Yes, it's hard to tell, but these are my fuzzy penguin socks (only hazard being the little string on the front that provides yet another heel trap for front passes in closed dancing) AND these are my new sparkly jeans that fit.. Well "fit" would be more apropos, since they are about two inches shorter than I'd like, but this works okay for tango dancing.I ordinarily despise jeans for tango, since they limit leg movement compared to skirts and stretchier fabrics. These were more or less fine, though, and honestly I'm enough of a leggy-terror on the dancefloor that it's probably fine to keep some of the high kicks closer to the ground from time to time.
But to indulge the jeans! tangent, yesterday evening was a jeans kind of night and I have grown tired of the few classy and simple dresses that allow for pretty feet and no major costume malfunctions. Also, I have to admit, my personal style and figure are far better flattered by pants (provided they remotely fit, which is always a challenge) and a certain head nod to adrogeny achieved through a blending of masculine clothing paired with obscenely girly accessories. In this case - and no, no pictures, sorry - I paired my tight sparkly jeans with my favorite tuxedo shirt and my blingiest I-was-inspired-by-my-previously-Puerto-Rican-coworkers-after-work-hours gold earrings and what Andrew called a "delicate punk" gold bracelet from my aunts.
I am also sure that Leslie - the office paralegal/manager/goddess-of-all-things-I-can-never-keep-track-of-because-I'm-more-or-less-gunning-for-a-cross-of-crazy-cat-lady-and-absent-minded-professor (yes, this is totally on her business cards) - will be proud to hear that I took her suggestion for my hair. She came into the office one day, rather randomly, and announced to me that she had seen a hairstyle that was a really good idea. It involved a side-pony tail, looped over itself once and then pinned into a messy side bun. I'm sure there are instructions and pictures of starlets out there doing this somewhere), but you can just take my word as I took hers. And I will say, it took enough bobby pins to set off metal detectors, but it was a nice "casual" look.
Ok, but I was talking about my shoes and dancing. Here they are again!
And so no, my balance was not 100% and it was a slightly different crowd at the EXPERIENCE A PRESIDENTIAL POST V-DAY TANGO EXTRAVAGANZA!! (see, I named it, thus ensuring it would be more engaging than the last milonga I hosted where I had a migraine and didn't dance much). If you haven't seen the event site, I am rather amazed that people let me organize based on how I write these up, but I suspect my sparkly jeans distract people with oooooooh shiny. Or nobody actually checks these pages out and they just show up because it's always on the same night anyways.
Anyways, kind of a funny theme, since the real theme of the milonga was Canadians! We asked instructors Emiko and Francis from up North to be our DJs. This turned out to be quite the stroke of strategic brilliance, since a huge swath of US Citizens had fled down South to Valentango or were otherwise long-weekending far away. So, we had our contingent from Oak Harbor and a large influx of British Columbians filling out the floor between the odd (and I mean that in both senses of the word) regular who hadn't made the trek down to Oregon.
And, as may be expected of Canadians (off the freeway, at least) they were all extraordinarily nice and positive people. I didn't feel any oozing of overly serious self-taking and while no dances caused me to melt into chocolate fondue, many of them fizzed away into delighted laughter by the end.The music was definitely traditional, but very well mixed, and on the spot, I might add, which is always impressive. It was not the "Best of Golden Age 2 CD Mix" that I suspect some traditionalists resort to when arranging music. And they played a few of my favorite quirkier Canaros and more playful Biagis. The valses, were particularly fun. I get the sense that they must focus quite strongly in their instruction on playing with the music and varying tempos and paces. This would be confirmed by my few tandas with Francis, who is utterly and absolutely adorable (adding to more delighted giggling) and quite the opposite of snotty or self-important.
We had the usual "I have never seen you before! Where are you from..." conversation reflecting a sort of similar under-the-surface sentiment that you hear in "you don't seem like a lawyer!" The tone is essentially that it is odd that somebody with a nice personalty in the latter case or the ability to dance in a former could not conform to the expectations associated with these things (not a lawyer in the latter and familiar due to frequent dancing in the former). I did not feel I was doing my best following with him, but I think part of this was that we were still figuring each other out. He has an excellent sense of rhythm and whimsy, but just drives a little differently than other leads with whom I'm better versed. Our final songs of the tandas we danced were much closer to perfection and over all a lot of chucklingly good fun. I didn't dance with the other two Canadian leads who looked to be frequent dancers. I wouldn't say they were cliquish, but they certainly had their familiar faces to dance with and I am often hesitant about opening up to an unfamiliar cabeceo when I'm not feeling on and I have plenty of familiar glances to meet already. Yep, call me a situational coward. I dare you to. And yes, I was very boring at Truth or Dare when I was a kid.
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| I dare you to call me out on something I already know about an occasional personality trait of mine that may diminish my exposure to pleasant new situations! |
At any rate, it was a fun evening with a few particularly silly dances and no blood on the floor by the end. This coming Thursday I'll be stopping in at The Muse in Conway, another place David teachers. They're doing their live music Tango Cafe and I am going to a CLE in Bellevue the next morning, so I figure I can just finish the drive to Andrew's house afterwards and get up bright and early to learn about advanced counseling for dissolution clients based largely on systems theory. I am kind of excited about that. And the dancing should be fun as well.
Until next time kiddos, I have no clever ending... because life continues far beyond the Happily Ever After nonsense anyways. Happy President's Day
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