Cover Story: Way too tango

Here are some words I would like people to use more often when they speak of me: smoldering, dangerous, sensual, guapo, bon-bon and orgasm-for-the-eyes (which is more a moniker than a word, but I like the way it sounds).

So I've decided to learn the tango.

Yes, the tango: the poses of pimps and prostitutes in 19th-century Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay. The dance of horny immigrant workers who came from Poland, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Africa and elsewhere to process Argentinian cattle. The lusty language of Gomez and Morticia Addams. The dance whose patient seductions are to the restless rabbit-rhythms of the forbidden lambada as an all-night lover is to an adolescent's first over-eager carnal romp.

My wife laughed when I told her of my plan. She's a Cuban woman who can seduce you with her salsa and whip you to oblivion with her merengue. Based on the meager evidence of my salsa performance on a Biscayne Bay party boat, she's gotten it into her head that I can't dance. As if there were something genetic that prevented a Celtic Yankee from unlocking his hips. (Have we so soon forgotten "Lord of the Dance"?)

I may have grown up a Scot-Irish Presbyterian who attended a high school where the Future Farmers of America was, by far, the largest student club. And yes, my teenage dancing consisted mostly of unintentional variants of "The Robot" and pathetic imitations of Michael Jackson videos. But damnit, this is America, where we have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the dance floor pursuit of dark-haired women in tight red dresses. This is the land of the free, where a mild-mannered dance writer can transform himself into Pies Patosos (Clumsy Feet), the Atlanta Tango King.

I take my first steps into the public obscenities and libidinous delights of tango in the basement of a Decatur church, where Luis Rognoni instructs a group of initiates who call themselves "The Keenagers," a senior citizens' group organized by the Decatur Recreation Center.

In a class of about 15 people, there is only one other man (an atypical imbalance, I later discover). He was obviously dragged along by his quiet wife, who I like to think is hiding more heat than her floral print dress reveals and is dancing the tango to fan the flames. Her husband eyes me with silent suspicion, probably wondering what the hell I am doing here in the absence of spousal obligation.

Rognoni begins to teach us the basic steps: side to side like a sliding two-step, walk forward, walk back, pivot to turn, feet touching briefly each time they pass. "Toca, toca," he says. Touch, touch.

My body is soon pressed tightly against a tall woman in a long, light cotton dress. She had brought her mother to the class, then decided to stay herself. My thighs slide along hers with every step. The A/C in the basement is either broken or was never intended for such worldly gyrations. We are soon damp with sweat, and I down ice water between songs.

"Walk like a cat," Rognoni says. Despite the massive chest and burly forearms of the prosperous builder he was in Argentina before the economic bust, he does indeed walk like a cat: soft, elegant, utterly assured.

My own form leans toward the feline, but my steps do not. You're not supposed to toca your partner's toes. I lead the dance, but my steps are hesitant, leaving my partner uncertain of where we're going. We dance an arhythmic arousal; we fumble our foreplay.

The tango is a carnal conversation. Its signals are centered on the expanded chest of a man and the uplifted breasts of a woman, but the whole body speaks its piece. Ronda Patiño is a master of the language.

She gives me a private lesson one evening before the regular class she teaches with her husband Manuel Patiño and partners Jim Hudson and Gabriela Lopez. From watching me walk across the parking lot of the Decatur School of Ballet, Ronda says she can tell I've had dance training (a few years of ballet and modern, but none in social dance). And after dancing with me for only a few minutes, she tells me that I'm a runner. (Yup.)

You'd think that ballet and running would help me with the tango, but they often get in the way. I kick my legs out like I'm throwing a jetee and lunge forward like a hurdler, putting Ronda's shins in constant peril as she struggles to match my stride. My chest, which should announce my feet's intentions, is silent in the upright rigidity of an Irish jig.

Tango is often described as an "elegant walk" by people who haven't seen me attempt it. It's a bit more complicated than that, of course, but this does capture the fundamental feel of the dance. Its steps are generally small and soft, knees slightly bent, chest slightly forward. For all the adornments (the best of them reserved for women) of feet sweeping the floor in sinuous barridas, of splits performed between a partner's legs, of a knee slid seductively up a man's hip, tango is first and foremost a stylized, counter-clockwise walk around the dance floor. As Manuel tells me, "It's not easy, but it's simple."

Beneath the eloquent body language of the dance, there are also subtle social codes to tango, particularly in Buenos Aires. In the milongas, the dance clubs, an invitation is made with sustained eye contact and confirmed with a nod. An invitation from a talented dancer is a sign of great respect akin to having your high school head cheerleader or quarterback ask you to the prom. If your partner tells you "thank you" and leaves before the four songs of a tanda are through, the whole room knows that you can't dance (and you won't get asked again). A second tanda danced with the same partner is tantamount to declaring a love affair (or a marriage).

