Women and the Tango Question

               

               Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the question in tango. Once again, I remember Mariela Franganillo’s short lecture/lesson on that subject one Saturday afternoon at Dance Manhattan in New York City.

               “Do you hear the question?” she asked as she demonstrated a seemingly simple pivot which I found impossible to replicate with my partner.

               I kept waiting for her to say something about the answer but she never did. I found that frustrating and that is probably why it is still on my mind three years later, here in Wisconsin, where Winter refuses to yield to Spring.

               Men and women are different, especially where questions are concerned.

               Men rarely inquire, we simply do. This is not always a good thing.  

               Women are always asking questions, “Do you think I’m pretty? Where are we going? Do you love me?”

               When a man asks a woman a question, her response is not always an answer. If he doesn’t pose it properly, she may not do anything. How he asks is everything.

               I think this is why Mariela did not talk about the answer, because there doesn’t have to be one, there only needs to be a response and the response can be anything, even silence.

               This is a woman’s prerogative. This is yet another reason that some find tango so addicting. It is a dance where a woman can be a woman and react to what she hears instead of what her partner thinks he is saying.

               I can see that this would be heady stuff for a lady of the 21^st Century. It must feel very liberating, especially after a hard week of work.

               Over the course of seven years, I’ve seen many women give tango a whirl. For most it is a flirtation but there are those few who fall into it as if gravity had pulled them into its orbit.

               A woman’s first real tango dance is her best for a long while. I can imagine her profound confusion and absolute delight when she asks, “What do you mean, ‘I can never make a mistake’?”

               Once she begins her education, it is a downhill slide for a very long time. At first, she finds her fear of falling overwhelming as she careens downward. Instinctively, she carves a turn on the floor to slow her momentum and maintain her own balance. She suddenly realizes that this is exactly what she was supposed to do!

               Just as gravity is a force of nature, so too is her movement as a woman. In tango, she is a skier on the unpredictable slope of a man’s intentions, responding to his musical inquiries in a spontaneous and instinctive manner.

               I wonder how it feels for her to be with a man who is finally asking questions. He is not just asking a question, he is asking all sorts of questions: silly, serious and serendipitous, to the rhythm and to the melody.

               It is my guess that tango is a woman's insight into a part of men that is purposefully hidden from her. Here, she can see all the possible other halves of herself that could be.

               As her tango education progresses, she nears the bottom of the hill and hits the gas to carry her up and over the next incline. She delights in the freedom it gives her to connect with her true nature, to hear the question as it really is and to respond to it in whatever manner she feels is best.


For more of the Kayak Hombre, read my book Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure or River Tango. Available on Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle.