Molinete

My program assistant Heather, who has become an avid Latin dance enthusiast over the last year or so, works weekends and some nights at the Mambo Room.

Ever since they'd begun to offer Tango Bootcamps there, she's been nudging me to pick up a class-- perhaps she figured out I have a thing for Argentine tango music, since my computer at work is loaded with it.

So, I am proud to announce that this afternoon, I finally attended (my first ever) Tango class: three and a half hours of basic tango instruction, finishing up with putting the steps and patterns we learned together and dancing with partners (other Tango Bootcamp participants).

I'd taken Ballroom classes in one of my previous lives, and ballet as a child; but it has been centuries since I did anything like this. The instructor was fabulous-- and very patient with the lot of us, including beginners like me, who've collected additional lumps through the years and aren't exactly, um, in the sveltest shape. I posted a photo that Heather took of me on the dance floor, in my Facebook album; here's a look if you care for it.

Before all the excitement began, I snapped a picture of one of the ceiling fans in the Mambo Room. As we learned to do the basic 8-part pattern, how to settle into the intuitiveness of the music and its call to either lead or follow, and how to execute the Molinete or "little windmill" (a series of turns around the leading partner), I thought that the flower-shaped ceiling fan nicely echoed in visual form some of the basic concepts of tango.

We didn't get to learn any of those sexy tango embellishments yet-- like the caricia, lustrada, or castigata-- but I look forward to taking up more lessons in the near future!