The Chacarera Challenge
“So, you’re saying you feel okay while dancing tango, but you feel like an idiot when you dance chacarera?” I should never have told her. “I was exaggerating,” I mumbled, in tactical retreat. “It’s more like… awkward.” “Physically incapable? Stiff?” she pressed on. “No. Inauthentic. Like an impostor.” “There must be some deep psychological trauma haunting you.” I nodded. “That’s not all,” I added. “Believe it or not, I’m almost physically unable to watch Dutch people dance chacarera. It’s painful.” She looked at me in astonishment. “It’s intriguing, isn’t it?” I said. “Oh, you need help, my friend.”
I reminded her that adolescent peer pressure in Rotterdam had conditioned me to think folk dancing was for losers. She caught on quickly. “You’re not that young man anymore,” she said. “You should be able to make a new choice.” She was right, of course. I was an old man now—what did I care about what other people thought of me? “The challenge is to dance as if no one is watching,” she continued. I had heard that one before. “Yes. Bungee jump as if elastics never break,” I said. “It’s not that simple if you think about it.”
I shared my experience from last year’s Heidelberg tango marathon with her. The organizers offered a chacarera workshop. Keen on triggering a new phase in my personal growth, I stepped in, albeit with some apprehension, distinguishing myself from the majority of cowardly men staying behind, hiding behind their brunch plates. “Chacarera is all about eye contact,” the teacher, Ina Greiner, demonstrated. Her confidence was daunting. She had the participants pass each other, switching eye contact continuously. “Forget about the steps. Connect with the other person—with your eyes.” It was a big change from a previous workshop I had attended, where our biggest challenge was getting the sequence right, as well as the exact moment to turn and embrace our partner at the end.
I glanced into the clear blue eyes of a woman dancing in front of me and couldn’t help cringing with embarrassment. She returned my glance fearlessly, like a gunslinger in a Mexican standoff, while we finished our sequence of turns. Our eyes locked. Who was she seeing? A middle-aged guy pretending to be a South American macho man. More Dutch than Gouda cheese, and with negligible chest hair, too. My moves became forced. I forgot the order of circles and turns. My timing sucked. My eyes drifted to her shoulder, or some vague point behind her. By the time the chacarera melody rolled towards its finale, I totally fumbled the end pose, of course, and embraced the void next to her.
“So, you’re saying chacarera is a more intimate dance than tango,” she analyzed, “and you’re afraid of the intimacy?” “Who are you, Mrs. Freud?” I scoffed. “That’s nonsense. I dance tango—a dance once deemed too intimate for the Pope’s liking.” I didn’t tell her that those clear blue eyes, peering into my very soul, kept me awake for many hours, later that night. The Pope must have missed this one.