Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Why Tango?


               Well, I got the job! You think I would be elated but, to tell you the truth, I am more tired than anything. I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to be on the lookout for work. It was a job just to keep telling myself to keep my chin up and my eyes open. Now it’s over and I can relax….and my body is doing just that by taking me off guard duty.
               Last night, I went to practica at Moravian College and that’s when I noticed the extreme fatigue. I would have bugged out but there was a very sexy tanguera there and I had some great dances with her. I couldn’t talk myself into leaving, in spite of my growing lethargy.
               Tonight, I went to Stroudsburg practica. It was not as good as last week, though there were more people. An extreme newbie was there and I danced with her, finally, at the end of the night.
               She was nervous and tense. I tried walking her around the room to the music but that was not resonating with her, so I tried talking.  It is funny, with novice tangueras, what it takes for them to relax enough to become followers. She couldn’t pivot until we began a conversation.
               I asked her where she was from, what got her into dancing, why tango? She reminded me of myself, so many years ago, searching for the same thing. At the time, I couldn’t quite frame my feelings into a question. I can now. The question is the answer. I needed to ask myself, “Why should I dance tango?”
               The answer to that question, I already knew.  I knew I needed to make contact with the opposite sex. I needed to find women who were like me, women who liked me, women who liked me…..for me.
               I started with salsa, then swing. Soon, I progressed into the hustle and then to ballroom, then back to swing. As I teetered on the ledge between ballroom, swing and salsa, I found tango and asked the question: why tango? It took me two full years to understand the world of dancing, to realize that tango was one of the alternatives. Once I began asking the question, I knew I had found something. I didn’t know what it was but that was where the satisfaction was derived: in the search.
               A common observation about Life is that we are all asking the same question: Why? Tango is like Life, to propose the question is to begin a journey and that is what we were looking for all along.

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