the-vu

Pushing the Amateurs – How one woman is trying to create a chapter of USABDA
By Jeffrey the Barak

USABDA – The United States Amateur Ballroom Dancers Association. You might expect a big dancing town like Los Angeles to have a large chapter of USABDA, but in early 2003, there is only a mostly defunct Greater L.A. Chapter, which is not only less great than it once was, it’s virtually completely disbanded.

Standard Competitors at USABDA’s 2002 National Championships

Enter one enthusiastically devoted amateur ballroom dancer by the name of Alexandra Caluen, and her quest to create a long overdue West LA chapter of USABDA.

There is no shortage of social ballroom dancing in West LA, mostly thanks to well-known teachers such as Russell Adcock and Michael Kuka, and there is more East Coast Swing, Salsa and West Coast Swing than you would ever have time to do, but USABDA is only partly about social dancing.

As the national governing body for amateur ballroom dancing and DanceSport (the competitive version of ballroom dancing) in the United States, USABDA encourages its members to compete and perform as well as to waltz the night away for purely social reasons.

If you join a chapter of USABDA, you had better be prepared to be encouraged to recruit new dancers, dance with new people at the socials and also to learn a performance routine or two as well as give serious consideration to entering a dance competition.

And why not? 99% of social dancers already know it’s all about the dance itself. A ballroom party is no place to cruise for your next date. The dancing and the constant quest to improve upon it take precedence over everything else.

And attracting beginners is essential. Many ballroom events are filled with beautiful souls who are almost too old to go on a cruise ship. As cool and fabulous as these more mature people may be, the only hope for the future of ballroom is the constant influx of younger and younger new dancers. With Salsa and Swing being so popular, there are plenty of potential recruits, but there is often an image misconception with ballroom dancing.

Latin Competitors at USABDA’s 2002 National Championships

For example, unless a Salsa Dancer is exposed to the visual wonders of advanced competitive Latin dance, they are not going to be able to erase the image of nice old grannies doing a gentle social Cha-Cha on the community center floor on a Saturday night.

Unless a Swing Dancer actually witnesses a high-speed continuity style Foxtrot, they are not going to have any inkling of how amazingly cool that is. They are going to see the word “Foxtrot” through glazed-over eyes.

USABDA is like an outreach organization that spreads the word to the unconverted. We dance because we evolved enough to be able to dance, and it feels even better than it looks. USABDA is a way for there to be more Ballroom Dancers, and better Ballroom Dancers.

So there was this void in West Los Angeles. In this case West Los Angeles also includes a 30-mile arc around West Los Angeles, and Alexandra Caluen decided to take some action to fill the void. Alexandra even bought everyone dinner following the second meeting that took place to discuss the formation of the chapter!

Alexandra Caluen with her husband Phil

the-vu: When did you first become aware of the existence of USABDA and the lack of a local chapter?

Alexandra: I don’t remember the actual first-heard-about-it moment, but I suspect that I saw an ad placed by USABDA in a magazine called Dancing USA. I joined fairly soon thereafter, and this would have been within my first year of dancing ballroom. As to the local chapter, Greater LA lost its entire board of directors last year. We thought and talked about if for a couple of months after receiving an appeal from the regional vice-president; when no one else stepped up to revive a local chapter, I took a deep breath and dived in.

You met your husband Phil in dance class?

Yes indeed. We both started lessons in August 1997, by November were practicing together, and New Year’s Eve was our “first date.” We got married October 6, 2001 and yes, we danced a lot at the reception.

How long had you two been dancing before you decided to pin on a number and compete?

I believe it was in January 1999 and we were still quite bad. J But competition has proved to be the best motivation for us to continue improving overall, to stay in group-lessons, to take private lessons. For me it’s also quite exciting since I was never athletic before. Phil did some biathlons before we met, but for him also ballroom has become an excellent outlet for that competitive urge.

What has been your greatest success so far in competition?

We placed first in a “Silver” level three-dance event (cha-cha, rumba, and swing) at USABDA’s 2002 Nationals. Big thrill, major thrill.

How much help and encouragement, with regard to the formation of the chapter, did you get from your teacher, Russell Adcock and others in the professional dance world?

