I recently attended a friend’s 50th birthday party, held at the Mercury Cafe, an eclectic restaurant and dance club in Denver. We had not seen each other since my 40th birthday party, six years ago (held at the not-so-eclectic, very-little-dancing-ever-goes-on Ross residence).

Since last seeing my friend, he had gotten married, had a son, shaved his head and gotten an earring. My husband thought he had gained weight and looked "more prosperous." What had not changed was his distinctive, rich voice, his engineering-oriented career, and his love of tango. Yes, tango. In fact 90% of the party goers were fellow tango dancers. People who have day jobs and at night, live to tango.  At the Mercury Cafe and other places around town.

The first part of the evening was spent talking to tango enthusiasts, about how they got started, where they dance, why they love it so much, and what they do when they are not dancing. During the second half of the evening, I was the keen observer of what makes this dance so magical, from the outfits worthy of a serious whirl on the floor, to the smooth moves from plenty of experts in full body motion. It was full immersion into another world for one evening. 

To find a group of natural boundary crossers, join a community of tango dancers. My husband probed one regular on how long it takes to get to the level of competence that we were observing on the dance floor. The woman said simply, "A long time." When he probed further, it turned out most people at the party had been practicing tango, consistently, for five or more years. One had been a competitive ballroom dancer in Europe. People don’t take up the dance lightly. And like my friend, most had long-time careers in something completely different.

The woman who sat across from me at dinner, a harp instructor for over 35 years, remarked how tango dancers fall into two camps–those in the "touchy feely" professions (e.g., musicians, massage therapists, artists, nurses) and those in analytical professions (e.g., software developers, product managers, network administrators). She explained that it takes both sides of the brain to do tango and only those who can make the leap to the "other side" become good at it.

The dance takes close communication between the partners. The man leads and choreographs the steps for both dancers in real-time, a case of improvising parallel, but distinctive parts. The woman follows, or maybe senses is a better word, so that the dancers are moving as one. Both must respond to the emotion of the music, illustrating with their bodies the ups and downs of the musical lines.

It turns out that alot of the communication comes through the chest. That type of physical intimacy takes some getting used to, I was told that beginning women students often start by putting their hands on the man’s chest.

If this wasn’t complicated enough, there is no percussion in tango music. Finding the beat can be a challenge for newbies. Other oddities I observed included full stops in the dancing–complete pauses that are timed to integrate seemlessly with the rest of the movement–and a swiveling of the female hips reminiscent of a secret handshake.  Almost all of the women danced with their eyes closed, to be able to sense more acutely the movement of their partner.

Unlike the stereotype of tango as a movement of wild abandon, I observed it to be a thinking and sensing person’s dance, one requiring whole brain thinking. The harp player remarked that dance clubs usually don’t welcome tango dancers because they rarely have more than one drink. Any more and it impairs their ability to quickly sense in the moment a partner’s movement or a nuance in the music.

When we left at 10:30pm, the party was still going strong. My friend was beaming, sweaty from the last hour of dancing. His two-year old had long been taken home by relatives to be tucked into bed.

I was grateful to have gotten a glimpse of this other world, to have gotten an appreciation for a whole new mind in another context.