A comment taken to heart …
“Dancing with you is like a meditation. It’s like dancing tai chi.” So said my partner at the end of the tanda. Maybe not everyone’s high water mark, but it is mine.
Who would have thought?
Though I started practicing Tai Chi in the late 90’s, a few years before my introduction to Tango, it was only recently that I considered the possibility of cross-fertilization between the two. I presumed that, as one was a solo practice – completely routinized and without music, and the other an improvisational couple’s dance, there would be little overlap.
Then came COVID and social isolation. Everything became a solo practice, including Tango.
As my primary (sic: only) dance partner, I began to focus on my instinctual movements, inner timing, balance, and body awareness that had nothing to do with step sequences or music or holding a partner. Daily, I repeated the same balance, pivoting and walking exercises and routines, trying to keep myself tuned up for when dancing returned.
Then the “AHA moment:” strip Tango down to its core elements, and it looked and felt a lot like my Tai Chi practice. With both practices, I was awakening and attuning to my inner dancer.
Since that moment, my awareness of the similarities has intensified. Consider …
Sensuality
My favourite place for practicing Tai Chi has always been in our backyard, bare feet twisting into the grass, breeze caressing my face, eyes massaged by the beauty of the enveloping garden, sun soaking into my pores, my focus honed into movement itself as a sensual experience. (Obviously seasonally dependent).
A counsellor friend recently related that most men, and many women, don’t know how to identify pleasure in their bodies, especially not the subtle, gentle kind. Pain, illness and discomfort are often the only times we pay attention to our bodies. And we are so often relying on mood or sensation-altering chemicals to repress or stimulate responses.
As Tango is the quintessential sensual dance, this is obviously a handicap. When I dance the Tango, I want to feel my way in and out of every movement and moment, creating space for pausing, breathing and listening to myself, the music and my partner.
The sensual stimulation that comes from holding hands, folding into an embrace, and moving in synchrony is only meaningful and perceptible if we are attuned to such nuances. Otherwise, we often rush over or push through those minuscule moments of pleasure and connection in deference to complicated technical step sequences or maneuvers.
Next blog, I continue exploring my Tai Chi Tango theme by playing with the maleability of time and space, my most impactful learning from Tai Chi as relates to dancing. Stay tuned.
Reflecting on your words Aydan — “A counsellor friend recently related that most men, and many women, don’t know how to identify pleasure in their bodies, especially not the subtle, gentle kind. Pain, illness and discomfort are often the only times we pay attention to our bodies. And we are so often relying on mood or sensation-altering chemicals to repress or stimulate responses.” — I felt an immediate connection to my experience in Argentine tango.
There is truly so much to learn, not just in movement but in sensing. Tango invites us to notice those subtle, quiet forms of pleasure we so often overlook.
It brought me back to a moment at a workshop this summer, during an exercise in close embrace with different partners. With one partner in particular, something shifted. I felt myself transported beyond space and time, held in a shared presence that brought pure bliss, calm, and safety — a feeling I haven’t known since my father passed away. In that moment, I realized I had forgotten my pain and stresses entirely; they simply dissolved.
Tango has a way of opening us to these delicate sensations, the ones that remind us we’re alive, connected, and capable of deep, quiet pleasure.
HI Sher. THanks so much for your comments. It often doesn’t take much, just that little awaking or portal into another awareness. I very much appreciate having you as part of our community.