Such high social stakes attached to a difficult dance attract competitive personalities, perfectionists and large egos. The stakes aren't quite as high in Atlanta, where a much smaller tango community can't afford to be so exclusive. But even the Atlanta community has its share of melodrama, often turning on silly arguments over who is dancing the true, authentic tango.

There are two dominant styles of "Argentine tango." In the milonguero style, the dancers have no space between them: chest to breasts, head to head, legs completely intertwined. In the salon style, the dancers open a little space, though they are still quite close and are always in contact through their hands and arms. There is also an international ballroom style of tango, a sanitized and far more formal dance with the dancers leaning back from one another as though suffering from halitosis.

Both styles of Argentine tango are danced in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Salon works better in large dance halls. Allowing larger and more dramatic movement, it is more impressive to watch. Milonguero, which takes up less real estate, works best in crowded clubs. Its compressed intimacy provides a more intense experience for partners who have good chemistry (and an awkward several minutes for those who don't).

There is plenty of room on the dance floor to accomodate all styles. Alas, it cannot always accomodate all egos. Some stories in the Atlanta tango community sound like the novelas on Telemundo, complete with nasty public confrontations, social vendettas, portentious silences, accusations of sexual infidelity ... all set to an intense soundtrack.

The majority of dancers in the Atlanta tango community understand the salon vs. milonguero debate to be a question of personal preference and architectural adaptation, as opposed to divine dancer's dogma. A few true-believers have sometimes fractured the community, but at the parties, even most of the zealots put aside the fights. They all just want to dance and enjoy their time together.

I spend an evening with Norberto and Annie Guallini, the owners of Tango Restaurant in Alpharetta, where Luis Rognoni teaches tango on Wednesday evenings. Norberto grew up in Argentina, but his parents were from Genoa, Italy. Annie was born in Cuba. They met in Puerto Rico, where they both attended culinary school. (With a fusion like that, need I mention how good the food is?)

Playing on the sound system is old tango music, dominated by the bandoneòn, a kind of accordion imported from Germany. (That's right: Though tango is one of the sexiest, most sensual dances ever created, one of its closest musical cousins is the polka.)

Annie is also just learning to tango, so she and I dance while Rognoni adjusts our form. I'd begun to feel more confident in my own steps, but Annie and I are a difficult pairing. I'm quite a bit taller than her, so instead of communicating through my chest I end up leading with my abdomen (and wishing for a beer belly to allow for a better connection). I walk with what feels like baby steps. Experienced tango dancers could make the adjustment, but Annie and I soon give it up.

Norberto brings out a coffeetable book called Tango! (by Simon Collier et al) and opens it up on the restaurant's piano. He tells me a little about the precursors of tango and its influences. But mostly he just points at pictures and names the singers, musicians and actors.

"Carlos Gardel," he says, pointing at a picture of a handsome man with well-oiled hair, wearing a fancy dress shirt and holding a cigarette just so. A baritone, he was one of the most famous tango singers in the world during the latter half of tango's golden age, which spanned the years between World Wars I and II.

"Beba Bidar," Norberto says, adjusting his glasses. "Pichuco, el Gordo," the legendary bandoneònist. Norberto pronounces the names with fierce emphasis, shaking his head and jabbing the photos with his beefy fingers. To him, they are clearly the titles of stories from his youth, the echoes of his first marriage, the voices of the country he left behind, the once virile nation now frail and poor.

We drink red wine from Argentina. "Salud," we say, and clink our glasses together.

The lyrics of tango are like those of country music or the blues: The men are always losing their dogs and their women. When they get beyond their own sense of loss, it's usually just in time to see their former love — her once sparkling eyes now vacant — turning tricks on the docks. They drink too much. They bet on horses that never win. They long for their homes in Andalucia or Italy.

I go to a milonga one night at Pura Vida, a tapas restaurant in Poncey-Highland. Danny Waggoner and Leslie Hodges hold them here two Thursdays a month. A row of tables is soon filled with tango fanatics.

As at every tango event I attend, the group is like an expatriate support group: people from all nations coming together in shared exile to hold one another. While many native Atlantans dance the tango, the community has an abundance of dancers from Russia, Japan, France, Taiwan, Germany, China, Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina.

We all sit together, talking tango and eating tapas before we dance. Leslie is sitting next to me, at the head of our table, leaning forward and on the edge of her seat. She is thin and wiry, and has the tight, intense smile of a pageant veteran.

