Ripping the Butterfly Cocoon

El Flaco asks La Mariposa to dance, but she looks at the face of her husband, and the storm that is there gives her answer.

She comes to the milonga week after week and sits with her hands in her lap on the outer fringe of the dance floor. Her silent husband is close. In the shadows they are hard to see. He does not dance. No one asks her to dance.

Later, we ask ourselves when it happened, but no one knows when La Mariposa begins to sit alone. Week after week, she comes away from the wall and the shadows, and her hands are no longer in her lap. Her fingers tap to the music. Men ask her to dance.

She wears an orange dress.

I sit beside her as Vida mia begins to play, and La Mariposa laughs.

A man comes across the floot, his intention obvious, and La Mariposa lights up. 'I had forgotten what it was like to like myself.'

The Dance of One Is None

La Luna is demanding. 'The colgadas are for the daring.' But on this day the balance between partners falters. La Luna, a world-class dancer, is patient, kind, encouraging - unrelenting.

El Flaco arrives to the lesson as it is ending, and he is impatient. He expects the floor to clear for the milonga that will be this night. He cannot control his eyes, and they roll to the ceiling.

I do not know my partner's name, and he does not ask mine, but as Adiós Chantecler sighs into a pause, we fall back into the colgada and spin, spin, spin, my leg free, the trust total.

'All these moves are no good on the dance floor,' El Flaco mutters. 'They can never be done.' He is like this. Practical. Everything to a purpose. 'All this work. All this practice - for nothing.'

And I laugh to myself as I spin, and we both fall back into the safety of each other's weight.

The tango is not steps; it is trust.