The Religion of Tango

                Ouch! If I wasn’t a tango dancer I’d have to say the commentary on my last article was painful. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t find the accusations and the ignorance disturbing. All the ripples in the water tell me there is something roiling beneath the surface. See if you agree with my observation.

               Let me fill you in on what has been happening with my blog. A woman in my facebook friend list, most of whom are milongueros, posted a link on her page to my blog. She did this because she was so shocked that I would write a post advising beginner tangueros on what the appropriate behavior should be if they got aroused, which is to do everything possible to contain it and not to say a thing. Her and her 1800 friends all read it and were equally traumatized.

               Stupid me, I thought the appropriate response was to repost some writings I had done on tango’s ‘higher’ qualities but very few of my accusers bothered to read those posts. I came to realize that being too accommodating was like putting a Welcome Mat on my back and lying face down on the floor. It occurred to me that maybe these people didn’t want respectable, what they wanted was a little action in their life, they wanted to be shaken.

               As an experiment, I wrote another piece on arousal but this time from a slutty woman’s perspective and she is the provocateur. Once again I got hundreds of readers. My instincts were correct: these people, as upset as they professed to be just wanted to read about people getting aroused.

               None of the commentary mentioned any of the eight posts in between the first article and the second dealing with this sensitive subject. Those essays dealt with other subjects related to tango. All of my detractors claimed to know what tango was really about and flat-out accused me of having a trashy mind. Well, that may be true, sometimes, but sometimes I also have a noble mind. If ‘they’ had read some of my other posts, maybe they would be more forgiving in their characterizations of me.

               Which brings me to the observation I'd like to share: there are people who tango just so they can be associated with the stigma of this dance. What is the stigma of tango? I’ll try to define it but forgive me if you think I’ve missed something.

               The word ‘tango’ is synonymous with danger. Physical danger is implied but the real threat is to a person’s life which can be turned on its end and picked up by a storm of events that will likely leave that person’s life in tatters. A good example of this is Mark Sanford, a former governor of South Carolina who could have defeated Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican nomination for president. He is a tango dancer and knows first hand the perils of which I speak.

               Tango is one of the most difficult dances to learn. It took me three years to learn how to hold a woman and five years to realize I was just an advanced beginner. Pursuit of proficiency is akin to a quest to master Tai Chi or achieving Nirvana through meditation. A person able to dance tango skillfully and with grace is deserving of respect for their accomplishment.

               Argentine Tango is also known as the most passionate dance in the world. Practitioners are often assumed to be knowledgeable in the affairs of the heart and also matters of the flesh. That is true IF you are capable of connecting with your partners. If you can connect you expose yourself to your desires as well as your partners’ desires. You also risk becoming emotionally attached. If a dancer is able to achieve this bond then he/she will have learned how to manage their desires and how to steel themselves against emotional attachment. This not to say they have engaged in matters of the flesh, only that they are in control in the face of temptation...in control and still being able to dance is quite a feat!

               People who only care to be associated with the mystique of tango want to be seen as daring, worldly and disciplined in the art of dance. They are men who don’t know how to lead after participating for years in milongas, workshops and practicas. They are women who won’t follow. They’re not interested in committing themselves to the kind of attachment necessary for a couple to move as one entity and therefore never expose themselves to all the dangers of this dance.

               These people live in an emotionally sanitized world. There is no passion in their embrace and none of their desires are revealed to their partners. To them tango is an exercise to music that must be conducted under the constraints of a myriad of rules they create.  It is almost like a religion and one thing religion absolutely despises is sex, sensuality and attraction! No, they can’t abide a dance such as tango being associated with such things…despite the fact that it has its origins in the bordellos of Buenos Aires and Montevideo!

               When I am at a milonga I meet these people all the time. The ladies don’t follow but they expect me to invite them into my embrace repeatedly in spite of the fact that I find their lack of passion, desire and willingness to follow, offensive. The men try to engage me in conversation that is uncomfortable at best and extremely insulting at worst.

               My job takes me all over the country, the United States. Tango is spreading around this nation and I am your barometer from which you can gauge the intensity of its impact.

               I am also one of its missionaries. Yes, I pray at the church of tango but I do not try to make the rules for others. The missionary believes in the message while living a humble life. The bishops and the cardinals make the rules to enforce subordination. My humility and dedication to the truth are the tenets which set me free. I see much in my travels that I do not agree with but I do not judge: I write about it.

               If you want insight into how tango is faring in America’s Heartland and don’t mind being shocked from time to time, then my blog is for you.

               If you are like the woman with 1800 Facebook friends who de-friended me today, then my blog is not for you: don’t read it. She exercised her prerogative and didn’t hang around to chastise me for violating her emotionally sanitary perception of tango. She doesn’t want to live in a world where men and women are imperfect and can be victims of their natural desires. I do.

               I am a writer. I am not perfect. My imperfections and my willingness to show them to you, the reader, are what make my blog worth reading. I am constantly struggling with the emotional turmoil created by mingling with the opposite sex through tango as well as trying to balance my need to dance with the constraints of raising children and maintaining a full time job, a working class job. I believe I have conducted myself well in most of those battles but I promise to let you know when I fail because that will be worth reading and I don’t think you will want to miss it:-)

 Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango