Musings on Tango, Sensuality and Spirituality
aydan.tango How Ironic. My strategy for surviving the tough times was to dance Tango. And what is the first thing to take a hit? Tango of course. Let’s face it. It breaks all the rules of keeping a safe distance and not touching or breathing on others. Under normal circumstances, dancing is one of the healthiest … Read more
All of this de-sex-itizing of traditional roles and the learning of alternate patterns for relating offers to society as well as the individual, a unique and powerful experience of intimacy and connection. A re-envisioned Tango can present a window to a more balanced and creative expression of same-sex and hetero-sexual relating.
So says Cardinal Bergoglio, not yet Pope Francis. (Netflix, “The Two Popes.”)
The question is posed: Does Pope Francis still dance the Tango?
Or perhaps even more to the point: Do we care? Maybe …
We do not change the world with an artless and thoughtless flick of a rock into the water. We change the world by infusing our moments with artistry, effort, and imagination.
It is my belief that if we invested oursevles more fully in the arts of all genres and learned the prerequisite skills of introspection, mindfulness, creativity, intimacy, cooperation and such, it would be a better world.
Not a perfect world, mind you. Tango is a great example of how things get complicated and messy as we muddle our way through. Consider the focus for this blog …
Tango is danced to the beat of the heart … Only feeling gives it understanding and beauty, which is what is between the musical and the poetic and differentiates it from the coarse and mechanical…. Carlos Gavito.
Touch is the most immediate and strongest way of connecting with the world around us, including – and especially – people. It just so happens Tango is an intensity boot camp in touch. Bonus.
But there are a few lessons (actually, more than a few) that one has to learn along the way to transform the dance into something that feels up close and personal.
“Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle.” (a proverb of the Asaro tribe of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.)
Brene Brown, the Ted Talk phenom who went viral with her talks on vulnerability, reviewed some distinctive traits of the most influential people whom she had met. Included in the top four was: they all had a physical practice whereby they integrated the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual learning through movement and exercise and creative impulse.
Colour it agism. The older I get the less my conversations are about content and the more they are about connection. I tend to listen more for the intangibles, attend to body cues, invest more effort in making eye contact, place more value in a smile than the words spoken. My take away from such encounters is a treasured feeling rather than a thought.
The same is true about my dancing.
Everything changes: Our lives, loves, the way we do things, the reason we do things, our energy, our ability, what attracts and inspires, what repels in trepidation. All that we are and do takes its shading from not only the seasons of the year but the passing of the seasons of our years.
And as in life, so in dance.