Tango after dark except I went to the matinee and therefore it was light out

 So this whole thing started when Maria sent an urgent text from Stockholm. She said I simply must go see Tango in the Dark, featuring tango dancers from Buenos Aires. They were coming to the Joyce Theater up the block from us. She had seen them in London and the audience was standing on their seats at the end. 

Maria fires a flare into the air. Tango in the house!

tbh, I had no intention of going to see this show. First of all, I got confused and thought it was already over. Second of all. There is no second of all, I thought I'd missed the show. Then I randomly walked by the Joyce, read the marquee, and realized I was mistaken. I had not missed Tango After Dark. It was currently playing. 

I went online and all the shows were sold out. So back to square one, I had missed the show. 

But then I noticed a Saturday matinee. With 1 (one!) ticket remaining. 

I know! This blog post is pure adrenaline-fueled ups and downs! I wasn't going, I am going, I can't go after all, but wait, maybe there is hope....

So let's talk about this 1 (one) remaining ticket. It was for a seat up in a balcony area I never knew existed before. But after this whole emotional roller coaster, for sure I clicked to purchase said single remaining ticket. Next I informed Tom he was not coming. He may or may not have been devastated.

I zip into the theater and wind my way up to my seat. It's a lot of twists and turns but finally I emerge onto this skinny-ass little balcony. 

The seats are, I'm going to say, dining room chairs all lined up facing the stage with Brother P-Touch labels on the backs so you know where you're supposed to be sitting. I should have taken a photo.

View not bad from my dining room chair
up in the skinny hinterlands which
are in no way accessible if one is not spry.

taking the required photo w the playbill or dancebill
or whatever its called when it's dance and not a play.

The thing about going to the theater by yourself after having purchased a ticket like 12 hours before showtime and then getting seated in a skinny-ass balcony on a dining room chair -- it put me in an extremely sociable mood. So I fully chatted up the guy sitting beside me. He was there with his husband.

I leaned in on this because Matt, my new friend, turns out, was from Buenos Aires originally (grew up in Brooklyn though) and is a tango aficionado. I learned many things about the tango. What we were seeing was real tango, not irritating tourist tango. I also learned about his job teaching an ESL class in Bushwick. He hopes to move back to Buenos Aires in six years and open up a language school, but he has not yet told his husband this plan. 

And right, I can see the hesitation to tell the husband, you can spot the challenges from a mile away. The husband doesn't speak Spanish and the first time he ever went to Buenos Aires was literally two weeks ago, when he finally went to meet Matt's family.

So yeah, Matt and I chatted the whole time before the curtain went up and also intermission. I think the husband got annoyed by the duration and occasionally covert nature of the chatting.

Oddly, the two of them left in a flurry right before the end of the performance. I think they had somewhere to be. Anyway, I enjoyed the conversation. I'll never see them again but yeah. I decided I enjoy sitting in the skinny-ass balcony on the dining room chairs.

Tango after Dark!
It really was a great show.