Several months ago, a friend, a man in the tango community, a person I like and respect, asked me to write an article about returning to tango after the pandemic.
I thought I could do it. It didn’t sound hard. But, I found I couldn’t.
It didn’t make sense to me because it would be dishonest to say I stopped dancing because of the pandemic.
Sure, the pandemic put a dent into dancing. Many of us didn’t dance for three years.
But it wasn’t the pandemic that made me run away from tango so many other times. The pandemic therefore is just an excuse. I know plenty of people who created a trusted friend-dancer group where they felt they were able to safely practice.
No, tango is something I run from often.
It’s a commitment problem, a problem I’ve had all my life and in so many parts of my life. I hold myself out just enough to, I don’t know, presumably “stay safe.” Lol.
I laugh because I’m not even sure what that means, when I say “stay safe.” And what a cliche. What is safe?
Safe from what?
We all talk about fear of intimacy and all of that, but what is it really, to be afraid of intimacy or commitment?
This is a big, thorny topic. I’m also, finally, learning about co-dependence and how unhealthy patterns learned in turbulent childhoods can make our lives almost unlivable if we don’t arrest (and address) them. And that disorder plays a role here too.
Today, however, we’ll approach the topic through the lens of tango.
Argentine tango and I have a fraught relationship.
It’s a dance. That’s what we’re talking about here. I have a fraught relationship with dance in the first place. I was terrified of dance my entire life and still am. When I managed to get the nerve up to dance at a wedding a few years ago, the man I was with said, “You’re trying too hard.”
That hurt. It cut me down.
But the pain I felt from those words was out of all proportion to what had actually transpired.
I felt immolated, annihilated, riven, gutted, flayed.
And that’s just weird.
In a nutshell, I came to dance because I realized in my mid-forties that I didn’t want to die having never danced. I chose tango because it’s beautiful, and I love the music, but the real reason tango works for me is two-fold.
First, it’s intensely technical and prescriptive (not “free-form”), which I feel I need since I don’t seem to intuitively understand “dance.” Second, it requires one to meld with one’s partner physically. It’s not a dance where you dance in front of the other, mimicking each other’s movements. Rather, you fuse as one and work as an interdependent unit.
One of the things that terrifies me about dance is being “seen.” It triggers deep shame in me, stultifying, overwhelming shame. I’m not entirely sure why. Sure, my mom ridiculed me once when she saw me dancing. She said I didn’t have to shake my butt like that or something along those lines. It held enormously caustic criticism and judgment.
And it worked. She severed me from my ability to move my hips. I’m not kidding. A few years ago, my daughter tried to teach me how to move my hips. She wasn’t successful. In yoga, I’m discovering how to move my hips. It feels illicit and dangerous. And good.
Back to tango (which—reason number 3!—requires the hips to be still).
At the time I had no idea tango is considered the most difficult dance.
Which is why you have to commit. That’s another reason it’s the perfect dance for me. It demands I commit. It forces me to contend with commitment.
I run away a good deal. I hold myself out, slightly.
But when I return, it’s to a bosom buddy.
Yesterday, I attended a class in San Francisco’s Mission District. I took BART into the city from Oakland, where I live. On the walk to the station, I passed a mature red maple tree peeking from someone’s back garden. Just coming into bud, she sported a profusion of pale pink, winged seed pairs draped about her like so many flags.
I got off at 16th Street station, passing a woman semi-collapsed against a wall, her mouth open, apparently in the throes of a drug-induced haze. I passed several haunted, unstable, suffering individuals staggering about on the street. It was like running a gauntlet.
But I also enjoyed the street, the sun shining on me, the little Yucatecan restaurants, Latin music spilling from the doorways, the feeling of being in the City, of being free, and of striding resolutely to my waiting tango class at Bissap Baobab, a Senegalese gathering place with restaurant, bar, and dance floor.
I got there a few minutes early, recognized some folks, and had a funny reality check with a handsome man. I still had my sunglasses on and, well, my eyes… Anyway, I thought he was older than I, but “maybe still in a date-able range.”