She tells me how she lost her job as a flight attendant when Eastern Airlines folded in 1991, and how afterward she stared at the TV screen for months. Then, one day, she saw an ad for tango lessons. Call it desperation or divine intervention, but she was immediately obsessed with the idea of learning this dance, compelled to get up off the couch to enter a more romantic and exotic world. Leslie's eyes glow with adoration as she tells her story. Tango was her salvation, she says, and she doubts whether she or her marriage would have survived without it.

The music starts. Dancers pair off and take their turns on the floor, dancing around the sometimes dumbfounded and often delighted other diners.

I dance with Rae. I'm dancing badly tonight, kicking her toes. But I manage to negotiate us around the floor without sending any platters of paella into the diners' laps.

Rae tells me that she's been married three times. She finally found the right guy on the third try. And then he died.

I hear sad stories all the time in the tango community. The tango magazines, like Milonguero and ReporTango, are replete with candid stories about the tragic lives of famous tango singers and dancers ... obituaries of great artists who died penniless, lonely, sick and suffering.

People dance salsa, meringue, the more frenetic spasms of rock 'n' roll and all-night raves to forget their problems in an orgy of adrenaline. But people don't dance the tango to forget. They dance to feel, to touch, to be held, to let out the grief of losses large and small, to express their desparation and desire. And to make it all look beautiful.

"Someone once told me that my beauty was my sadness," Claudia Novoa tells me one night as we sit alone in the House of Tango, a small dance club in an old cotton warehouse near the railroad tracks on the West End. Rough brick surrounds a smooth-as-silk dance floor that Novoa and her husband, Nicolas Miraballes, built themselves. The ceiling is painted gold and the walls are red. "Sadness is also beauty: the beauty of learning, growing and knowing who you are, even if you don't like it," she says.

Novoa aligns herself with "organic tango," a modern style that emphasizes lively innovation over adherence to traditional forms. Though she's one of the youngest tango instructors in Atlanta, she speaks like an old shaman ... albeit an unusually attractive shaman who wears sexy black dresses and can capture the attention of an entire room when she dances.

"There's no perfection in improvisation," Novoa said. Tango has much less structure than most social dances (mosh pits notwithstanding). It arises not from the formulas of some kinesthetic mathematics but from the need to negotiate a dance floor crowded with other dancers who are moving in unpredictable ways, to adapt elegantly to the challenges of the moment. Learn some basic steps, a handful of ornamentations, then make it up as you go. It's a language without a grammar; it's freeform poetry written on the floor.

And now, for the Atlanta premiere of Pies Patosos, the Atlanta Tango King.

I'm watching a tango performance at Tierra, the Latin fusion restaurant near Piedmont Park. Ronda and Manuel Patiño are trading sets with Gabriela Lopez and Jim Hudson.

This is no lesson or practica, no mild milonga for amateur shoe shufflers like me. The masters have the floor. Without the constraints of other dancers to maneuver around, the performers are breaking all the rules ... dancing close then far apart; taking long, dramatic steps; kicking high; leaning deep into their partners; caressing with their thighs, knees sliding up in open invitation.

It's bedroom and back alley hot, like watching August lovers in a town where all the motels are full, making love in public without the fumbling linen entanglements of ordinary sex.

Then Manuel takes the hand of a dance student who came with her mother to watch the show, and Ronda is left without a partner. She walks over to me and asks me to dance. I've had a grand total of five tango lessons. I hesitate.

I see visions of spilled wine, of crashing tables, of bruised legs, of six dancers piled on the floor, moaning for medics. My legs aren't graceful, but they are strong. I fear the damage I'll do if they set me loose on this floor, forgetting the soft restraints of the milongas I've attended.

The tango is an art I barely know, one in which even the masters make it up as they go. Now I'm to improvise it in front of a room of strangers?

I haven't said a word, but Ronda reads my body. She tells me I don't have to dance if I don't want to.

Released from the obligation, my anxiety ceases its frantic imaginative spiral. Some 21st-century remnant of chivalry rises within me. This beautiful woman, this talented dancer, is standing alone on the floor. She wants to dance ... and I want to dance with her, want to have these few minutes of intimate public passion with her, even if I am going to do it all wrong. I mumble some disclaimers, then take Ronda's hand and pull her close.

It isn't pretty. I'm grateful for the other couples, whose confident gestures hold the diners' attention. I lose the beat a couple times and fumble a lead into crusada, but Ronda adapts brilliantly to my errors. We make our way around the floor while the sad music plays, turning in place while the waitstaff walks by, dancing around the tables, weaving our little world into the dance, holding one another until the music stops.

thomas.bell@creativeloafing.com