I had wanted to write an insightful, and perhaps romantic post about dancing Argentine tango. Yet glancing back over my old photographs for inspiration I discovered something quite unexpected. Not one photo was fixed in time. Not the year, the month, nor the day or the hour.
Buenos Aires appears to be city that defies time.
0700 hrs. You arrive at Ezeiza on the early morning flight from London after a sleepless Atlantic night. Navigating immigration and removing your watch, you board a Manuel Tienda Leon bus for the city. You feel strangely awake.
Possibly 1100 hrs. You return from the supermarket with coffee and medialunas - to see you through your first day. Light glints sharply from taxi windows. Jacaranda blossom blows in billows across the side walk.
It’s now late afternoon and you set off for lunch at your favourite café. Miraculously, they are open.
As Portenos travel home from work, you return from lunch to take a siesta.
It is now dark outside but you have promised yourself ‘just one tanda’. You dress for the milonga. The taxi arrives sometime before midnight.
According to a friend, its after 0300 hrs and you are drinking coffee together discussing Carlos Di Sarli.
By dawn light it must be about 0500 hrs when someone says, ‘Let’s go to La Viruta’. Once in Armenia you are joined by dancers from across the city.
On the return journey your taxi driver reminds you that commuters are congesting Av 9 de Julio, so he takes the back route. The mystery is that nobody appears tired.
Home again, you are not ready to sleep. The music of La Guardia Vieja, Roberto Firpo, Julio de Caro, Francisco Canaro, Osvaldo Fresedo, Juan D’Arienzo and Anibal Troilo is jumbled in your ears… an orchestral spread of over half a century condensed into a single timeless memory. Tango seems to exist in a different time zone. And so do you.
Reflecting back, it was like this when learning to dance tango. ‘I have learned the ocho cortado!’…..’I am sure I have mastered musicality and am doing great’….’It’s clear I know absolutely nothing’… Did the tango clock go forwards, or backwards?
A forgivingly refreshing shower washes the trees below your apartment windows. A fresh breeze arrives from Rio de la Plata. A flight of green para
keets fly from the palms.
I don’t know what day it is….. but I sense it
