1736  Notes from Buenos Aires 26

Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 14:45:40 -0500
From: Rick McGarrey <RICKMCG@FLASH.NET>
Subject: Notes from Buenos Aires 26

Without Fear
(Part 1 of 2)

'Sin miedo, amigos!'
-Tete

There is a movie that I like called 'Sweet and
Lowdown'. In it Sean Penn plays a nutty character
named Emmet Ray, who is a jazz guitarist in the '30s.
Ray was so overwhelmed by the talent of the great
guitarist from Europe, Django Rinehardt, that he
would faint dead away whenever he came near him.
It's a very funny

movie, and I instantly identified with Ray because he
liked to drink a lot and take his dates to the
railroad yard to watch trains.

Famous people don't normally have much affect on me
one way or another, but I was very excited about my
first encounter with Tete. He's by far the most
interesting person in tango. Everybody seems to know
him, everyone watches him, and everyone seems to have
an opinion. Like the old compadritos, he lives on the
edge of the edge. He is at the fringe of the tango
world of Buenos Aires... which in a funny way puts him
right at it's center. Like a child, he does only what
he wants to do and nothing else, which of course
bothers some people. He won't join the boys club of
the milongueros, or play by their rules at all, and it
annoys them. But their jealousy and envy is
impossible to hide. When they say he's a dancer of
rock, it's apparently true. During the dormant years
of tango he became a champion rock and roll dancer-
whatever that is. What it means to me, though, is
that when he returned to tango, he brought a thousand
ways of feeling and moving to the music that the other
milongueros can't even begin to match.

Alejandra says Tete is really a very nice man... but
there are stories of workshop organizers trying to
calm tearful women, mixed up schedules, and Michael
Walker once told me there was a big problem at one of
his events when Tete lost a suitcase with $8,000 in
it. He had left it in the hallway and was planning to
come back for it later, when it disappeared. The
suitcase later turned up with all the money, but it
reminded me of the last time Alejandra and I saw him.
He rushed in and said a taxi driver had just driven
off without giving him change from a $100 note. Tete
knows more about the streets of BsAs than anyone
alive. What could he have been thinking?

A friend once told me her husband gave up dancing
after Tete whacked him on the back of the head during
a class. I missed him in BsAs two years ago because
he was in Europe, but this story must have been going
through my mind when I finally made his class last
year. I rushed in late, and by the time I got there I
was already sweating. Like Emmet Ray in the movie,
the mere proximity of such prodigious talent was
enough to disrupt my internal wiring. Something about
finally actually being live with Tete after studying
him on video for so long just floored me. Maybe I was
afraid he was going to hit me on the head or yell at
me, but after a few minutes I was sweating so much
that I could hardly concentrate. I think Tete was
afraid I was going to have a heart attack or
something, because he kept asking me if I needed to go
outside for some air or a cigarette (right).

Toward the end of the class he had the women line up
and select the men, and of course none of the women
wanted to dance with me because I was so sweaty. They
probably thought I was going through heroin
withdrawal, and they didn't want anything to do with
me. He was actually very nice though, telling me to
relax, and kidding around and calling me 'maestro'.
Finally, at the low point when we were all sweating,
and tied up in knots from trying to do some impossible
Tete thing, he stopped us and said, in effect, forget
about it. Then he yelled, 'Biagi! We play!'. He
put on the music, and shouted, 'Sin miedo, amigos!'-
'Without fear!'. And away we went. Everybody began
dancing around like crazy.

(End of Part 1. Part 2 continues in Note # 27)