Why dance? (2)

Tango has taught me about the gulf between appearance and reality. There, I met artists whose art remains (forever I think) unknown to all but those with whom they are embracing on music, and many ordinary people who have an extraordinary skill that nobody would guess who doesn't know their dancing selves. About five years into it, I was walking to a milonga in a foreign city; a block away from it, I walked past a man, neither short nor tall, quite large, middle aged, so grey and plain that, I told myself (why? why then?): "before he fully disappears from my visual field I will have forgotten him forever". And because of this thought I remembered him long enough to recognise him in the milonga. We danced, barely talked because he could only speak a language that I didn't. But his embrace, his gift of a structured space in which I could dance freely, how he gave me the music, how his feet always found mine on the floor, and the way he put me in unexpected places, effortlessly, imprinted this man in my memory, with longing. I had many encounters just as spectacular, each of them different from the rest.

Birthday Waltz

Gipsying around Europe for work, I dance tango whereever I happen to spend the night - if I am lucky to be in a tango-city. Now I am in Salzburg, where milongas are few and far between, so last Thursday I ended up - by pure luck - in the most atmospheric pub of this lovely town, where apparently people who love traditional music gather every week to play their instrument, chat and party until the small hours of Friday.

I ordered a beer, noticed again thatin Austria it is still possible to smoke everywhere in public houses, and continued to watch people. Salz-burgers are easy-going and smiley, and life here has the same sweet pace I know from other cities in Mitteleuropa, no rush, as if we didn't have agendas and dead-lines, as if we were going to live forever.

Everybody was warmed up, music was flowing, when one of the organisers said that two of the local guys were celebrating their birthday ("Geburtstagskinder", they call them in Salzburg, as they do in Bavaria). Suddenly the tunes turned into waltz, and for the next half an hour the Geburtstagskinder danced in the middle of the pub, their partners changing every few minutes - and announcing it was their turn to waltz with a short clap of hands.

Later, I asked about this and it turns out it is an old-ish tradition for celebrating birthdays or other events - in this part of Austria as well as in Bavaria. It is called "Abklatschen", from the hands clapping.

Tangueras and tangueros, does this remind you of anything?