I have a Napoleonic complex. It’s very sad, actually. It took my partner several rehearsals with me in the very beginning to get into my head that my 5′4″ will never be close to his 6 feet, so I might as well stop reaching and extending and doing god knows what to seem taller.

I am 5′8″ in my tango heels. When we dance, that brings me somewhere around the area of his nose. Better than nothing, I suppose.

It’s one thing to be petite and a ballerina (read: 5′4″ = perfect height), but it’s completely another to be petite and a tanguera, in my extremely idiotic opinion, especially if your partner is so tall. This height discrepancy is always mentioned be it by our coaches, himself, or even people, who take class with us.

“Oh, you are so tiny. And he is so…tall.”

Grrrrr!!

I have a few insecurities when it comes to tango and I’ve always felt that this height difference (already something I was insecure about) was a major flaw. Not one I can fix, obviously, unlike my technique. It helped no end to have my maestra beat some sense into me during one of our last classes together. The woman is tiny and all of her partners have always been quite tall. This has in no way hindered her dancing. On the contrary, she is one of the tango greats.

And so my inner Napoleon has been restrained somewhat over the past few months, but my desire for high tango heels hasn’t been.

Of course now instead of “you are so tiny”, I get “ohmyGOD, how can you DANCE in those HIGH HEELS?!”

Which reminds me, I’ll have to go on another shoe shopping spree soon. The economy needs helping, dontcha know? And I’ve already been drooling over one particular pair (okay, okay, three) since last year.