The extraordinarily poetic tango lessons of Debi Altieri

I’ve just returned from yet another exquisite experience at La Catedral, (half a block away from my flat), where Debi Altieri is currently giving her extraordinarily poetic tango lessons on a Sunday evening. The quality and subject matter of the tuition is priceless and yet, the group is small. Tiny. I just can’t figure out how it is that some of the most beautiful experiences to be had on earth, experiences that cost little or nothing, manage to escape the attention of the masses. I often wonder why this is, as I float on my back, feeling like a millionaire, under a mackerel sky in the deliciously icy water of the Lido, a seventy-five metre swimming pool next to my place in London, which I frequently have all to myself in winter.

Debi’s classes leave you deeply in love. In love with your dance partner, in love with tango, in love with the moment, in love with life. In this class, all the dancers hold each other tenderly for a long moment after the music has ended. Debi’s lessons are themed and structured to make it so. She has exercises that draw the genie out of the bottle.

Her last lesson was about the pauses and silences of tango. Before the class, I had depended upon the man to create these spaces, but since Debi’s lessons, I have learned that I can create them, too. It is the pauses and silences that give tango it’s poetry, it’s intensity, it’s tints of emotion. It is in the silences that we share another’s heartbeat, another’s breath. When we pause, we can luxuriate in the tenderness of the embrace, the proximity of another’s body, the bloom of another’s face. A tango, which is nothing more than steps and fancy figures is a lie.

Tonight’s lesson was about talking with your body. That is not what she called it, but I believe it is the essence of what she was trying to convey to us. The lesson was not about dance steps or ‘technique’. It was about giving and receiving, the communication of feelings via micro-movements of the head, arms, shoulders and the many different parts of the torso. The class started with contact exercises, the results of which were then carried forward into the dance exercises with utterly beautiful results.

The Catedral is the perfect venue for her classes, with its dark, cavernous hall, the warm wooden floor which she frequently gets us to lie on, the sculptures and artefacts hung all about , its central circle of coloured lights creating a hallowed space for our special dance experience and a colossal, illuminated human heart hanging on the wall. Sadly after next week, she expects to move the class to another venue, but no doubt she’ll somehow manage to transform it into a cathedral of the heart.

Thank you Flor, for telling me about Debi’s classes.