rhythm of life

This weekend, I found myself in Bristol. This city in the southwest of England has never been on my list of places to see before the sea swallows the land, and I can't even say that I had been aware of its existence before the idea of this trip was raised. I must further admit, to my shame, that I didn't know Banksy hails from there. Well, well. Off we went on Friday morning, to discover the charms of a maritime city away from the sea and art in unexpected places.

This post is not about Bristol. While a friend and I spend two lovely but miserably cold and wet days in town, seeing the Avon and old docks, remnants of a proud harbor studded with new developments, Brunel's Clifton suspension bridge, and as many coffee shops as you need to keep warm when November is at its worst, the real reason for going there in the first place was dancing. My friend's friend, our host, is a tango enthusiast and teacher and a regular organizer of milongas.

A milonga is an Argentine institution, a place to practice and dance tango. Fanciness is not required, only passion. People come for their love of dancing, and the only thing they show off is their skill on the dance floor. A milonga can be held anywhere, even an old shed, if the music is right and the wood of floor smooth. The milonga we went to was in a community hall in a village outside of Bristol. The night was Halloween and fancy dress very much encouraged, black or white with accents of red.

I'm not a dancer. I took a year of salsa classes in Grenoble, and while I had fun, I never got the hang of it. I have a good dozen hours of salsa in my iTunes library, but the music doesn't speak to make, it doesn't make me want to move. I went to the milonga with the lowest expectations but walked away, hours later, rocked to the core.

Tango is easy. In its simplest form (might the aficionados forgive me for saying so), it doesn't require much more than shuffling across the dance floor, keeping step with the beat, more or less. Music controls the two bodies feeling each other. Subtle shifts of weight move a unity of two forward or to the side. After suffering through salsa with much dedication and some hard work, I was shocked how natural tangoing felt.

It probably didn't look much like tango to those watching (in horror?), and the other dancers on the floor must have wished we hadn't been blocking their elegant progress, but I had, for the first time in my life, the feeling that not all music might be lost on me. For this alone, it was worth going to Bristol.