Social Dance
Tango as a social dance grew from the idea of improvising together by using a rich mix of movements, constantly developing as tango subculture keeps evolving. Tango can be compared to a language used to communicate with another person, each conversation being unique. At every moment the partners decide what they will “converse” about, depending on the music, skills, and desires. Given a very rich movement vocabulary, these “conversations” may vary in an almost infinite number of ways. Here the most important thing will always be not what the dance looks like to the outsiders but how you feel dancing it with this particular partner to this particular music. Many people come to tango to try out something new, something they always wanted to try, sometimes just to meet the opposite sex, to socialize, to dance, to move their body.
First Impression
The impression that strikes a new person observing the dance floor in a Milonga for the first time is actually the intimacy of what is happening, despite tango being quite a dynamic dance to quite dramatic music. A man and a woman embrace each other closely and start moving in a synchronised way, harmoniously, but without showing off. The basic structural element of tango is a walk together, where the man/leader “leads”, moving forwards in the direction of the dance, and the woman/follower “follows” by walking backwards. To imagine, however, that in tango a powerful “macho” is controlling a pretty “princess” would be just as wrong as to suppose that a classical ballerina is a fragile, weak creature because she plays the spirit of a dead girl. Tango, like any dance, embodies a particular cultural notion of what it means to be a man and a woman; in tango this notion has both European and South-American roots. These origins give rise to this particular image of a proud, seductive, smartly dressed man and a sensual but treacherously elusive woman. However, this is just the surface.
Cure For Loneliness
The first and probably most important thing is learning to create a close physical contact with another person, a contact that is sensuous, deeply felt, musical, intimate, yet not sexual. Yes, it sounds paradoxical, considering tango’s erotic connotations. As modern human beings, we mostly lack this kind of physical contact in our urbanized context. Our environment rarely provides us with a possibility of close physical contact devoid of (sexual) ambiguity. We hardly dare to touch our friends, even less our co-workers; sometimes we do not have a lover or a significant one in our life at this moment and with family and children physical contact is not always that straightforward either. Yet, we see more and more scientific studies confirm that physical contact helps to heal depression, reduce anxiety and increase the level of the “love hormone”.
The State Of Flow
Tango therefore, can be seen as a dance that reflects the human life as a succession of encounters and relationships with Another. The second important aspect of tango is learning to trust the flow and to act spontaneously, fully living the present moment. We can see tango as a dynamic awareness practice. For the dance to happen, both partners have to enter this state of flow and to be fully present, all the time communicating with each other by dance movements. This flow experience is very important in itself and has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are a good or a bad dancer. Living the present moment in full awareness is always a transformative experience that takes you to yourself, your true center, your desires, goals, and emotions, letting you know what your inner being finds most important, what you allow yourself to do and feel and live and which experiences you deny yourself.
Couple Dynamics
True tango is only possible if both partners are all the time listening to the other and actively interacting. Many long-term couples who come to tango, discover, to their surprise, subtle hidden mechanisms of dependence in their relationships, of buried resentment, responsibility avoidance or blaming all the mistakes on the other person. This couple dynamic, surfaces during the learning process, allowing the couple to review and improve their intimacy. Often people also meet their shadow side, one they refuse to feel: fear of true intimacy, emotional dependence, and lack of self-confidence or mistrust of life. Sounds scary, but personal growth is not possible without first becoming aware of your psychological blocks.
Intimacy
Tango provides a context for this process while remaining a pleasant hobby and a source of great enjoyment. On the outside tango may seem just a synchronized couple dance or a prelude for a sexual encounter, but on the inside, it is neither. People who dance tango feel like they touch upon a mystery that is impossible to convey in words. The deeper you go into tango, the more you realize just how much it serves as a metaphor for any kind of human contact, be it love, sex, friendship, parenthood or collaboration. And this means that we can learn true intimacy on this universal primary level of body movement, to use this knowledge later in other areas of life.
Tango Community
There is a feeling of community and inclusion in the Hudson Valley Tango population. There is always room for new members to come onto the Tango dance floor. Tango dances are taking place all over the world and the Tri-State area.
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So what are you waiting for, call Dojo Dance Studio today:
Phone: (845) 475-6006- http://www.DojoDanceCompany.com
Their studio is at 464 Main Street, Beacon, N.Y.
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