If I remember correctly, the last time we danced tango before the pandemic was in February of 2020. News just broke of some Polish guy who went to a tango festival in Europe and infected like, a hundred people with COVID. It was a scary time and the tango organizer at our last milonga in Toronto went to great lengths and great costs to temperature check us at the door and put hand sanitizer on every table. I’m not one of those people who didn’t care - I was and still am gut wrenchingly fearful of germs and getting sick (yes, in that way I’m a pussy) - and every hug and kiss with all you lovely people of Toronto Tango gave me the heebie-jeebies.
Then everything shut down. No Tango, and not only for just a couple of weeks. And this went on, and on, and on. For almost FOUR YEARS.
Yippee! I was free! No more freaking studio practice sessions with Man Yung cracking the whip and turning me into a multi enganche gancho back sacada parada colgada performing tango monkey in heels! No more “You got to be kidding me, in public??!?!” loud Tango arguments about steps with Man Yung at the milonga! No more “Look Ma! I’ve turned into a zombie!” Mondays (or Wednesdays, or Thursdays, or Fridays) at work after a late night at a milonga.
They say you look back at times of great trouble and stress and all you remember are the good times. And yes, it was easy for me to forget the constant fear of getting sick, watching frightening COVID related news on a loop until I was actually sick (and not yet with COVID), lining up forever at the grocery store wearing a mask in the cold with my glasses fogging up and not being able to see a damn thing, and of course, ALMOST RUNNING OUT OF TOILET PAPER.
What I remember most happily about 2020 - 2023 was:
Drinking lots of Gin and Tonic!
Driving in Toronto and being the only car on the road and not in constant gridlock!
Watching Downton Abbey 4 times!
Eating a whole lot of Lobster and Crab (because suddenly it got cheap - lockdown in China meant that mainland Chinese people weren’t buying all the seafood in the world and driving up the prices!)
Spending time with cat!
Becoming a proficient artist of heads and fully clothed torsos!
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| (But not of arms and legs, but I craftily circumvented that particular problem by drawing people kneeling with hands hiding under cats or out of the frame. Here I did do hands, but as you can see, the fingers look like sausages) |
And of course:
NOT DANCING TANGO.
People would be amazed to learn that we only danced Tango once during the pandemic, in our kitchen which is the only place (apart from the bathroom) which had tiled flooring in our condo. Just One Tango in which Man Yung knocked me into several cupboards due to there not being any space. I was glad that we didn’t try in the bathroom, because it would mean being knocked into the toilet, and we didn’t exactly want to have a plumber come to our place because to fix stuff because, you know, COVID.
I was absolutely fine with not dancing ever again. In fact, along with my newly acquired phobia of running out of toilet paper, I developed a phobia of going to milonga. Whenever Man Yung would even think of dancing (he may not actually say anything but I could smell it on him) I would have terrible nightmares of going to milongas where no-one wore a face mask and wake up in a cold sweat.
So, finally, after actually getting COVID (and thankfully, not dying) and what must be our hundredth COVID booster shot, we went to our first milonga after the pandemic in December of 2023.** A Christmas Milonga, in fact - at the location closest to home, and where the lights were turned down so dim you could hardly even cabeceo…Just in case we had forgotten how to dance and look real stupid on the dance floor. Because four years of not dancing tango, not listening to tango music, not talking about tango and not even thinking about tango (well, that’s me, I can’t speak for Man Yung) should really do a number on your tango skills.
Guess what? We took to that slippery dark dance floor with lots of trepidation… and discovered that we could still dance! I could still follow (but as Man Yung would say, “It’s easy to follow - you don’t actually have to do anything, so stop bragging about it”) and Man Yung can still do a million (out of his pre-pandemic million billion gazillion) steps.
It was amazing, it was like stepping into a foreign country for the first time (or after decades) and finding out you can still speak the language (somewhat) fluently.
We returned to Tango in full force (well, almost - I draw the line at practicing in a studio by ourselves, going to a milonga on a night before or after a workday, arguing about steps, and having to lead a very heavy Man Yung unless absolutely necessary - because hey, following is NOT not doing anything and doing your best impression of a truck with square wheels) and the rest is post-pandemic history.***
** Just for the record, I still didn’t want to. Man Yung may still be spritely at his advanced age, but let’s face facts - old is old. “Man Yung, why can’t you take more precautions and be the guy in Germany who had 217 COVID booster shots? That’s how safe you should be before you dance with every single germy woman at the milonga,” I said.
***…waiting to be written on this blog to an audience of absolute zero. This is what happens if you haven’t blogged since 2020! Thank god I have a day job and don’t need this pile of tango blogging crap to make a living.
