Incidentally, with regard to dressing well, tango traditionally puts a premium on that, and there's a strong artistic reason for doing so. When it is danced by people who know how to dance it, tango is a sensuous undertaking of direct erotic power and great feeling. Dressing well for it gives it even more of this power because the elegance of the dress enhances the fires rising from the soul and the heart.

The fires, as it were, hide themselves within the clothing. They smolder there. They're fanned by suggestion and nuance. They begin to appear as the result of the erotic give-and-take between two very involved dancers, and when the flames finally break out, they are truly incendiary.

When you look like a skateboarder in your baggy cargo-pants or intentionally tattered tennis warm-up suit, when you have a beard that has not been trimmed since the day you began growing it a few weeks ago, when you're wearing a sweat-band around your forehead that has a faded New York Knicks logo on it, and when you're dancing in scuffed Wal-Mart athletic shoes, you're not letting yourself shine.

Better to take the time — a few years, at least — to study the basics of tango with real masters so you can actually dance the thing. Applying yourself to it in this way puts you on the inside of a cultural revolution in which the greatest art form ever to come from South America is being revised and refined to its own great benefit. The fellows at DNI — and so many other places around the world — are not part of it.