A Lesson in the Steps That Lead to the Dance

Pablo Tamburini dances the tango with Aya Kawai, a tourist from Japan. Tamburini spends about four nights a week as a taxi dancer, earning $10 to $15 an hour to be a dance partner. (By Silvina Frydlewsky -- For The Washington Post)

BUENOS AIRES Pablo Tamburini, in search of a tango partner, sat at a table in the dance hall and surveyed the 200 or so others assembled along the perimeter of the parquet dance floor.

If it weren't for a mix of national and professional pride, he might walk directly to a woman's table, smile unthreateningly, and politely ask her to dance. But that would violate The Code -- an unwritten set of rules that dictate behavior inside the milongas , the dances held in different tango halls every night of the week. The Code is hard to read, he said, tripping up lots of initiates before they take their first dance step. If someone isn't familiar with its ways, he said, that person might never even make it onto the floor.

"It's like stepping inside a little, closed society in here," he said, scanning the other tables that were just filling up at 12:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. "Everyone is looking around at everyone else. They're not only watching what everyone is doing, they're watching how they're doing it."

Tamburini spends about four nights a week in the milongas working as a taxi dancer -- someone who's paid $10 to $15 an hour to be a dance partner, usually hired in advance for an entire evening. It's a new profession that has spread through the tango halls just in the past two years or so, a response to the rise of dance-themed tourism that fills the milongas with planeloads of newcomers -- particularly women -- who have little idea that The Code even exists.

"I don't like to think of myself as a 'taxi dancer,' so to speak," said Tamburini, 30, who is married with two children. "Instead, I think of myself as a teacher of The Code, someone who helps others interpret it so that they don't come to the milongas and end up sitting all night without ever dancing once."

A common scenario, he said, is this: A woman comes to Buenos Aires, perhaps accompanied by a tango-phobic husband or a group of female friends. She dutifully learns her tango steps, then heads out to a milonga to put them to the test. She takes a seat at a table, sipping her Malbec wine as couples float about the dance floor. An hour later, she is still sitting there, with the sole of her new strap-at-the-ankle tango shoe tapping the floor impatiently, vexed by her apparent invisibility and cursing the terrible truth in the old cliché about this dance: It takes two.

The men determine who dances and who doesn't, Tamburini explained, but the women have a role to play, too. The initiate might not even recognize when she's being beckoned to the floor.

"There's a body language very distinct to Buenos Aires that they don't know," he explained. "The women of Buenos Aires know the language naturally, but others have to learn it."

That language is communicated principally through the languid glance, which is always in danger of being misread as its distant cousin, the lurid leer. The man needs to gaze at his target from a distance (getting too close is a patent violation of The Code), hold the woman's eyes for a moment, then indicate his itch to dance by casually tilting his head. The process is kind of like fishing: The glance is like casting the line, the slight jerk of the head is like setting the hook.

Tamburini wanted to dance this morning just for the fun of it, not to get paid. He stood and took a long look around the room. About 20 couples were on the floor, moving to accordion-driven music. The age range was as inclusive as the fashions on display -- everything from hooded sweat shirts to ascots on the men, from casual slacks to silken gowns on the women. Among the dancers, the facial expressions on most of the women suggested a placid sort of pleasure, with hints of smiles a few grades more subtle than the Mona Lisa's. Many of the men, responsible for leading the dance, were more intent, sometimes with earnestly knitted brows.

Tamburini, strolling around the room, resembled a younger and slightly thinner Bruce Springsteen, his dangling earring catching a brief spark from the muted overhead light. He saw a woman sitting alone and cast a glance.

She looked away, resisting the bait.

As he continued to work the room, faithful to the rules as he understands them, a bald fact could not be ignored: The Code was being broken with unembarrassed abandon almost everywhere one looked. Some women were actually asking the men to dance, verbally. Some of the men were actually saying yes.

It was then that Tamburini's loyalties crystallized: He was not a mere observer of The Code; he was one of its most energetic proponents and enforcers. He did not want to see it marooned by the modern drift toward a laxity of standards. Implicit in his mission was to remind people that The Code exists in the first place. To advertise its presence. To keep it alive.

About 1 a.m., Tamburini directed his gaze toward a Japanese woman, Aya Kawai, 31, who had arrived in Buenos Aires two days before. She had been dancing tango seriously in Tokyo for a year and had come to the milonga with her teacher and regular dance partner. Before Tamburini approached her, she had never heard of The Code.

She rose from her chair, took his hand, and he led her onto the floor and into the shifting crowd.