In The Stillness is the Dancing

“Sometimes we are doing what seems impossible, dancing the silence.”  Carlos Gavito. 

The deliciousness of the Tango, its enticement, its enchantment, is that each step, each moment, each movement is complete unto itself. It is a hologram that holds within it an entire universe of feelings and sensations.

The essence of the dance, its tension, earnestness, eagerness, is present within each step, within the transition to each step, within the nanosecond of a pause between the steps. 

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. Four Quartets, T.S.Eliot

In the “still point” is the dance, in the creative gestation between movements, in time outside of time when a window is opened and the bracing breath of Spirit washes over the couple.

Really? says my alter ego. “Mostly I experience dancing the Tango as a series of very complicated sequences which my partner and I frequently flub. Hopefully, we make it to the end of the tanda still friends. Not exactly transcendence.”

Sure, it is often like that. Maybe mostly like that. 

But then, as with all spiritual practices, there are those openings, that fleeting awareness, the flash of insight and awareness.

If … 

we slow down, take the time to pause, settle into the completed step and breathe into the moment

 … before we launch off into another stream of busyness.

This musical carousel is a sensual inhalation of Spirit. 

Sometimes it feels like bliss, sometimes eros, sometimes like affection, sometimes weightlessness, other times like sinking deep into the earth. 

Sometimes there is no feeling at all. 

Sometimes it is two people moving in beautiful, blended symmetry, an exquisitely executed sacada fit into a molinette.

Sometimes it is a moment of suspension filled by the almost imperceptible softening of the embrace, or the squeezing of the hand, or the pressing of cheek to cheek. 

Sometimes it is just resting against another person in stillness, openness, and vulnerability. 

The Tango Koan*

Its meaning evades the anxious grasp of logic,  a haunting question that is only assuaged by pressing flesh to the mystery. 

It is a deep meditation in consort not with one’s partner but also with the music and all the hosts past and present who cradle this mystery. 

It is two hearts, souls, and bodies suspended in that delicate, ephemeral vapour of creative anticipation, the pregnant pause before the joyous birth. 

Each tanda leaves one searching, longing for that which was left unrealized. We are pulled into the spell, dance it, embrace it, pause, listen, attune acutely to each sensation and ask …

… “Is this it? 

*A Koan is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.