Musings on Tango, Sensuality and Spirituality
aydan.tango 
This is starting to get creepy. More precisely, my skin is starting to feel creepy. There is a good reason for this … “The Hug is the Drug.” It is only natural when we don’t get that stimulation regularly – blame it on anti-social distancing – that we start to experience withdrawal, (in my case restlessness, irritability, and creepy-crawly skin. Just saying).
Tango is a dance of touch, of close embrace, of cheek to cheek, chest to chest. Yes, we know how to step, how to interpret the music, but do we know how to listen to our partner?
Perhaps Covid has been an equalizer, a stabilizer, a needed break in the action. Nobody dances, nobody parades down streets or celebrates Easter or wars. Nobody plays soccer.
I like the old world better.
It’s Easter. A good time for hope.
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.