MY PLACE. AN UPSTAIRS TANGO CLUB IN RICHMOND.
Published in The Sunday Age, 2.3.2014
I step through the door between the chefs’ clothing supplies and the bolt warehouse in Swan Street, and climb the steep concrete stairs. Music becomes louder as we rise. We pay at the retro bar and sit down to change into our dance shoes.
People appear at the top of the stairs, pay and join us on the vinyl couches and chairs to chat and get ready for class. The piles of shoe bags accumulate. David and Di, the teachers, are moving around, checking the music, greeting us, putting out trays of water jugs and glasses. Evening light filters through the bamboo blinds and unlined red curtains across the dance floor to where we sit and wait at the back. The roar of trams competes with the background music.
A bit after seven, David gathers us onto the floor and the tango lesson begins. We stand in a line facing the mirrors on the opposite wall. We’re a varied lot, ranging from very tall to very short, from quite large to tiny. We could be aged twenty or seventy and could have been learning for years or be joining our first lesson.
The class accommodates each of us, rigorously and courteously. We move from partner to partner, gradually developing the steps for the night as the Golden Age tango music swirls around us. Our brains and bodies work really hard. After an hour, those water jugs and glasses are very important.
I love Sidewalk Tango.
Sense of Places 