Lately I’ve been helping out at a beginner tango class and find myself thinking a lot about what makes a good tango connection possible. I once wrote about this and likened it to being a trick a dancer uses to connect to their partner in a way that is both physical and mental and, eventually, much more than that. There was quite a bit of blowback on that assertion but I stand by my belief with conviction and would like to offer more of an explanation of why I believe this is so.
Maybe ‘trick’ is the wrong word or maybe the use of that word triggers a negative reaction in adherents to the faith of tango. Use ‘stratagem’ or some other synonym if you must but it is what it is and ‘trick’ is my word of choice. Here is why:
When I was young, in my 20s, I worked as a whitewater riverguide on the Lehigh River. To be a guide on this river meant mastering the art of whitewater kayaking. The Lehigh River is a fairly easy river to navigate and its proximity to NYC and Philadelphia made it a very popular destination for those inspired by the movie ‘Deliverance’ to seek adventure in the great outdoors and ‘brave’ the rapids of this wild and scenic waterway.
There were so many people that we had to put them in rafts without a guide and herd them down the river with our kayaks like sheep dogs funneling woolybacks to the corral at destination’s end.
Poetry is the use of words to convey maximum meaning with a minimum of words. It is, in a word, art. Art is merely the obvious evolution of a skill, refined to a point where the practitioner achieves the highest result with as little effort as possible. So it is with the art of guiding rafters down the Lehigh River: the best guides devised various schemes to get customers to paddle their rafts downstream from point A to point B in a manner which required very little physical exertion on the guide’s part whilst allowing their charges to have the most fun.
One of our biggest problems was getting the rafters to avoid rocks that their rafts would pin against and cause its occupants to become separated from their rubber boats and force them to continue their journey downstream with just their life jackets for comfort. To rectify this situation and return the customers back to their original configuration, i.e. butts on boats and feets inside rafts, required a maximum amount of effort and resulted in a minimum amount of pleasure for the guide and the rafting patrons, though there were many guides who did thoroughly enjoy the show and may have worked to achieve this particular outcome...but I digress.
Each guide developed his/her own toolbag of psychological machinations to the point where we had the rafters doing most of the work for us: from launching their boats into the river, maneuvering around obstacles, rescuing each other in the rapids, to carrying their boats up a steep set of stairs at river’s end, they did it all. Not to brag(which is what a person who means to brag always prefaces a braggadocio post with) but, for a while, I was one of the best. My customers had the most fun on the river while I had the most fun paddling my kayak down the Lehigh River with them.
I developed a persona, Omar the Blond Arabian, adopted a southern accent, which was not difficult for me since I lived in Georgia for four years as an adolescent, and used psychology to maximum effect: reverse, forward or sideways, it didn't matter. It didn’t hurt that I loved my job and I loved the river and the guests were just along for the ride. Happy workers make the best employees and I was the boss for the day when it came my turn to be lead guide.
One common mistake I learned to avoid was in getting rafters to steer around hazardous rocks in certain rapids. Most trip leaders positioned a kayaker behind obstructions to warn rafters away from it. I found that actually caused more collisions resulting in more rescues than was necessary. It seemed to me that customers tended to steer towards the kayakers; they were strangers in a strange land and headed for the person they assumed was there to keep them safe, e.g. the kayak guide. Eventually, I would place a guide on the side of the stream furthest from the hazard and found that was enough to get the rafts to avoid the obstacle and, consequently, made my day much easier.
Shiny happy people holding hands: that’s the key to the kingdom of pleasure and it is applicable to many of Life’s endeavors today, including tango.
I love dancing tango and I love dancing with strange women. It is a no-brainer for me on how to make each encounter an enjoyable one. I simply let her know, let her feel, how pleased I am to be in this situation: accompanying her on a beautiful journey through the impending musical pieces. To her, I am not Omar the Blond Arabian(although I will never not be Omar, she is just unaware of who I am at heart), I am just a guy with a nice shirt and clean pair of pants waiting to dance with her. On the river, I needed to keep away from obstacles to get my charges to have a good time, but, in tango, the opposite is true: I must be close to her in order for maximum amount of pleasure to be achieved.
The trick is to make my partner feel that I enjoy being with her and yet, I do enjoy it, so, maybe it is not a trick, or maybe it is a trick I play upon myself: such is the mystery of tango; who am I to question why I love it so much? For whatever reason why I feel good is not important, the only thing that matters is that my good feeling is conveyed to her, and, upon doing so, she relaxes and allows me to get closer to her. The obstacle here is not a rock in the river, it is the physical distance between us, which we have now eliminated, thus allowing us to have the most amount of pleasure with the least amount of effort.
What I am trying to say, and maybe not succeeding at, but I am not afraid to try, is that making a connection in tango is a skill that can be refined into an art, and that those who can do so, do so to the maximum benefit of their partners. May happiness ensue.