Russell has always encouraged us to participate in USABDA and has been very open-minded about how he might help. Professionals aren’t allowed to actually organize events, of course. Michael Kuka and Thomas Hicks (other local instructors) are also both actively supporting social ballroom and competitive ballroom.

Junior Competitors at USABDA’s 2002 National Championships

If the West LA Chapter looks like it won’t be happening after all, at what stage do you think you’ll pull the plug on your time and personal expense?

If after one year we have the chapter chartered, and have scheduled our first social dance, and have organized one promotional event, I will keep on with it. I don’t have the kind of ego that will require me to flog any dead horses. All I require is a moderate level of interest and commitment from enough other people to actually pull off the events we all want.

How will the chapter encourage social dancers to learn a performance routine or enter a competition?

I hope that the chapter will fall out, structurally, into a sort of tree. The trunk will be the social dancers who both attend and organize the chapter dances. The branches are competition, performance/outreach, college/youth programs, a formal dinner dance, etc. We would encourage couples who dance socially to learn a routine so they can perform it at chapter dances or outreach events; we would also encourage singles to find partners for the same purpose. Those couples might then very likely be tempted to begin competing. Once you get over the initial stage fright, the performance aspect can be addictive, and if you are at all competitive, the prospect of winning a medal or trophy can be that extra motivation you need to really perfect your technique.

Ultimately, in order to attract those who haven’t considered ballroom dancing before, we need to present it in all its forms: social, competitive, whatever. The point above about “club” dancers being attracted to ballroom by the variety it offers is one that I hope we will make over and over again in our promotional efforts. The catch is that those dance clubs really are predominantly places for the younger, dating crowd. So not only do we have to frame USABDA events in such a way as to arouse the curiosity of club dancers, we have to take our message into the clubs by offering short lessons or demonstrations in the other dances that can be done to the same sort of music in the same sort of ambiance. If people like dancing at all, seeing something new will often inspire a wish to add it to their repertoire. If our hopes are realized, that wish will bring young people into the ballroom studios and they will start to enjoy all the glamour and romance of traditional ballroom, as well as the excitement of DanceSport.

If your readers are interested in learning more about USABDA, there are pages & pages of information on its website: www.usabda.org.

Thank you Alexandra!

And so at the time of writing, it is not yet certain that Alexandra will meet her goal, and that there will be a West Los Angeles chapter of USABDA, but if it doesn’t get off the ground, it will be a loss of opportunity for the area, and for every person that does not learn to dance, it’s a life wasted in the mediocrity of sitting still.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu, and an enthusiastic social dancer.

Photographer Carson Zullinger’s dance photographs courtesy USABDA.org

Pole Dancing 101
Sheila Kelley’s School for Bedroom Strippers
See below for writer credit

Sheila Kelley

Sexy actress Sheila Kelley once wrapped them up in legal jargon on the 80s hit courtroom drama LA Law, these days she’s more likely to be found wrapping her legs around a pole like a stripper. And what’s more she’s teaching others how to do it. In her back garden studio of her plush Hollywood home, Kelley, 37, twists and spins around the pole like a professional, teaching her mixed age group of female students how to copy her elegant, yet erotic moves.

Kelley first became interested in stripping while studying for film roles. This fascination eventually evolved into the gritty stripper movie ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’, which Kelley produced and starred in along side Daryl Hannah and Jennifer Tilly. During the filming, Kelley immersed herself into the seedy life of strip clubs during which she learnt dancing techniques and tricks from real strippers. “Having had the dancer background, I took to it very easily and very well. Never in my life have I been in better shape.”

Daryl Hannah at the Blue Iguana

“Women come to the class terrified, like I did, but also compelled. There was just something, from the very first time I saw a stripper in a strip club I was hooked.” Kelley says who during the making of ‘Dancing at the Blue Iguana’ paid strippers to teach her their sexy dance moves.

Kelley certainly doesn’t look like a stripper sat in comfortable sweats, her look is more that of a slim and attractive Hollywood mum-next-door. When performing elaborate tricks on the pole, twisting and spinning like a topsy-turvy ice-skater, Kelley adds a touch of class that makes her act seem almost wholesome.