I had to laugh when I got my other glasses on and realized it was a man I’ve danced with before, and he’s a young man, who indeed is handsome, and I had to laugh (and did, inwardly) at the proof that I have no idea how old I am, or how old anyone is, or how I look anymore.
He’s a kid, basically, compared to me. He’s also serious about tango, and getting good fast. Almost everyone in the class is that way. You have to be, with this dance. There was an attractive woman with short, curly hair in her early forties with pretty feet who knows just how to style and arch them in her sexy tango shoes. There was a very femme young man who later donned a pair of sexy black heels. I liked him; we immediately clicked. He had that “Hey girlfriend!” kind of vibe. He was serious about tango and a sensitive leader.
There was a kind, older Japanese man who spoke little English and kept apologizing though he had nothing to apologize for. In fact, I enjoyed our slow, rudimentary dances more than my dance later with the “expert” dancer who was throwing me around. That’s a type in tango that we all (us tango aficionados) know. Sure, these partners know how to dance. They’re grounded, on axis (have good balance), and know the steps, but they’re arrogant, pushy, and insensitive to their partners. No fun, in other words.
We worked on the molinette, but the teacher never once named it. He called it a giro, a turn, and he broke it down into baby steps for us. It was a good class, on a sequence we’re all supposed to have mastered by now, but which, as I’ve learned in dance, always has room for improvement. In my case, it has heaps of room for improvement. I’m still learning to keep my axis. I’m still trying to figure out what “grounded” actually means.
A man in Argentina ten years ago invited me in a park to push him, suddenly, from the side. He swayed, stumbled, and caught himself. Then, he asked me to push him again, with the same force. He was like a rock, immovable.
“That’s groundedness,” he said. (He was an expert tango dancer.)
It’s mental and physical. It’s a girding of the body, but it’s also a type of focus, commitment, an internal gripping, a determination.
People say, “Push into the floor.” For years, that made no sense to me. How do you push into the floor? Your physical weight, the weight of your body, is what “pushes” into the floor… isn’t it? Nope. You can push into the floor, and when you do, your muscles immediately respond with tone.
That’s what dancers have. Tone.
Once, a young UC Berkeley student I was dancing with said, “Dancing with you is like carrying a pot of pasta water across the floor.”
That was not a compliment.
But it was good information for me.
I was not grounded. I was not toned. I was neither grounded nor toned.
Yet, I was tense. As tense as can be. Like a cat on the drapes. That kind of tense.
For years, the main piece of advice I received was, “Relax.”
This made no sense to me. Relax, but be toned?
One teacher explained it to me like this: “Be ready to respond.” When you’re about to run a race, waiting for the whistle to blow, that’s how your body is: ready to respond.
Why do I run away from tango, and why do I return?
I run away because I get hurt. I grow fearful, and discouraged. But also, I don’t want to be too eager. I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket (thought that’s a great basket to put them in). I don’t want to belong to any club that will have me. If I think it’s worthwhile, it must not be. Ouch.
I once asked a man, a doctor in the tango community, if it was worth it. Was tango worth the effort, time, attention, and expense it required to get good, good enough to really enjoy the dance?
He said, by all means, a resounding yes. “In what other pursuit do you have physical fitness, beauty, culture, incredible music, sensuality, connection, community, and yes, eroticism all in one go?”
He had a point.
I leave tango because it’s scary. I don’t want it to subsume me.
I return to tango because it’s beautiful, and I want to be subsumed.
really great use of short sentences and longer blocks of text here!
I loved reading this piece, Christy. I also have a deep and sometimes complicated relationship with dance, and have gotten super involved with flamenco since moving to Portland. The quote from the man you asked "is it worth it?" applies very heartily to my feelings about flamenco, which I wrote about here, in case you're interested in comparing dance notes. 🤓 💃🏻https://www.allhandsart.com/blogposts/2019/12/13/why-im-hooked-on-flamenco?rq=why%20I%27m%20hooked%20on%20flamenco