My mother was a ballet dancer. She was a soloist at the Stora Teatern in Goteborg, Sweden, which is where I was born. When I was old enough to express an interest and I saw her put my little sister into ballet classes, I entered as well. With a break in my teens, I took something like thirteen years of ballet ending in my early twenties. I quit when I allowed school and work to become too taxing, although I did perform very briefly with a modern dance company before that.

I avoided partner dancing for many years, although my mother did teach me to waltz when I was five. (It was something she thought every young gentleman needed to know.) I felt rather intimidated by partner dancing, for two reasons. First, I was afraid of the lead-follow relationship and the way that allowed for many more screw ups than the tightly choreographed world of ballet. Or rather, more screw up in judgment, since ballet certainly allowed for screwups in execution. Second (and probably exacerbating the first), partner dancing is inherently social dancing, with all the cliques and gossip and hierarchies that such a thing entails. I wasn't ready for that because I was too attached to what other people thought of me.

Then I met a wonderful woman who had grown up doing partner dancing. While I was out dancing in punk clubs (see, I was not afraid of all social dancing, just the partered kind), she was busy disco dancing. Eventually, I bowed to the inevitable and took swing dancing lessons with her and enjoyed it.

I had one tango lesson with her, but she didn't want to continue. I don't think she enjoyed the fact that tango was not about stringing together steps, the way just about any other partner dancing is. She was amazingly good at all of those. Although I'm not sure of this, I think the tango connection was frustrating for her.

I adored it, but it was several years before I decided to commit myself to it. By that time, my partner and I were no longer together. I looked for a tango partner and I turned to Eleanore, an old friend of mine. I needed someone tall enough and she was 5'9". Surprisingly, she was able to make the commitment to tango that I needed. We have learned a lot together in the last nine months.

Posted by Michael on 3/21/05; 11:26:47 AM