Musings on Tango, Sensuality and Spirituality
“If more people danced, I am convinced it would be safe to go back out on the street again.” Making links between tango and the drive-through murders in Toronto this week.
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I am delighted with the experience of community that we have cultivated at Naked Cafe on Monday nights. It has been nurturing, sustaining and healing for me and others as well. As long as we continue to hold each other in a loving embrace, figuratively and literally, it will continue to be so.
At 97, Anna Halprin has more energy, rhythm and flexibility than most of us at half her age. When she says that dance is the key to a healthy life, you listen. Check out the video clip.
The Christmas message invites us to look for God in the fullness of life, in the bloody blessedness of a barn-yard birth. The venerable morphs into vulnerable. The eternal, infinite, divine, holy is hidden in a needy, fully-fleshed, bed-wetting, breast-sucking, infant god-child.
This is the last lasting gift of dance, or creating a mandala, or gazing into the eyes of a child or being held in a nurturing embrace. It teaches us to value those precious fleeting moments as the true treasure of a life well-lived.
Ultimately, I want to do more than just dance. I want to create a moment with my partner. For me, dancing should be more than just a dance – it should be an experience that sticks with us… And we never forget dances with amazing connection. Karen Kaye
“The shape of tango is made up of moments: a swift sudden entrance, a sweep of the foot, an advance, a retreat, a halt and a start, a displacement of the hips, and a freeze, as if hanging in air.” Pablo Ziegler 1997 ( grammy award winning, jazz-tango fusion composer)
The secret of Tango is this moment of improvisation that happens between steps. It is to make the impossible thing possible: to dance silence.” Carlos Gavito:
When I dance with my heart the separation between You and I vanishes. Two become one. We are absorbed into and subsumed by the music. We breathe the same breath. Our hearts resonate to the same beat. We share the same axis. We turn in harmony and unison.
If we dance with an open, non-judgemental heart that affirms and supports our partner’s efforts and delights in the exquisiteness of this shared experience, tango promises to be the most pleasing and rewarding compassion practice.