TANGO|AWARNESS|CONNECTION| TANGOFULNESS|MUTUALITY
Learning about Oneself and Creating Awareness through Tango Dancing
When I was 24 years old and enjoying my independence, I discovered the joy of salsa dancing. The music and dancing immediately captured my heart. What joy! Shortly thereafter, I took all the salsa classes I could find. After several years of five-nights-a-week-salsa-dancing I decided to branch out on my dancing repertoire because to me, dancing meant joy.
Tango was next. I began to take tango classes and in 2002, I was 28 years old and needed a break from work. I took a sabbatical to go to Buenos Aires, Argentina for three months to learn Spanish and tango. Mornings were filled with Spanish classes, afternoons were filled with tango classes and evenings were filled with going to the milongas (tango social dances). I was new at tango and danced like a beginner, but nonetheless I would go to the milongas. I would sit alone most of the evening, waiting for the “eye contact”.
The “Cabeceo”, which is one of the social rules in the tango community, was killing me. It is when a lead (usually a man) catches the eye of a follow (usually a woman) and through the eyes and a slight nod he can ask her if she would like to dance. If yes, she nods back and smiles. If not, she looks away or never makes eye contact with him in the first place.
Sitting alone and needing to wait to be noticed through making eye contact brought up all kinds of traumas inside of me. Not being seen, not being “good enough”, and being required to “follow the rules” were all seed beliefs held inside of me; they were flowering and being reflected back to me in my tango experience in Argentina. I did not know it then, but I was seeking real connection and sitting alone at a dance most of the night was not filling that need and it highlighted my internal fears and beliefs.
Six weeks into my tango lessons, I got so discouraged that I decided to stop tango dancing and went salsa dancing for the rest of my stay. When I got back to Seattle, I danced tango for a little while longer and then gave that up as well. The experience in Argentina was too traumatic for me at that time. I was too immature to realize what an opportunity it was to learn about myself. Instead, I just quit.
Here I am, now 48 and restarting my tango journey after much healing and life experience. I have learned much about myself in the past 20 years. I have learned how mutuality, openness, and receptivity is necessary for creating the lasting “real” moments in life, like a “real” moment when I saw a stranger in the grocery store and we looked in each others eyes, shared a genuine smile and then kept going about our shopping. The “realness” was in the feeling that was exchanged through the smile and eye contact. I hope to share “real” moments with others when dancing tango.
Recently, I read a book by Dimitris Bronowski called “Tangofulness” and was deeply touched by it. He shared his tango journey and about the healing, connection and caring that can be shared through tango. What he was really describing was unconditional love and how “real” moments could be expressed through tango. Maybe tango is only fully experienced by mature people. I don’t mean “older” people, but simply wise people. The person could be 22 years old or 82 years old. Maturity is shown by how loving, generous and caring one can be to another person.
There are some dancers who bring their egos full-fledged into the dance and don’t pay much attention to what would make their partner feel most comfortable. They are the partners who need to be “right” or correct you when you don’t ask for it. They act this way because they, too, need connection and don’t know how to create a mutually real connection because they have never experienced true acceptance and unconditional love themselves. It is an opportunity for me to be even more gracious.
As I continue my tango journey, I hope that I can be a mature dance partner by being generous, kind and loving. I want to create meaning, connection, and more personal awareness through tango, even if it is not a perfect dance technically. I realize that the joy I receive from dancing can be more than just the music and the movement. The joy also comes from the connection with another human being when it is mutually recognized. There is truth in the saying, “it takes two to tango” and I can imagine the most amazing tango experiences are when both people are mutually caring and loving of one another, even if it is the first time they met or ever danced together. Dancing together is joy.
