, which is so chauvinistic and embodies the domination of women by men, but it’s so elegant, it makes you want to be a part of it.

We had a pair of tango teachers come to the Casa a couple of days before we left for BA, to show us real tango, not the strange, stiff-armed, rose-between-your-teeth version that Hollywood brings us and not the showy kicks and lifts of that touristy tango shows in BA. First, they danced for us, and I’m telling you, I’ve never been so impressed by dancing in my life. Silently, they somehow communicate to each other exactly where they’re going to be, and their motions flow together so seamlessly that they seem like one person. Of course, they followed this image of grace by teaching all of us the basic steps, then sitting back to watch us totter around like newborn foals finding our legs.

There are eight basic steps in a tango (for a woman…not sure about the man’s part, except that it seems so much easier), and they always take a woman backward. It’s the man’s job to steer the woman around obstacles and other couples, because she can never see where she’s going. When you’re in the tango “hold,” you have one arm around the other person, and with the other arm you sort of hold hands, although the woman’s wrist is bent at a 90 degree angle and her arm is tense so that she can be guided by the man’s pushing.

It was a strange experience, dancing with everyone at the Casa. There were three levels of dancing: first, dancing with the other boys in our group, who were only just learning the steps, too, and who usually ceded the lead to you if you knew better what you were doing 😉 . The second level was just Wimon, because he and Rosalinda have been taking tango lessons for something like a year now, so he’s got the steps down pretty much pat, and he’s just learning to give the right cues so that his partner knows when he wants her to do what. The third level – very intimidating! – was dancing with one of the two professional men, either the instructor or the younger male assistant they brought with them. These guys lead. You go where they want you to…you have no other choice.

When we got to Buenos Aires, tango was everywhere. That city knows how to market its assets! La Boca was full of tango dancers, doing the steps in the streets, blasting tango music from storefronts, posing for pictures with tourists, and entertaining lunch guests at the restaurants all along the streets. Everywhere, you could buy pictures, paintings and figurines of tango dancers. At night, tango dinner shows draw tourists in droves.

Show tango is so different from ballroom tango that its almost not recognizable as the same thing. Dancers touch or don’t, they hook each other’s legs and kick between each other’s knees, the men dip the women or lift them over their heads; it’s ostentatious and choreographed and obviously designed to impress.

Speaking of designed to impress (yeah, this is a stretch of a transition), the cathedral at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires was one of the stops that my smaller group took on our single day of free exploration. We walked through, awestruck like all the other photo-snapping tourists, and then sat down on some of the benches for a few minutes of quiet contemplation. I looked around at the beauty of the place, and I was inspired – so this is what I wrote in my journal while we sat there:

The cathedral is beautiful – every inch of it is decorated, from the mosaic-tiled floors to the vaulted arches and painted domes. It’s awe-inspiring…but I do not feel God here. This was my first thought as we walked through this place, but then I realized that even as I felt that intangible sense of spiritual disappointment, I was praying, reaching out into the empty space to see if my fingers brushed His presence, like a child searching the hole left by a lost tooth with his tongue.

I look up at the ceiling high above me and see sunlight streaming through a high-set stained glass window in golden bars, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. How could God not be in this place, taking a father’s pride in the art his children created and accepting their reverence? And how could I say this place was not spiritual when it made me consciously reach out to God in a way that my stubborn self-reliance generally does not allow?

Cheesy, maybe, but don’t judge. Being in a place that gorgeous will make you want to wax poetic.

~ by Sara McPherson on February 18, 2009.