Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Tango as a force of life...



Tango is not a dance but all sorts of things for me. Its music, and not just any music, its music that is able to tell a compelling story in 3 minutes, as Placido Domingo indicates in the previous post. It is poetry. It is emotion. its a juxtaposition, where simplicity and complexity fall in love...

Tango is the wardrobe, the shoes for me. Tango is the hair, the shower I take before the milonga, and the one after. Tango is the eyeliner, the dress. Tango is the parfume, the cologne, tango is the pheromone.

Tango is the embrace for me. it is powerful enough to make me leave my excess baggage and hang ups at the entrance of a milonga. Through tango, I embrace a total stranger, with the attempt to create an inner connection. It has the power to peel the layers that we so carefully build, trying to harden ourselves against the blows of life.

As the music peels my layers one by one, I realize how great it is to feel again, to breath, to loosen up. The more vulnerable I am, the better the connection, the lighter the step, the prettier the melody, the more tender the embrace.

Tango is the women: old and young, sometimes irresistible, sometimes needy, sometimes pouting, sometimes full of life,sometimes seducing, sometimes shy, but never dull, always dramatic...

Tango is the men: Sometimes tender, sometimes forceful, sometimes wise and sometimes childlike, sometimes insecure and yet armed with the strength to make you feel safe in their arms. Tango, with its embrace, allows us women and men to take care of each other.

Tango is the community, with its gossip, rivalries, jealousies, with disagreements, but also with its solidarity and diversity.

Tango has the power to make life seem more vivid for me. It makes me more sensitive to everything. In any other circumstance, I could not bear to hold a sweaty man (whom I do not know at all) that close to my self.:) In any other circumstance, I don't think I could tolerate spending hours, in a badly lit, sometimes smoky, definitely
humid environment with an intense crowd, whirling like dervishes. In any other circumstance, I would have taken those heels off way before. Tango is my pain killer. So tango gives me the power to bear things beyond my capacity, or what I think is my capacity. It pushes my limits, it expands my horizons. Actually that makes me think, is it because I am in a trans, like the dervishes, who whirl without getting dizzy?

So, by the end of a perfect milonga, when I get out on the street, with my aching feet, my not-so-well hearing, my palpitating heart, I feel like I am breathing the fresh air for the first time. That is why it feels so good to breath in the cold air in the winter. That is why it feels good to walk outside after amilonga in the summer.

Next time you get out of a milonga, ask your self, why does it feel so damn good to hurt? To pass your bed time? To be dehydrated? To fall in and out of love?
For me it feels so damn good because tango is a force of life for me... And for you?

10 comments:

  1. tango is a very shy me feeling beautiful in the middle of a room.

    tango is a turn in the music that makes me weep.

    tango is something like falling in love.

    tango is how i can justify dressing up every night of the week. :)

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  2. Absolutely.

    I often think that Tango is, for me, all those things that it is for you. It is a representation of life, very crude, very stark, very vivid--socially, physically, emotionally.

    And perhaps as this is the case, I love Tango so much because it makes me feel alive...

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  3. I know what you mean... Isn't it interesting that my feet can be so sore but my heart so happy? :-)

    beautiful post.

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  4. I loved this.. what a beautiful post! I don't think I've ever felt more sexy and beautiful then I do when I am dancing tango.

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  5. Sometimes I feel like Tango is my real life and everything else is just the moments in between dances. Tango makes life so much more full of every emotion and feeling.

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  6. What a beautiful, well-written (IMHO) post. I wish I could think like that.

    "Tango is the parfume, the cologne, tango is the pheromone."

    Oh my god, did you create that line? It is fantastic! I'm going to steal it and use it as the subhead for a tango blog. Bwahahahah! (and write a song with that as the chorus, unless it's already been done? It seems too perfect).

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  7. If tango is all the above, then tango is beautiful.

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  8. Too quiet... Danzarin, where are you??? Hope at least you are dancing more than I am these days...

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