Milonga Picante

continued

After about an hour, a total of four men have come up to talk to me, but not one woman, so I seek out Heather, an artist from Westland who's been dancing Argentine tango for four years. Rail-thin in tight black pants and a black top and high heels — all the women are wearing beautiful shoes, I notice — Heather is sitting out this tanda after having danced the last few. She's a regular at dances like this throughout the Detroit area. "I used to be a soccer player," she says, "but had repetitive injuries. I was specifically looking for something that was fun, and physical and challenging." Soccer, I say, seems a long way from this, in which the woman's role, it seems, is to relinquish control. Heather pauses. "I think of it more as a conversation," she says. "He initiates it and I reply. I love the music, and I love that it is improvisational. And I love that you never get to the end of knowing tango."

The Tango Club hosts Milonga Picante tango parties at the Michigan Union on Saturday, April 9 and 23.   

[Originally published in April, 2005.]