An open letter to a beginning tanguer@
Dear beginning tanguer@, On the brink of becoming totally hooked on tango. Perhaps, you just took your first intensive beginner's course, or just got through your first night dancing at a milonga...or maybe even just returned from your first tango trip abroad. I have decided to write you this letter, perhaps as a word of warning, perhaps to ease your path a little, or perhaps, to reminisce about my own path that has taken me through some pretty amazing highs - and the most crushing lows. Indeed, what i am going to tell you, I wish they had told me before I took a single step on the dance floor. Years ago, when I was a starry eyed beginner, full of hope and aspiration to become one of those mystical creatures filling up the dance floor in the milonga, I met a man in the lift of a low-end hostel in Berlin. Somehow, we got into talking about tango, and the man told me he had also been a tanguero for a long time, before walking away. Shocked by even such a possibility, i enquired how...