The thought of teaching it to others came to her while stripping for her husband, Richard Schiff, who plays Toby Ziegler, a sharp tongued Communications Director on award winning series about life in the White House – West Wing, Kelley and Schiff have two children, ages 7 and 1 and a half. “It struck me how unbelievably empowering it was for me to dance for my husband alone,” she says. “Simultaneously, you become your most open, your most vulnerable and your most powerful.”

Schiff says men are bug-eyed with envy when they find out his pretty wife, likes to strip for him. He says he has also discerned a difference in female friends who have taken her classes. “It has changed their marriages, and it’s changed the way they walk through life. There’s a centered kind of sensuality in them that might have been fighting to get through before,” he says. “Then there’s just the fun they have. They’re always howling and screaming back here. I’m playing with the kids, and then I hear this hooting and hollering, and I think, ‘Man, I want to be back there. What am I doing changing diapers?

“I probably got pregnant after a lap dance,” Kelley adds, “There’s a way to spice up your marriage.” Now Kelley teaches four 90 minute classes of her ‘Stripping for Everyday Women class’ a week. Yet the lessons aren’t designed to turn her students who are mostly upper-middle class actresses / friends ranging in age from 24 to 57, into strippers to take the stages of the seedy strip clubs on Sunset. Kelley wants stripping out of the clubs and into the master bedroom. “What I am doing is taking that beautiful art form of erotica out of a decadent place and bringing it to women as an empowering tool,” explains Kelley. One student, who preferred to stay anonymous, claimed the classes give married women a renewed sense of sex appeal. “Women my age, housewives and mothers, aren’t prepared to say, ‘Look at me, aren’t I gorgeous?’ It’s embarrassing,” said the actress and mother, who is in her 50s. “The class is incredibly embarrassing and brings out all of your insecurities. And yet, you’re dying to do it.”

“I’ve taken the best elements from all the different types of dance I have studied over the years, and created my own movement technique. It’s a 40 minute warm up flow, getting the body moving in a more feminine way, in a more curvaceous way, and after that we do pole work and each person does a routine.”

“I’ve never been able to act sexy in a movie. I was playing romantic parts and everything, but that was an area where I just felt foolish, totally foolish,” another student says. “Sheila’s very supportive and wonderful. She eggs you on and keeps saying, ‘Oh, powerful move, powerful move,’ and screaming out how beautiful everyone is. And she means it.”

The classes aren’t designed to titillate the women’s partners, that’s a bonus factor, the classes are to help women feel sexy and confident in themselves without relying on men or anyone else to make them feel that way. These sisters are doing it for themselves!

“It’s a really beautiful bonding experience. The women move from beginners, to intermediate to advanced together, so they develop this incredible bond and trust. There is just this unspoken camaraderie” says Kelley, “If you are scared, I’ll get up there and do it with you. I’ll be right next to you talking in your ear.”

“Allowing your body to move the way it wants to move naturally, being overtly sexual without apology, gives these women and myself an enormous sense of satisfaction,” Kelley continues to explain.

Kelley claims the classes not only make women feel more confident about themselves sexually but also about their bodies. “It helps them own their body no matter what. One woman thought she had a big butt and as she turned around from the last third of the dance, she had to walk back, she went ‘oh no they are going to see my big butt’ and then she claimed it, she went ‘yeah! They are looking at my big ass’. You could see it in her moves! It was a beautiful moment. She didn’t give a damn!”

“The most erotic dancer I ever saw was a 250 pound Jewish girl wearing braces who as she got up to dance, she just floated. She was a real stripper. I was awestruck, dumbfounded by her beauty. This is when I realized that it doesn’t matter what you look like it’s about how you move your body. She was a big girl, but when those hips moved the men were riveted. She was beautiful for those few moments,” explains Kelley.

“Women have such erotic power. We don’t use it because we are scared. We are told ‘bad girls do that’. ‘It’s nasty to move your hips like that’, ‘you’re a slut’ ‘you’re a whore’. I want to blow those days out of the water.” Kelley says.

