Although Our Tango Was Sublime, We Fell Far Short of a World Record

Participants Practice Before the Event

Well, it's official. Decatur sucks. Not that I didn't know that before this event came up, but still one harbors hope. I went to more than one practice for this Guinness Record attempt and it was packed. Lots of people dancing their fool hearts out, so foolishly I assumed we had a real shot at getting this record. Bah. Once again Decatur let us down.

Where was everyone? One theory is that the weather kept them from coming. It was about 10 degrees with winds of 25-35 mph. Okay, that might have discouraged some, but surely the younger college students could have walked over and participated! It was Millikin University's idea to do this - they couldn't recruit enough people in a college of approximately 18,000 students?

I'm disappointed but not all hope is lost. Apparently we also have a shot for a record regarding the fact that everyone was doing the tango. Wow. The organizers were happy that so many showed up and felt good - I was disappointed that so few showed up and felt bad. Well, not bad exactly. We danced and we were pretty good, we had fun. It wasn't all gloom.

Afterward we all went downtown to eat some Argentinean food, just to keep in the spirit. Many of the bars/restaurants downtown had special menus to celebrate the event. We had a good time and that helped ease the sting of the no-shows.

The positives from this experience? I learned how to dance the tango. I got to spend quality time with my children and a potential future daughter-in-law. Everyone seemed to have fun. So I guess the "world record" was not important, after all.

Tango for the Guinness World Record Next Weekend!

Last week I attended my first Tango "practice" dance class. It's not an ordinary class by any means - our community is attempting to capture the Guinness World Record for the Largest Dance by Couples next Saturday, February 21st. We need 1100 couples (or 2200 people) to dance the tango for five minutes straight to win. For all the details please click this link Tango Decatur

The only bad part is that I have never tangoed and my only knowledge of the tango has been gleaned from movies, most noteable among those True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger. When the instructor asked the class what we knew I said "the man drags the woman across the ground at some point, right?" to which he laughed uproariously. Fine. I'm an idiot. After that faux pas I didn't dare say anything about the transfer of the stem of a rose from one mouth to another.

I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. We have a basic step, a step with a rocking thing in the middle and then a step that has the man swerve the side and we follow. Anyway, we don't have to do all the fancy steps, just the basic one over and over. For five minutes. I'm guessing it's going to be the longest five minutes of my life. I'll give you all the details after the event.