Like many a foreigner, I was first seduced by the Argentine Tango while sitting at a café in the colorful working class barrio of La Boca in Buenos Aires. It was here, at a non-descript café on the Calle Caminito, while sipping a glass of Malbec that was as vibrant as La Boca itself that my introduction to the tango began. As I turned to see if I could locate where the mellifluous mélange of live Afro-Cuban and Spanish music was emanating from I spotted a pair of street performers dancing the most sensual dance I had ever seen.

The couple’s movements mesmerized me and for the next few minutes these anonymous dancers were the only two beings that existed for me. I was captivated by the graceful style exhibited by the female dancer. She gave the illusion of floating when she danced as she glided across the floor. Her feet rarely touched the ground when she would perform such moves as the “gancho,” a move in which she would hook her leg around her partner’s leg or a “boleo” where she would perform small quick back kicks as she sashayed from side to side. Her moves were often quick, yet elegant and poised. At other times, she would dance slowly and tantalizingly by performing such moves as sliding her foot down her partner’s body or arching her back as he dipped her.

Watching this couple, it was not hard to imagine a time when the tango was a forbidden dance. Although there is nothing vulgar about it, the Argentine Tango is danced in a close embrace or “abrazo.” It is for this reason when there is chemistry between partners, such as the couple I was watching, that I feel as though I am watching an immensely private moment between two lovers. The couple’s dance conveyed several emotions over the course of a few minutes allowing a voyeuristic glimpse into their relationship. Through their dance steps viewers could catch conflicting moments of flirtation, foreplay, seduction, resistance, passion, rejection and reconciliation. The emotions that we all have in human relationships were summed up in one simple, yet emotionally intricate and complicated dance.

It is said that tango is essentially walking with a partner to music, but such a description misses the essence of tango. To me, the tango is a dance where a couple makes love while fully clothed. It is the most passionate dance I have ever seen performed and it is a dance I knew then I had to learn. It is for this reason that I enrolled in Group Dance classes at “Dance with Me Soho.” I was hoping that I could relive my time in Buenos Aires and learn to dance like the porteña I saw dance so beautifully. Secretly, I was also hoping I would be paired up with an Antonio Banderas type, preferably the Antonio Banderas from “Take the Lead” since that version already knew how to dance the tango, but any iteration of Antonio would do.

When I arrived at the dance studio, I realized that not only would Antonio would not be in attendance, but I would be lucky to dance with a man at all. The ratio of men to women was disappointing as there were eleven women to three men in the class. I tried to overcome this chromosomal imbalance through imagination. When the instructor turned the music on, I transported myself back to Buenos Aires by imagining I was six thousand miles away at a milonga in Palermo Soho, a fashionable neighborhood of Buenos Aires. I imagined Carlos Gardel was signing one of his legendary tango songs, Por Una Cabeza, a song in which he compares his love for gambling on the ponies to his obsession for a particular lady. I pretended that I was the graceful, sensual porteña on Calle Caminito instead of the frustrated woman on Broome Street dancing with an equally frustrated woman where one of us would inevitably stop every so often to ask, “who is leading? Are you leading? Are you pretending to be the boy? Am I the boy? Who is the boy?” The gender confusion was exhausting! After awhile I felt like I was on a bad reality TV show that was experimenting with gender identity.

That night I would learn that at a milonga, a tango dance hall, couples dance counter-clockwise. This was a concept my classmates and I seemed to have had problems grasping as there were several collisions. As someone who would have rallied against banning the tango in its heyday, I would fully support the City of New York outlawing my class ever dancing the tango en masse. What we, as a collective, did to such a graceful dance, should be illegal. While there is a thriving milonga scene in New York City, which I hope to visit one day, I will only do so after I have engaged a private dance instructor to learn the tango. Although I have three more classes left, I have banned myself from taking group tango lessons. For the next three weeks, this gringa can be found dancing salsa in Soho.