Friday 18 May 2012

...todo mi ser...

The whole of my being.

I am nothing except in your arms.

I hear nothing but the music and your gentle breathing.

Our embrace contains us and everything that's important to us.

I can feel the ground pressing against my feet, and through our chests I can feel the ground pressing against your feet.

I know where you are.  You know where we're going.  We know our mind.

The whole of our being.  Tango.

Thursday 17 May 2012

...del día que te dí...

Sign up for classes or workshops with a partner who isn't known to you. Maybe the organiser pairs you up with somebody, or you appeal online and you're matched with someone you've not met.

These workshops can feel very long, or very short. You're sacrificing your day, risking it on a completely unpredictable factor. If the two of you don't click, the lessons are going to be more about you bashing heads than about learning something new. If you're lucky enough to have a regular partner for classes, then this experience won't have bothered you often. I'm lucky enough. But occasionally, through illness or unavailability, you're thrown in with someone else for a change.

This is communication of a different kind. You're in a lesson. Feedback should be welcome. But it still must be tactful. Crush someone's confidence at the beginning and they won't be in a position to take anything else on board. Allow someone to batter your ego and you won't be able to focus on the task at hand.

Of course, for some couples, the regular partner is the problem. They look on it as a relief when they get to learn with someone else.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

...con la ansiedad febril...

Two words that never help: "Calm down."

Your partner knows that they're tense.  Nervous.  Anxious.  They know that they're likely to pass that feeling on to you by contagion.

But the objective is to do the reverse.  To stay calm and still and allow them to hook into that.  Maybe you just stand and listen to the music for a while.  Perhaps a weight change or two, so that she doesn't worry that she's missing something, or to tell him that you're connected and you're there, and that he's going to know where you are at all times.  A non-vocal reassurance.  Give them your calmness as a gift.  Don't demand it in an order.

Tuesday 15 May 2012

...tratando de olvidar te recordé...

If I forget your name, please don't take it personally.

If I smile, nod, say hello, but don't introduce you to a friend, please don't take it personally.  I remember the feelings of dances, but I remember few faces and few names.  I'm never offended if I'm not remembered, because I remember so little myself.  This seems unimaginable to those lucky people who have an infinite number of slots in their memory for different people.  They meet them once, and thereafter can remember their home town, place of work, type of car, favourite pet, and mother's maiden name.

I've been known to not recognise the odd photograph of myself.

Monday 14 May 2012

...del desamparo cruel...

It's easy to find a comfort zone and stop trying to improve.  We neglect our own training.  We turn our noses up at possibilities to improve ourselves.

Some reach this comfort zone early.  They turn up at milongas.  They dance as much as they want to.  They go home.  They don't seek to make themselves nicer to dance with.  They've achieved their goal already.

I think we all go through phases of this.  There are times when I've stagnated.  Settled for where I am, accepted that I'm good enough.  There are times when the effort and risk of going backwards in the interests of eventually going forwards again seem too high.

And then something inspires me again.  It may be watching a particular leader.  It may be dancing with a particularly wonderful partner.  It may be failing to dance with a particularly particularly wonderful follower.  And back to the class I go.  Back to the private lessons.  Back to the practice time with renewed enthusiasm and determination.

I'm back to enthusiasm at the moment, and so I realise that I've been neglecting my tango education recently.

And by neglecting that, I've been neglecting my dance partners too.

Friday 11 May 2012

...y allá en la soledad...

The milonga has to begin at some point.  It begins now.  Some people have arrived already.  They change their shoes.  They pour water into glasses.  They eat a grape or a crisp or a biscuit, whatever happens to be set out on each table.  They are itching to dance, but the floor is empty.  Who will take the first step?  Who will make themselves visible first?  Knowing that there's no way they'll be dancing their best after an hour in the car, or a walk through the rain and the cold, or an argument about the fact that they'd forgotten to feed the cat before setting off.

Whoever does it, is temporarily a performer.  They don't want to be.  But they'll be watched by others, wondering whether it's safe, yet, to come into the water.

It's difficult: dancing without other people to shape your dance, to give you boundaries, to make the pace.