Judging by the popularity of her program since it started in May, last year women want to blow that image out of the water as well. Kelley teaches lap and pole dancing to classes of 6 – 10 women of ‘all shapes and sizes’ a week each paying $50 for a 90 minute class. The waiting list is growing so fast that Kelley is looking for rented space to accommodate bigger classes and there is talk of doing a video to reach others.

Kelley’s classes may indicate that in the new millennium another sexual tabbo is being brought into the mainstream. Hollywood has recently made strippers the theme of films like Showgirls and Demi Moore’s Striptease. Crunch gyms in Los Angeles started cardio striptease classes as favored by ex-Baywatch beauty Carmen Electra. The classes proved so successful that sessions are now being offered at Crunch clubs in New York and Miami. Sexy actress/model Pamela Anderson, who has a stripper pole in her bedroom, recently announced she might give up acting to strip onstage during her boyfriend Kid Rock’s rock concerts.
Kelley has no plans to return to acting in the immediate future and won’t be staring in a movie reunion for L.A Law, which is being planned for the American network NBC’s 75th anniversary. Kelley won’t be starring in the special one off reunion show of the groundbreaking drama about the lives loves and courtroom battles of Los Angeles lawyers as it will only star first season cast members, Kelley joined in the third.

“I had an opportunity to do a pilot this year and I just wasn’t into it. I don’t get the incredibly satisfaction of giving something to somebody when I am acting these days that I get from what I am doing. This is so rewarding. I feel like it really transforms people, it really changes people’s lives for the better. I’ve got the most touching phone calls in the middle of the night from women genuinely choked up with emotion, saying ‘how can I thank you? I am a different human being, I walk through the world like a different person’. I don’t get that from acting. But I do think I will eventually get back to acting, I love to act.”

“I did not say I wanted to become a stripping teacher. This all just happened,” Kelley says. “I know how powerful I feel when I do it. I know how sexy I feel. I know how beautiful I look to me and to my husband, and that’s all that matters.”

Five ways to bring out the pole dancer in you!

1. Invest in some sassy outfits that would be fit to grace the stages of Stringfellows – if you look sexy you’ll feel sexy too! With the Internet you can shop from the privacy of your own home at discreet sites like: www.annsummers.com

2. Set the mood with some appropriate music. Kelley uses everything from Kid Rock to Jah Rule.

3. Keep eye contact with your partner as you dance. Looking at the floor is another of Kelley’s tips.

4. Learn in the comfort and security of your own home with a video on exotic dancing by Fawina a former exotic dancer from: www.exoticdanceschool.com

5. Create yourself an alter ego – swap your Mary Poppins prudishness’ for a more daring persona – developing a steamy new you will help you shed your inhibitions and leave you free to do anything you want.

Sheila Kelley can be found and contacted via her website at http://www.sfactor.com

The writer of this article comes to the-vu courtesy of the Splash News and Picture Agency. Due to too many weird emails, we have removed her name.

By Cherie Magnus

It was known as La Cat’dral. Not easy to find in Buenos Aires’ dark side streets at three in the morning–no signs, no cars, no people in front. But once I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the old warehouse, I could hear the siren call of music. It was eerie and scary, mounting those stairs alone, but I was helpless to do otherwise, a pilgrim drawn to the altar of Tango.

The room was huge, like the inside of a barn, all wood. It was barely lit by large candelabra with most of the candles melted into pools of silky wax, some votive flames, and a few strings of fairy lights. It smelled of cat piss and dusky marijuana. A bar ran the width of the room in back, with gigantic paintings hanging over it all the way to the rafters. Shadowy figures were sitting around the room on the lumpy funky old couches and broken chairs, their conversations punctuated by the smoldering ends of their cigarettes moving in the dark.

At first I could only see the silhouettes of dancers through the smoke. Three or four couples on the warped, uneven wooden dance floor, moved, not to Pugliese or Tanturi, but to Louis Armstrong’s “Kiss of Fire.” A tall figure approached out of the gloom. “Quieres bailar?” He was young, muscular, handsome, with black rimmed glasses framing eyes that sparkled with cocaine excitement. He was so tall I had to reach up very high to wrap my left arm around his neck. He held me tight and led me with brute machismo, so unlike the subtle leads of the old milongeuros I had danced with at Club Almagro earlier that night. When I leaned against him in the traditional tango pose of female trust, he dragged me across the floor, lifted me back on my feet, turned and twisted me, giving me no opportunity to embellish or decorate his steps. I simply obeyed the movements his body ordered. It was different, exhilarating, exhausting.

