I arrived at my private Argentine Tango Lesson on Friday and said, “I need Tango therapy”. “What’s wrong?”, she asked. “I seem to dance fine at classes, but then I go to milongas [social dances] and my dancing just falls apart.” I’m not sure if it’s performance impotence or premature ambulation”. She laughed, then looked at me with that look that was a cross between regret that the ACLU provided the State an excuse to close all the mental health hospitals in the state and the look that says “I want to beat you with a tire iron”, which reminds me wistfully of my mother, who died in 1988, but all she said was “I’m not going there”. Then she said, “What do you think it is?”, to which I replied, “I don’t know, that’s why I’m here”. I love when you go to a doctor or other professional and they ask, “what do you think it is?” uhhh, if I had figured it out, would I be here? Anyway, she asked me how I knew my dancing was falling apart, then of course, she pretty immediately figured it out, and fixed it, which is why she is the goddess of tango and Zumba and all things dancing.
However, the rest of the day, I did reflect on her question, “how did you know your dancing was falling apart?” question, and it occurred to me that if SHE didn’t know how I knew, then maybe other guys needed some help figuring out when THEIR dancing needed some help. So, while I’m not expert, here’s just a partial list of clues you might focus on that’s suggestion your dancing at social dances needs some work. While this is taken from Argentine Tango, I’m pretty sure this applies to the Shag, Ballroom Dancing, Contra Dancing, maybe even free style, rock and roll dancing, as when it comes to dancing, I think women are pretty universal in this regard.
1. When most of the women you dance with, look at you at the end of the dance, like your neighbor does, when someone’s dog craps on her yard, this is a sign your dancing is falling apart.
2. When she gets back to the table, and takes out a voo doo doll that remarkably looks like you and starts sticking knitting needles through the groin area, this is a sign your dancing is falling apart.
3. When you’re dancing with someone you’ve danced with many times before, and both of you know things aren’t going well, and she blames the floor, the lighting, the humidity, and the recent outbreak of solar flares, this is a sign your dancing is falling apart.
4. When you go to a table where a lady you have previous asked to dance is sitting to ask someone else to dance, and the entire rest of the table gets overactive bladder and leaps to the bathroom likes the starting gun for the Boston Marathon has just gone off, this is a sign your dancing is falling apart.
5. At the end of the tanda, she looks at you and says “thank you”, but has that same expression on her face you saw those few days when Nelson Mandela died, this is a sign your dancing is falling apart.
6. At the end of the dance, when she has that look in her eyes, like your loved one does, as if you just gave her a vacuum cleaner for Valentines day, instead of the lingerie, diamond necklace, and massage she was hoping for, then this is a sign your dancing is falling apart.
Hope it helps.
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