Colgada Day

Colgadas are off-axis moves, in which the leader hangs the follower out to swing off his axis. They are quite counter-intuitive for a tango follower. Working 5 hours on them was exhausting, and I've hunkered down tonight at the apartment a little wine with leftover chicken salad from lunch amplified by bagged salad from the local market. (It isn't exactly bagged -- it's a variety of shredded, shrink-wrapped veggies on small paper plates. But it doesn't require a lot of gussying up and it's filling. And, hey, it's salad.) [Family joke.]

Our teacher said it was the toughest day of the two weeks, which is reassuring, since I agreed. She is Luciana Valle, 30ish, with long curly black hair, amazing posture, and a quick wit. In the hyper-competitive world of Buenos Aires tango, she has quickly built a following for her exceptional ability to analyze movement and to structure teaching. Her English is fluent, her energy intense, her attention direct and encouraging. One craves her "Bien!" (good) and even her "Bastante bien!" (not bad).

The other wonderful thing about her program is being able to dance with the 9 leader assistants, as they are called. (Privately, I've dubbed them "hunkacitos," sweet young guys who are passionate about the dance). Some of them are teachers elsewhere. Each has a different style, strength, body type, embrace -- and adapting to these variances is itself part of the learning process. One of my fellow students, a willowy, sophisticated blonde from Minneapolis, says, with a dramatic snap of her fingers, that the class makes her feel like Cleopatra: "Next!"

On the right-hand side of this page are some You Tube videos of Luciana dancing with young Portland hotshot Alex Krebs in Washington, DC , in 2003-04. More recent ones, from her visit to Portland this year, were too dark to include. These are at least visible. They include dances to two of the rhythms of tango: a tango (slower) and a couple milongas (faster). The third rhythm, not represented, is tango waltz.