Milonga Madness
Alessandra, one of my best friends, and her family are touring Argentina, and made a stop in Buenos Aires. I’ve showed them my favorite things: El Cuartito, the Jardin Botanico, and the Ataneo. In return, they brought me to a place I never would have found on my own: La Confiteria Ideal. As a cafe, La Confiteria is sub-par. However, every Saturday afternoon from 2-8, the run-down cafe becomes a milonga. Many older couples, some with experience, others not, dance tango for hours on end. In theory, you can just watch. In reality, you have to dance.
I was forced to dance by an 80 year old named Alberto.
I guess that’s not really fair. He didn’t hold a gun to my head and make me choose between death or dancing. But I just couldn’t bear to disappoint an old man. Anyway, I protested fiercely: “I don’t dance tango. My feet are made of wood. I just arrived in Argentina. I don’t have the right shoes.” No excuse worked. He promised to dance simply and I agreed.
So we danced…and it wasn’t horrible. I let him push and pull me around, concentrating on moving my feet in the right direction. Sometimes I got nervous, but when I relaxed I moved around a lot more easily. All in all, I think I even enjoyed it a little bit.
But my partner Alberto really made the dance interesting. He told me all about foreign girls he taught to dance, even showed me a postcard that one of them sent from France. He kept on saying that he was a widower, but assured me that he wasn’t a sinverguenza (shameless person) and that he thought of me as a daughter.
Anyway, even if you don’t tango at all, you should all go just to talk to good ol’ Albert.