“You don’t really need to work out at the gym, do you?” I asked during a break in the music. “No, I eat red Argentine beef full of blood! Blood! To make me strong!”

His eyes glittered, muscles rippled under his tight tee shirt, testosterone energy creating an almost visible aura around him. Breathless, I had to sit out the next set and recover on an old velvet sofa. I watched people arriving and leaving in the candlelight, with their high heeled tango shoes and backpacks. The informality of the setting and the dancers’ attire and attitude clashed with the formal tango they danced so seriously. It was like watching a play: pure mesmerizing theatre.

Armed with two years of tango experience in Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam, and with knowledge gleaned from a trip to Argentina last year, I had flown off to Buenos Aires alone. I had no plans to connect with a group or to take any lessons. I simply went to dance tango.

I rented a room in the middle-class neighborhood of Caballito. Three other rooms in the apartment were rented to dancers, and the vivacious landlady, Maria Teresa, was a tanguera too. So whenever we met up with each other in the kitchen or the lone bathroom, we had plenty to talk about.

You can dance in Buenos Aires from after lunch until five in the morning. In the afternoon, the tables in the Confiteria Ideal–an elegant Belle Epoque ballroom of marble and mirrors–are littered with the cell phones of businessmen and housewives, also frosty ice buckets with bottles of sparkling sidra, the Argentine apple-cider champagne. Evenings you can go to practicas or take lessons until midnight. Then everyone hits the tango halls until the sun comes up. Repeatedly I went to bed with birds chirping and sunlight brightening the curtains of my room.

Every day, my friends and I discussed who danced where and with whom as if tango were the most important subject on earth. If I lived in Argentina, I would never work. I surmised that the dancers of Buenos Aires don’t keep a 9-5 schedule. Either that or they never sleep.

One night Maria Teresa drove us to Sin Rumbo. The historic milonga is far out of town, but famous as the “birthplace of tango.” Maria Teresa called it the “church of tango,” the genuine tango cathedral.

It was very different from La Cat’dral The harsh overhead florescent lighting illuminated a dozen people seated at tables and a few couples on the small, black and white checkered floor. The dancing style was more open, less crowded than in the packed town clubs. One couple caught my eye: a middle-aged pair a foot apart performing complicated figures with bored faces. “Married too long,” observed Maria Teresa, whose day job was as a psychologist.

Torquato Tasso was another small, cramped, inelegant tango hall, yet famous nevertheless. At first I couldn’t see why. Jetlagged and tired, I wanted to leave by two a.m. But when twelve white-haired portly men in tuxedos took the small stage, I hung around. Luckily for me, because they were the original members of the famous D’Arienzo Orchestra. With five bandoneons (Argentine accordions), a piano, violins, and double bass, they recreated the fabulous music of the 40′s and 50′s that all tango aficionados cherish.

I asked Maria Teresa, “Do you agree that the bandoneon is the sexiest instrument a man can play?” “Ooh yes!”she laughed. “Just look where they hold it!”

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I went to Pavadita on Avenida Corrientes. It too was upstairs, and after parting the velvet draperies at the top, I smelled the incense, burning to mask the musky stale odors of the windowless hall. At Pavadita, the men sit on a kind of stage at little tables, and the women sit in front of the bar and scattered around the room. Each time the music begins, men and women stare at each other across the empty dance floor. The women select the men they want as partners, and the men respond–or not–with raised eyebrows and inquisitive looks. After a woman nods affirmatively, the man gets up, crosses the room, and, when he’s close to her, she stands up and meets him ready to dance. These negotiations are invisible to all but the participants, and serve to prevent the embarrassment of public refusal. It’s a heady thing for us female tango tourists who are not used to it.

We catch the eye of a man who has just lit a cigarette and crossed his legs in a pose of relaxation…but suddenly he stubs it out and arrives in front of us to dance just because we looked at him.

