The sweat tastes of her salt, of course, but also of the chalk that dusts her palms. The room feels warmer than it should right now. She should not be quite this tired, not yet.
Her arm reaches out and curves around cold metal. It gives and pulls both with and against her, balancing her movement, her shifting center of gravity. She draws it in close. Spine straight. Eyes left.
The metal cools her skin. Her breath begins to slow. Her sounds sigh out alone into the empty room. She takes this moment to remember.
Tango is not a dance; it is life, it is connection. It exists not of either body, but of the soul conjured, the soul invoked betwixt bodies. Tango is born of the rhythm. It lives within the rhythm…
And it begins: the music.
The counterpoint of it makes itself known first. The rosewood of the clave leaves no doubt there. Point against point, in perfect order, drawn down, drawn in.
At this moment, the music is mid-phrase, so she does not seem to move. But within, the dance has already started. Her shadow self sweeps shapes, if only in preparation.
Her shoulders are squared. Her balance is centered. Only her weight is not her own. She and her partner connect and channel their mass down together deep into the ground beneath, deep, where roots grow, deep, where tango needs no words.
And one.
They are in motion, a single motion of selves. There is no lead. There is no follow. There is only dance, singular dance. Right now… And now again, and now again, there is only the dance. For the dancers have given over their selves to their art.
The power builds. The focus builds. The music crescendos… And release.
She is now draped back and down toward the Earth. Holding the form, holding the shape, holding the moment, until the piece ends.
She breathes hard as she comes back to her feet, much more weary than she should be. After all, tango is life, and she is utterly spent.
The cold metal of her partner clicks and whirs as its limbs collapse into itself. Its shape degrades from homunculus to cylinder, and the cylinder descends beneath the stage until it disappears from view.
Leaving her, the human dancer, alone.
Leaving her, the human dancer, utterly depleted.