It Takes Three to Tango

It takes three to tango: You, me and the dance between.
I have no other explanation for the odd stuff that happens between my partner and I when we dance.

Case in point: the other day I got nervous while dancing. A performance, no biggie, but I thought I should apologize. Except that my partner apologized first – for her nervousness! 

This was not simply a Canadian tradition of trying to  out apologize the other person for everything and anything. The truth is that neither of us was aware that we were sharing in the emotional state of the other person. We each had presumed that the nervousness belonged to each alone.

I experience this type of consciousness exchange regularly when I am attuned to my dance partner. Thoughts, feelings and movements congeal on an unconscious level. This in turn forms a distinctive dance energy that assumes a life of its own. This dance between becomes in a sense, command-central, a third mind that super-cedes our independent thoughts and feelings and effects both how we experience the dance and the quality and character of the dancing itself.

It is difficult to describe or validate this energetic interconnection for several reasons: 1) It is so pervasive that it is easily goes unacknowledged, 2) it sounds fairly woo-woo, and 3) the focus in tango is predominantly on steps which is in fact only a sidelight to and often a distraction from the energetic quality of the dance.

The presence and effect of this dance between can be seen most readily when the energetic connection breaks down.

Follow: “Sorry.”
Lead: “No, I’m sorry. It was my fault.”
Follow: “No. I lost my balance.”
Lead: “No. It was me. I gave a poor lead.”
Follow: “No. I didn’t …”

Both partners remain stubbornly convinced that they were singularly responsible for the miscue.

So who was responsible? No one. Rather, all three are responsible: You, me and the dance between.  When we are dancing with connection there is no singular responsibility anymore. We are fused in this third element of the dance between.

Here is a crazier version of the above “who’s responsible” debate, equally frequent. I have a brain fart, an infinitesimally brief lapse in concentration which invariably results in or coincides with a misstep by my partner. Then the inevitable – but much briefer – circuitous apologizing follows:

The distinctive feature of this miscue is that my partner’s misstep is not in response to an actual lead. I either haven’t yet given one; often I recover from my brain lapse quickly enough to give a perfectly good lead. But my partner stumbles nonetheless in response to or in conjunction with, my muddled thought process.

Follow: “Sorry. I wasn’t concentrating/ misread the lead/ lost my balance ….”
Lead: “No, it was my fault. I had a brain fart.” (conversation stopper).

Woo-woo, woo-woo. What is going on? Is she psychic? 

Or consider this. Perhaps my brain fart is my experiencing her loss of concentration/ brain fart. Triple woo-woo.

The point is that there is no fault or individual culpability. Caring for or cultivating the dance between is a shared responsibility.  

I must surrender my ownership of the dance. It is not all about me. The dance is an expression of the energetic connection between us.