I had already learned the infamous Code of Tango, and so I knew what was expected of me and how to behave. It’s all about invitation, wanting, rejection, needing, appearance, sensuality, attitude, sex.

I saw that young women are always invited to dance, no matter their skill levels, and old women hardly ever receive invitations, unless it is as favors from a friend or husband. And all the men wishing to dance, no matter their age, looks, or status, can tango as much as they liked.

Men wanted good-looking women; women cared more about the tango skills of their partner. That’s unfair, but it is a man’s world on the tango floor, always.

It is difficult to sit at a table with a man you like while he’s searching the room for prospective dance partners. Too, if you sit with a man, other dancers will ignore you, not wanting to infiltrate another guy’s “territory.” But the fellow at your table can catch the eye of any woman in the room and leave you to dance with her. That’s the Code.

The milongueros (tango hall habitues) of Buenos Aires are not young. They have had many years to perfect their art, are always formally dressed in wool suits and ties no matter the weather, and invariably smell of soap and French cologne. I love dancing in their traditional close embrace. For the milongueros there is only the milonguero style.

On my first trip I was absolutely petrified every time I was asked to dance. This year Carlos Gavito, Omar Vega, and other tango superstars approached me as if they were just anybody–or I was really someone.

At Club Gricel, I was afraid to look at Gavito for fear that he would think me too aggressive. I had taken a few lessons from him in Los Angeles when he was on tour with “Forever Tango,” so we knew each other a little. At the milongas, Gavito only danced with the best and the youngest women. Yet, from the corner of my eye, I saw him stand up, button his jacket, and walk around the dance floor to my table. Oh my gosh, I thought, glancing behind me in vain for the woman who was the object of his invitation. When he returned me to my table ten minutes later, the local women sitting with me were astonished. I could just hear the buzz: “Who is she?”

On my last day in Buenos Aires I danced an impromptu demonstration in the park with Antonio, a handsome milonguero who owned only the elegant suit of clothes on his back. We tangoed beneath a huge fig tree to music from a boombox tied to the bicycle of a grizzled old man. Elderly couples, young children, even a woman in a wheelchair, all cheered and threw money and candy at us while we danced. It was a miracle that I could glide so gracefully over the rough bricks in backless high wedgies with rubber soles.

Thank goodness I had prayed at La Cat’dral.

With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

By Kim Knode

Award-winning filmmaker, Adam Boucher declares, “I like to make documentaries like Tango: The Obsession as a discovery process which I can share with the audience.” Apparently audiences take pleasure in exploring subjects such as tango in Argentina together with Boucher. After a showing at the Smithsonian Institute in 1999, the Argentine Embassy was moved to declare Boucher’s documentary, “a significant film.” (Also, in the April of 2001, a representative from Jungle Films reports that recently a request for two thousand video versions of the film came in from Germany.)

The 1999 Marin County Film Festival also acknowledged the significance of the “Tango” and awarded Boucher first place. In the same year, at an Orlando, Florida film festival, despite the sold-out performances, Tango: The Obsession took second place. (The opinion poll after each screening may have influenced the ranking.)

The thirty-something director shifts his slight five-foot nine frame in a black easy chair as he starts to tell me about Orlando. (Outside, the twilight shadows fall on the streets of Santa Monica.) Inside my brightly lit office, I can see Boucher slightly blush. He grins and his green eyes flash as he confesses; “I got in an argument with a guy in the audience about tango.”

Boucher strikes me as a sweet, mild-mannered man. (He chose Argentine tango as a topic for his first film because he wanted to learn about the dance that “made my mom’s life happier and better.”  Boucher also dedicated the movie to his mother.) So I am momentarily surprised by a streak of the confrontational in Boucher. But then I remember that everyone has an opinion about the Argentine dance. (Not one dancer that Boucher interviews in Tango: The Obsession is neutral on the subject.)

Carlos Copello of The Tango Lesson (film) and Forever Tango (stage) fame compares tango to a drug.  In Boucher’s documentary, the Nureyev of tango mimes a drug addict shooting up. “It’s like you start to give yourself tango injections – continuous tango injections,” he says.

