Vamos a bailando!
Last night, we all cleaned up nicely, put on our dancing
shoes and suited up to go to Viejo Almacen. Viejo Almacen owns two buildings on
the corner of San Telmo. They offer tango lessons along with dinner and a tango
show. We took advantage of this opportunity and we learned how to tango!
Our lesson started off with a demonstration of a “simple”
tango dance. To be quite honest, it did not look simple at all but it was
quickly our turn to learn. The instructors lined up the men on one side and the
ladies on the other to begin teaching us this authentic Argentine dance. Before
we were even allowed to dance with a partner, we all had to learn the first 8
count of the dance. By learning the dance solo first, we definitely saved a lot
of toes which would have been crushed had we learned the dance while holding
our partners.
When you broke down the steps piece by piece and slowly, it
seemed simple. Forward, right, back, back, cross, back, left, and together.
Easy enough right? Well, not really. After we all began to remember the steps
and get the tango down, we all picked a partner. Many of us danced with people
we did not really know on our trip which was a great way to get to know each
other even more. We first danced the tango to slow counts by the instructors
and then transitioned into faster counts to traditional tango music. Some of us
were doing really well, while others were really struggling.
Once the instructors saw that we were learning quickly, they
began to add more complicated steps. This included learning to tango in a
circle rather than in a line. This threw a lot of people off and by the end,
some of us looked like we learned nothing. But, hey it’s all for the
experience! Learning to tango was such an amazing experience for all of us
because it was a great way to experience the Argentine culture first hand.
After the instructors recognized the fact that we were all awesome tango
dancers, we were given certificates to bring home to mom and dad to put on the
fridge! Altogether, it was a great night with some really great people.
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