It takes two to tango but it is not tango without
tango music. When I began dancing tango I found the melodies disconcerting and
laborious. My initial attraction to this dance was the proximity that it put me
to members of the opposite sex. After eight years of single parenting I found
that I was unable to deny myself the chance to hold a woman in my arms and move
with her to the music.
When
the initial euphoria wore off I found myself asking why I kept coming back. I
was hooked and it was a mystery to me as to how the barb was set that kept me
searching for more dances with different partners in cities far and wide. I was
forty-eight years old and my two daughters were in college. I was free to do
other things than laundry and cooking meals for princesses.
What
made my obsession even more perplexing was that I always looked at dancing as
an effeminate activity and an affront to my machismo. I had difficulty talking
about it to my friends and was somewhat ashamed to admit what I knew I had
become: a dancer.
When
I was young I worked as a whitewater river guide on various rivers of the
Appalachian Mountains: the Lehigh, Upper Hudson, Youghigheny, Nolichucky and
Moose Rivers. I never stopped being a river runner and raised my girls to be
river rats and adventure seekers. When river guides dance it is not pretty and
it is best to stand clear: arms flail, legs fly and the sound of their voices
will crack your ear; it is the unbridled expression of a very passionate
person. The rhythm of the river flows in our veins; it is the melody we hear
and it dictates how we move in spontaneous response to the pulse and surge of
the unpredictable current.
I
was in the process of writing a book when my tango obsession grabbed me. The
hand that grasped me was a familiar one, it was my own, the one I used to pull
customers back into the raft after they had fallen overboard. I didn’t know it
at the time but I was drowning, lost in the River of Life and I had slipped
below the surface, overwhelmed by my responsibilities as a father, worker,
friend, neighbor, brother, son. Inevitably my book changed course and covered
two topics: the river and tango. It eventually would be released as ‘River
Tango’.
Back
in the raft I could steer and there were rough waters ahead of me. I lost my
job, my investments tanked and my roof sprung a leak. My problems seemed
insurmountable but I was no longer alone, I had a dance partner wherever tango
dancers gathered and the rhythm of the music affected me like a river flowing
through my heart and soul.
I
left my home in Pennsylvania and headed south to the Carolinas to work as a
contractor in the telecom industry, renting out my house to a neighbor for next
to nothing just to keep it from becoming an abandoned building to be vandalized
by the young punks in town. I danced tango in Charleston, Raleigh, Wilmington,
Charlotte, Atlanta and Asheville. At that time I still did not know why I was
so compulsive about attending the tango events, called ‘milongas’, but
eventually the clouds parted to reveal the answer; it was the music.
Tango
is like sex. Anybody can do it once they find a partner. Even though the two
participants are inexperienced they can still make it happen. So it is with
tango, if you can walk to the music with another person you are dancing tango
as long as the music playing is tango music. The key is tango music. It is the
sex drive of the dance that motivates a person at the subconscious level to
constantly seek it out. It is the vehicle by which this cultural, anachronistic
import has rapidly repopulated itself around the world.
Tango
music is to dancers what anti-oxidants are to the human body. Anti-oxidants
keep us young and healthy. Tango music is what draws dancers together and it
keeps them moving to the melodies long after their muscles have become fatigued
and their brains addled.
Dancing
tango is a journey into your soul on a river of rhythms and melodies. The only
way to steer on this voyage of self discovery is with a rudder comprised of
self-honesty. By being true to myself I was able to learn about the other half
of our species. It took me three years of tango to learn how to hold a woman.
To do it I had to exude my manliness and be relaxed while doing it.
All
of the things I learned I already knew. A lifetime of misinformation had gotten
me to believe in things that were false. To be honest with myself I needed to
become a better person, to quit stereotyping people. I needed to be unbiased in
my opinions of others. Only then could I be alone with a woman in a crowded
room and be able to tune everyone out so I could hear the music, so I could get
into sync with my partner.
I
had to learn where my point of balance was and how to direct my momentum to my
advantage. It was like learning how to maneuver on the river all over again
only now I was riding down the rapids towards my own center. Once there nothing
else matter, only my companion and the music. I didn’t care if she was skilled
or a novice, all I needed to do was to hold her and move to the song in
complete harmony with her.
As I navigated the River of Tango the obstacles
I encountered ceased to be problems, they became rhythms in the melody of life.
I danced around them and eventually I started to become the center of my world.
I could make sense of the chaos and could adapt to the fluctuations in the
events of my life like a dancer navigating a crowded dance floor. The stress in
my life decreased dramatically.
All
the while, as I explored who I was I kept moving, I kept dancing and working in
different cities, moving west to San Antonio, Austin, Albuquerque and finally
Durango. Here I found a river waiting for me, the Animas River. Here I found
love and happiness.
Now that my
first child has graduated college I find that I am not an old man looking to
the end of his life with trepidation; I am alive and washed clean everyday by
the events in my life. I look forward to the struggle to maintain balance in my
relationships, in all my endeavors and on the dance floor. I know I will not
fail because failure doesn’t exist for the person who does not try to conquer
life, who moves with the flow instead of against it. I hear the music and move
to its rhythm because I am a dancer.
