The music started and I waited for my partner’s body to give me the signal that he would be stepping. As his right foot slid forward, my left leg stepped back in unison, one stride at a time. For the beginner Argentine tango student, the first lesson (and then forever after), you must continue to work on the basics.
Argentine tango lessons make me think of intense eye contact between man and woman, quick twirls and jutting, long legs, but the lessons are actually much more mundane.
I was taking my first lesson in Ottawa, Canada. We spent the entire hour and a half learning to walk, literally. Tango-ing requires such concentrated levels of effort between partners, that it must be taught and repeated over and over again.
What I loved the most was the language that both bodies are speaking. I was dancing with a man I had never met, yet we learned how to communicate with each other entirely by impulse. He was leading, so it was his job to inform me of when he would start stepping, when he would change to a side step and when he wanted to pause. All this he would within his body.
On my end, I had to let him know I was ready to dance by connecting and swaying in tune, put pressure on his arms to create the right amount of resistance and listen to his body communicate our next step. If our minds wandered for a second, we were disconnected and usually fell out of step.
What you can’t escape, though, is the music that underlies the steps. It’s impossible not to feel it flow through your bones, telling you when to step and how to move. It was an incredible feeling for me (who has only danced solo) to have to rely on someone else to dance. Both of us had to be in synch or it wouldn’t work. There’s a reason the cliché “It takes two to tango” rings true 
For those who live in the Ottawa area, Siempre Tango Argentine Tango School runs weekly lessons a few nights a week at the All Saints Church at 317 Chapel Street. Travellers can book Francis Caron, the principal teacher, for private lessons when they are in town.
Lori Henry is a freelance Travel, Health and Hockey writer based in Vancouver, Canada.
