After two years studying tango in the US, I finally made my pilgrimage to Buenos Aires, the mecca of tango. When I imagined finally getting to dance authentic tango in Buenos Aires, I was giddy and anxious to dance my first “real tango” but terrified that I’d do something wrong and be exposed as an inexperienced amateur. What I didn’t anticipate was that the hardest part wouldn’t be the dancing, but the getting asked. It’s not that Argentine men didn’t want to dance with me, it’s that they don’t ask—at least not the way I am used to, with an actual verbal request such as, “Would you like to dance?”Back in the states someone had tried to describe how Argentine men ask for a dance with a gesture known as the cabeceo (Spanish for “nod”). More than a regular old nod, it is a combination of intense eye contact and a slight nodding of the head. It’s not entirely different from an American’s head tilt that conveys, “What’s up?,” but it is accompanied by a distinct, inquisitive opening of the eyes, as if to say, “Yes or no?” It’s not a smoldering, “come hither” look, just an invitation that can be issued without a word from clear across a crowded dance floor. I’d heard about it but had never seen it in action and it sounded complicated.
On the first night that I mustered up the courage to go out to a milonga, the general term for tango clubs, I was by myself and worried that nobody would ask me to dance and equally worried that someone would ask me to dance and I would fumble through the whole thing. Could I hold my own in the birthplace of tango? The worst embarrassment would be if my partner ditched me in the middle of a tanda. A tanda is a set of four songs which are set apart by curtinas, literally a “curtain” of music which is a different style so as to obviously mark the division between tandas. Dancers clear the floor during the curtina as the men bring the women back to their seats and start looking for a new partner for the next tanda. It is extremely rude to stop dancing with your partner before the completion of the tanda; a dancer’s slap in the face. These rules hold true in the U.S. (except for uninitiated beginners) so I would feel the full insult if someone ditched me in the middle of a tanda.
So there I was, nervously awaiting my first dance at my first milonga in Buenos Aires. I had heard about this whole cabeceo thing, but it seemed like an urban myth. Did I really have to look strangers in the eye? I sat, by myself, at my own little table, wondering if I would ever get asked to dance. I sat, and I sat, and I sat, for over an hour. I found a tango magazine and started looking at that, trying to seem engaged and totally nonchalant about the fact that I was in Buenos Aires, by myself, ALL ALONE, for five weeks, with no one to dance with. What was I thinking? Why did I plan such a long trip by myself!? I even ordered a drink a friend had told me about—a classic in Argentina called Fernet Cola.