Despite the best efforts of his teacher, Boucher did not get addicted to the Argentine dance.  His  instructor?  Ten-year old, Geraldine Rejas, (featured in the film) started lessons at age four.

“Why did you choose a child?” I ask.

“She picked me,” he replies. “Geraldine was a good teacher. And there wasn’t the sexual tension of being in the arms of a woman.” He explains that tango with contemporaries is a little intimidating. “I mean what usually takes two or three dates (in North America)…You’re doing on the dance floor!”

Seduction and sexual tension is a part of the tango.  However, Boucher and his movie embrace a larger truth about the scintillating dance. “It is like a meditation,” says the documentary filmmaker. “There is no talking. And you can almost hear each other’s heart beat.” Boucher takes a sip of water and continues, “I experienced many of my ‘moments’ (of epiphany) dancing to “La Mariposa” – “The Butterfly” by Osvaldo Pugliese.”

“I get transformed because I get absorbed in what I’m doing. I don’t think about this or that. I just think about what I’m doing,” is how Margarita in Tango answers Boucher’s questions about the impact of the Latin dance on her life.

The swarthy, middle-aged Margarita matter-of-factly states in the film: “I was taught to dance by my mom’s brother.” (When she was six and seven years of age, she practiced her steps with a broomstick.)

Another lady in her forties, Boucher interviews in Tango: The Obsession whispers that daughters from good homes were not permitted to attend the late night tangos. So the younger girls picked up steps from older cousins. And then practiced with one another at home.

Besides the class restrictions to enter the milongas (dance salons), in tango’s earlier days in Argentina, only adults were allowed in. One man with a huge smile and gaps between his teeth sips espresso and elaborates on the details of his youth with delight into Boucher’s camera. He speaks of sneaking in with other little boys to watch Argentina’s experts twist, tangle and turn with ladies in stiletto heels. “We would hide and then do what they did.” (His initial tango training also started at home with older relatives.)

Thanks to his dancing mother’s connections to Copello, Boucher was granted entrance and access into the authentic (no-tourists-type) Argentine tango clubs.  However, all the credit goes to Boucher for his ability to create intimate conversations on camera while delving into the heart of the tango dancer.

He tells me he spent hours “hanging out” with lovers of tango to gain their trust. (In and out of the dance halls, time was spent munching media lunas (a half moon croissant) and downing “watered down versions of Italian espresso.”) He says, “In Argentina, it is common to share espresso with a fellow tanguero. In fact, they drink one after another.” Boucher states, “I am not particularly a coffee man. However, friends are treated like family. And quality time like drinking a coffee together is cherished.”  The filmmaker smiles and says, “So under those conditions how could someone not love coffee?”

Boucher may also have needed the extra boost from the caffeine. It is evident that the director did hours of homework on the history of the dance. Countless frames of black and white footage and sepia tone prints illustrate the emergence of tango. In addition, interviews with historians illuminate the beginnings of Argentine tango.  (Boucher’s clips with the so-called intellectuals of society – the historians – also take on the tone of a friendly chat on a street corner.)

One of the attention-grabbing moments of Tango: The Obsession was the proclamation that Italian immigrants were instrumental in the development of the dance.  Photos of the European men arriving in Argentina – a land of opportunity – exemplify some of the strains of melancholy, which filtered into the tango.

Tango: The Obsession demonstrates that Italians were not the only ones who needed a dance to deal with the blues. The early blacks of South America, the solitary gaucho, the stressed out citizen living in a high-tech society are all featured in the film.  Boucher’s probing camera lens provides insight (with his interviews and photographs) into why tango becomes an obsession. He gives us a glimpse into the lives of tango dancers who answer the call to touch and hear each other’s heart beat.

To order the film in VHS or PAL format or simply to learn more about Tango: The Obsession:
On the web: go to http://www.tangovideos.com/ or Amazon.com. You can also directly contact the distributor, Jungle Films: Jungle Films 11271 Ventura Boulevard, PMB512 Studio City, CA 91604 Tel: 818-771-8668 Fax: 818-753-8305

Kim Knode’s interview articles focusing on artists, celebrities and dance champions have been published in various print and on-line publications.