But they manage.  And soon dancers will fill the floor.  The crowd will fill the room.

And there is the solitude: gone.

Thursday 10 May 2012

...que te imploré...

Just let there be one more tanda, we plead.  One more tune.  Just a short one.

Our feet beg us to stop.  Our heads hurt.  We forgot to drink enough water.

The neighbours are banging on the door insisting that the music be turned off.  Now.

Our hearts entreat us for another moment of connection.  Another moment of stillness.

Everyone wants something.  Not everyone wants the same.  Not everyone can be happy.

We leave with mixed feelings.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

...el fuego de ese amor...

People get confused.

Tango works because there's a framework and there are rules.

You nod, you dance, you separate, you go on with your lives.

But sometimes the lines blur.  Especially in places where the rules aren't so established.

And people get confused.

It's not always easy to make and break such profound connections over such a short period of time.

It's easy to mix up the music and the dance with the real world.

It's easy to mistake that temporary love for real love.

It's easy to expect the fifteen minutes to become fifty years.

But it's over.  Until the next time.  Except when it isn't.

Confusing.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

...buscando de olvidar...

It's an expression of empathy, this dance.  Empathy to the nth degree.  We look to lose ourselves in the moment, in our partner, in the music.  This is desirable, to me.  But we have to do it because we want to communicate, not because we want to run and hide from ourselves.  While we're giving our all to our partner, he or she is likely to be doing the same for us.  And if we're not there anymore, how can they do that?

We have to be present for our partner, not absently dreaming the dream.  I think that resolving this contradiction is why people end up talking about having one body with four legs during the dance.  Somehow our thoughts synchronise, they don't stop.  I'm starting to feel this.  I've had a taste of it.  I want more.

Monday 7 May 2012

...Sin rumbo fuí...

I'm lost.

The room's too big.

The aren't enough chairs.

Nowhere to sit.  Nowhere to stand.  I'm either in a crowd or in solitude.

If the environment is wrong, we wander hopelessly.  We can't settle.  We can't feel at home.

If the seats don't surround the dance floor, we feel cut off when we dance.  We feel like we're dancing in an aircraft hangar.



Another day, another place.

The room feels right, it feels like everyone in it is tuned in to the music.  Hearing different things in it, maybe.  Interpreting it uniquely in each case.  But in tune.  And when that includes even those who're not even dancing at the moment, then we're the opposite of lost.  We're found.

Friday 4 May 2012

...como una maldición...

We all carry around our curses.

For me, there've been different things at different times.  Some seem constant.

Posture, of course, for me.  Always posture.  Slowly it improves, but as I dance I always feel it's wrong, know it's wrong.  I think we learn to live with these curses a little more, as our tango maturity develops.  We figure out that we can't worry about all our inadequacies all the time.  If we do, we dance like robots, constantly correcting ourselves.  Overcorrecting ourselves.  Forgetting the dance itself.  We get lost in the technicalities.

I know those whose curse is that they bend their legs too much or not enough.  Or they hold on too tightly or lean their head too far forwards.  Their arm on the open side of the embrace is too stiff or too much like jelly.

And the more you fixate on your problem, the bigger the curse grows.  Until your fixation on the problem is your real problem.

And to break the curse?  Apart from practice, I've still found only one answer:  Patience.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Llevando mi pesar...

We have baggage.

We carry ourselves from place to place.  We rarely leave everything else behind.  We ask ourselves, why should we?  We've earned this baggage.  It's the reason that people are often proud of their scars.  Evidence of existence.  Evidence that something happened.  We cling onto our emotional scars in the same way.  If it weren't for them, we wouldn't be who we are.

And tango taps into this, just as it takes us away from it.  If you've not experienced sadness and despair, it's much more difficult to connect to the music.  If you have, you can hear it multiplied a thousandfold in those voices.  In the violin.  In the bandoneón.  And at the same moment, your own pain is elsewhere.  Put on hold.  You're in someone else's shoes for three minutes.

Silence

... and silence falls as the cortina fades away.

We wait for the next tanda.

It won't be long.

I think I can hear it now.

Sounds like Donato...