The Tangueric Triad
Photo: NYC City Hall Subway Station, National Park Service of the United States
I changed my shoes and walked onto the wooden floor in the last thirty minutes of the milonga. Three tandas, three men. A Spaniard, a Japanese, and a Russian. The tanda of D’Arienzo started off with “Mandria”, and continued with “La Bruja”. By the third song, I had lost my wits to the joy of the dance, the music, the exhilaration. There are certain songs I can’t listen to now, without feeling a sharp pain, akin to the stormy calm that precedes tears. They were played often in Buenos Aires, and belong to the soundtrack of my life there…
Then a quick walk through the rain with a friend to the subway station, and brushing off the droplets from my leather jacket on the station platform, only to find another tanguero and another tanguera waiting for the same train. A moment later, yet another tanguero and yet another tanguera make their entrance into our station. The latter draws out a portable stereo device out of her bag, plugs in her ipod, and listo! Six dancers pair off into an impromptu Subte Milonga. Like magic.
Then the train comes speeding along, and it’s all over in three seconds.
Incidentally, the song that came out of the stereo was “La Melodía del Corazón“. Oh how I wished my beloved had stayed until the Cumparsita…
(I am liking New York more and more with each passing day.)
