10  Tango and Love

From: SERGIO [SERGIO@NCINTER.NET]
Sent: Dienstag, 13. Februar 2001 05:18
To: TANGO-L
Cc: SERGIO
Subject: Tango and Love

If you are not interested in psychological aspects of tango please press
delete now.

Popular dances, ballroom dances in particular are generally intended to
celebrate, to promote fun, to extrovert the joy felt by the dancers.
There is not doubt that dancing as an art expression reflects the
personality of the people that created it.
How was that they originated? Let us take rumba for instance, one can
imagine the tropical island of Cuba, blue sky, emerald sea, green hills.
Slaves working cutting and carrying loads of sugar cane on their heads, the
upper body straight, going up and down those hills, avoiding irregularities
in the ground, a stone here, a piece of wood there, a small bush later on.
Singing their African songs, mixed with Spanish rhythms, upper body
straight, hips moving to walk in that irregular terrain,
slow forward, quick, quick to the side just in time to avoid a stone. Soon
those moves were integrated in the evening dances and there you have it The
Rumba and the Latin Motion were born. Sensual, romantic, smooth, delicate.
Perhaps reflecting the mild Caribbean climate, and the simple and ardent
character of its people.

Why is then that Argentine Tango is so different. It originated in an urban
environment, rather than a rural one like most of the others, temperate
climate, it is intended to be serious, melancholic, nostalgic, extremely
introverted and introspective. It concentrates in the feeling more than in
the fun aspect of the dance. It requires extreme concentration in the music,
the partner and a special experience obtained by an absolute freedom of
interpretation of that particular moment. A real intimate encounter. It has
a convoluted choreography that reflects the complex mind of its creators.

I ask myself why? Try to find an explanation... It is true that art in some
instances creates those things that we do not have.
The same as a dream where we can obtain what we lack in real life.
Lonely men, in the periphery of a large city, their needs for intimacy,
romanticism, fusion with a woman, a need for true love unsatisfied.

Contact with the other body does not go further than the limits of the
initial solitude, it rather enhances it and makes it sadder, more
intolerable. One should wonder if this mechanism could explain the tango
sadness, so frequently associated with hopelessness, resentment and sarcasm.
It also could explain the fulfillment, of those needs, like in a dream,
absolute communication, intimacy, romanticism, fusion of two people in one,
true love that lasts only as long as the music plays.

That also explains the frustration of meeting a partner who dances as he/she
thinks of his personal problems, the bills that have to be paid, lighting,
the coffee, the announcement that has to be maid, etc., it is a real
betrayal, an act of infidelity, a most terrible experience... but this is
another subject. :)

Good tangos with great concentration in partner and music to you all.

From: astrid [astrid@RUBY.PLALA.OR.JP]
Sent: Donnerstag, 15. Februar 2001 17:00
To: TANGO-L
Cc: astrid
Subject: Re: Tango and Love

Sergio wrote:

> If you are not interested in psychological aspects of tango please press
> delete now.

(etc.)

I am, and I love this posting of Sergio's.
The invention and the function of this close dance probably has many a
person helped to keep their sanity in hard times. That it can also drive you
to states of confusion, exasperation or addiction may be left aside for now.
Thinking of something else while dancing:
There is a whole book with the tittle "Be here now", which seems to be one
of the hardest things to do. In Tango this is greatly facilitated, but
still- my posting about not knowing where to put my left arm produced the
explanation that the man is "not giving enough of his body" in close
embrace, leaving me to grope for a possible balance in spite of that. I
think the poster was right on point, thanks.
So, to embrace but not really, to listen to the music but not REALLY, to ask
someone to dance and then think about the bills while you do- this is a very
common problem in the west. So, a little Zen won't hurt...The eastern
masters say that you can only be there by "getting out of the way", meaning
leaving your endlessly babbling mind with all it's constant objections aside
and just BE THERE.
If one can't do it in something as pleasurable as tango, there is only one
occasion left, and you cannot be doing that all of the time.
On the other hand, if you can "give enough of your body into the embrace",
and just be there, feeling what is happening you can connect in ways never
expected, concerning depth as well as people.

I watched five couples dancing very close and slowly, on the tiny dance
floor of my regular bar in Berlin. And suddenly I had this vision, that if
the jet-bombers were flying over the city again and bombs were falling on
the streets around us, this is what we would be doing in order to cope with
our fear.
Tango was popular in the fourties, right ?

Back from Berlin
Astrid