I am currently away from Buenos Aires, enjoying the luxury of a second (northern hemisphere) summer in the city where I took my first steps on the tango floor. My tango adventures here began at a small, local práctica above a pub, at a place rather misleadingly called The Dome. I entered to find a class in full swing (perhaps we should say full giro for tango classes), taught by two familiar Argentine teachers. The dancers struggled through their playful sequence, while the couple circulated around the room, all smiles, patiently helping and dancing with the locals. As the class ended, the locals started arriving, including my main partner for the evening, whom I’ll call Teddy for his ursine physique and cuddly personality. Some people remembered me from a previous visit. Everyone was friendly and made me feel welcome and guys seemed happy to take a chance on my dancing (unlike many of the younger men in Buenos Aires, who require considerable evidence that you are a good dancer before risking fifteen minutes of their lives on a tanda with you). I wished I could feel a warm enthusiasm in return. But, although it made me feel like an ungrateful snob, after five years in Buenos Aires, I was suffering from serious culture shock and watching the dancing with horror. To my oversensitive eyes, it was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life. 
I couldn’t help confiding my impressions to Teddy because he was so sweet. He warned me, very gently, that I wasn’t at the navel of the tango earth anymore and my attitude might lead me to feel “rather lonely”.
You may be wondering what makes a good milonga or práctica for me. For me, the other dancers are 90% of the experience: more specifically, the leaders who are willing to dance with me. The other 10% — the music, the floor, the ambience — is not unimportant, but, frankly, I just love to dance and would rather be at a grotty venue with a pockmarked, splintery floor and strange music, in the arms of a good leader, than listening to a skilled DJ spin my favourite orchestras at an elegant and beautiful venue, with a mediocre partner.
On the positive side, there was a lot of musicality among some of the leaders (Teddy was especially sensitive), which was surprising and impressive, given that the music was a random mixture of tunes, perhaps generated by an iPod on shuffle mode (I was told that this was not always the case). And the leaders were creative in their choices of moves. But almost everyone on the floor looked awkward — stiff and tense and unconnected with their partners — and those I danced with almost all suffered from a leaden left arm. And suddenly it dawned on me why that was. The men almost all danced with little or no dissociation. They moved their bodies basically in a block, without any of the twisty, corkscrewing movements that are so characteristic of tango and which help to keep the couple snugly connected in their embrace, even if their chests are not actually in contact with each other, and no matter what their feet are doing. Without that feeling, of the upper bodies curving round to find each other — a kind of physical expression of a desire to be together, to move as one — much of the magic of the dance was gone.
Of course, I’m sure part of the problem was my own attitude. I need to find a way to connect with these men on the floor, even if their dancing is very different from what I am used to. I felt a psychological resistance which I’m sure could be felt physically. I didn’t want to make the straight movements they were leading. I wanted to curve and curl round them, to twist and pivot. But it’s a follower’s job to seek the connection, to adapt, to harmonise with the leader, without losing the quality and character of her (or, occasionally, his) own movement. It will be a challenge.
