Conditions were suspiciously perfect as a full moon hung over a rainbow sea of city lights in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We danced on a rooftop to tango music, becoming sudden converts to whatever religion Aphrodite commanded and thus had a god(ess)-given responsibility to romance, given the circumstances. I am very much not a dancer, but that evening I appeared to be and so I think our first date was spoken through movement and embrace. Ideal, actually, given our native languages were not the same. Victor, my dance partner that evening, and I were part of a tango festival as dance teacher/performer and musician respectively. My colleagues on violin encouraged us (though we needed little convincing) and Victor ended up joining us on the rest of our tour through Mexico.

Between concerts we explored cobblestone streets, a few cenotes, and delicious food. My lack of ability to speak Spanish was made up for in spades by Victor’s ability to speak English, so when we went our separate ways after the festival, we were able to keep in touch on whatsapp. I bought an airline ticket to visit him for March of 2020 but never made it as borders shut at the beginning of the covid pandemic. Argentina took particularly strict measures and it became unclear when we would ever be able to see each other. He continued his life in Buenos Aires and I moved to Buffalo, NY with some musician friends.

And so we became two dots a hemisphere apart on a frozen map. The days stretched into months, then years, the way time tends to swell around things that don’t have an ending. We kept talking—somehow both casually and with the persistent echo of something that hadn’t finished. We were, for a while, something between memory and possibility.

Eventually, we each attempted to rejoin our own timelines. We dated other people, but the conversation—the original one that started on a rooftop in Mexico—never entirely stopped.

In early 2023, QuinTango was headed on tour to Buenos Aires and Uruguay and we met again, both of us serendipitously unattached. I had never been to Buenos Aires; every corner has a different rhythm and he was a guide driven by his love for his city. He made Bolivian soup (his birthplace), we danced in dimly lit milongas tucked into so many different neighborhoods, we biked past all of the places important in Alejandra Pizarnik’s life, one of my favorite poets. The trip quickly became something else entirely and we talked about how to keep seeing each other.

There’s something quietly revolutionary about finding someone who fits into the pages of your life without asking you to close the book. By spring, Victor was visiting me in Austin, Texas. It was a reversal of our earlier geography—this time I was the guide. I introduced him to breakfast tacos and Barton Springs, to the sprawling, sun-bleached charm of Central Texas. Our shared days were stitched together with music, the library, cooking, movies. He was in the country on an artist’s visa and we were able to travel and perform together across the U.S. With each new city, it became more obvious: we weren’t a complication in each other’s lives. You have no idea how hard it was to date someone with a 9-5. Turns out many people stay in one place for much of the year.

When it came time for him to leave, it was clear that “goodbye” had lost its usefulness. I asked him to marry me. He said yes.

We didn’t do a traditional honeymoon. Instead, we did what we always do when we’re uncertain or celebrating or simply awake: we moved. We packed the car and drove across the South, through the plains, into the mountains of Utah and Wyoming. Zion, the Grand Canyon, Salt Lake, the Tetons, names that now read like lines of a love letter written across the American West. The weight of the pandemic years dissolved in our shared love of exploring new places and in the enjoyment of our new beginning.

We returned to Austin to await Victor’s green card, settling into a city that couldn’t quite contain a tanguista from Buenos Aires but held me, a singer-songwriter easing into Americana, with open arms. Victor gave me the gift of time and space, altering the course of his life to help me finish the creative work I had started.

In December of 2024, our son, Lucius Alexander, was born far too early. He fought for six impossible days. There is no poetic rendering of that time, just the arrival of grief. We rested our broken hearts and took care of ourselves and each other. We let the silence speak for us. Eventually, music returned.

We decided to do something we had always talked about: put on our first tango production. A show exploring the relationship between tango and jazz, two idioms born of longing, diaspora, and improvisation. People came. They listened. They danced. The evening shimmered with presence. We realized that our story, though marked by sorrow, had never stopped being a love story.

That performance turned into a company. We called it Arts Blossom Connection, an extension of our belief that the arts are, at their core, about connection. We began creating events where dance, music, and narrative coexisted, giving people not just something to watch, but something to feel with.

Now, we’re preparing for a new chapter. We’ll spend the summer touring across the U.S., bringing our blend of tango, storytelling, and live music to audiences who might not know they needed it. Our performances are part concert, part confession, part embrace. In the fall, we move to the Washington D.C. area, where we’ll expand our artistic practice and, hopefully, grow our family again, in all the ways that word can mean.

We’re not trying to recreate the rooftop in San Miguel. But we carry it with us. That moment passed, but the music and dance continues, and the world is ours to wander together.