INTRODUCTION
Why write about tango? Words cannot come close to
describing the experience of dancing. The main reason I started this project
was that I felt a lack of common vision of practice and improvement among even
the most serious tango dancers. I wanted to articulate some general principles
for myself, my students, and for some fellow dancers who were also interested
in the topic. I have written and rewritten it all many times, and eventually I
felt reasonably comfortable exposing the present state of it. This website is
the result, though it is bound to keep changing as I learn and understand more.
Tango is a relatively young art form. Potentially, it
can have as much depth and cultural significance as music, painting, or the
best of martial arts. But, so far, there has not been sufficient clarity among
the dancers or among the general public on how to explore this potential. I am not
a tango "master" - I still have a long way to what can be called
mastery of this dance. I am just a
serious student who over the years has been piecing together a working vision
of how to approach tango as a progressive artistic practice, and of possible
ways to develop it into the fine art that it can be. This vision did not come
easy. It took many errors and frustrating periods during which I was stuck and
confused, losing my enjoyment of this dance, in spite of studying with many
reputable teachers. I have seen a number of dancers who were initially in love
with tango become likewise frustrated and even abandon it altogether. Quitting
was not an option for me, as I had become a serious tango “addict”, so I spent
a lot of time and energy learning how to get “unstuck” and how to continuously
improve my experience of dancing. Many key insights came from outside of tango
circles – as a result of my explorations of Eastern martial arts and
philosophy, studies of various systems of bodywork, and a psychological
self-examination. One of my main
objectives in sharing the information and producing this website is to help a
potentially serious tango student who, like myself
when I started, intuitively perceives the possible depth of this art but does
not find clear ways to pursue it. Especially since I decided to stop teaching for
the time being (for reasons I explain in the Personal Background and Tango and Conscious Evolution sections), I feel like giving
tango students and fellow dancers an easy access to the information I have
accumulated over the years. My other main objective is to help foster a
dialogue between existing tango dancers, to help develop more of a common
vision of how to take tango to higher levels. Everything here is subject to
dispute and frequent revision, as I intend to continue learning.
Why tango?
Most tango “addicts” do not
ask themselves such a question – they know they love it, and that is why they
do it. I myself have had an urge to keep dancing tango for close to 13 years
now, and it is not getting any weaker. But, such irrational sentiments aside, I
am also interested in understanding the underlying qualities which make this
dance so appealing. In my experience, tango has been a positive force in the
following three ways:
-
as pleasurable recreation
and a comfortable social scene;
-
as a therapeutic activity;
-
as a culturally significant
art form, an instrument of conscious evolution of a human being.
Taken in the lightest
manner, tango, as any other social dance, is a great alternative to leisure
activities which center around food and drink. I
personally had always been somewhat socially uncomfortable, and did not enjoy
spending long hours in bars, restaurants or cocktail parties. The tango scene
instantly felt to me like a more natural way to come together with others. It
was easier for me to dance with people for hours than to talk with them for 5
minutes. But even talking became easier, for tango also provided an
inexhaustible topic of meaningful conversation. To me it also seems more
natural to meet people in an environment that involved dancing – one often
expresses oneself more eloquently and more inevitably through a dance than
through hours of small talk. Before I even began to consciously realize the
cultural significance of tango, I felt like I belonged in the milonga, though I was born and grew up in Russia. It made
much more sense to me to come together with people on the basis of music and
dance which we loved, rather than on the basis of more circumstantial workplace
or school acquaintances. Another unique feature of tango is that it is a
sensual, yet non-sexual interaction with the opposite sex. It allows one to
viscerally experience the other person’s psycho-physical being without getting
too personal. It is a great way for people to express themselves as men and
women without entering into a sexual relationship.
Another reason to dance
tango is that it can function as a therapeutic activity on many levels. First
of all, it is a light aerobic activity, relatively safe and accessible to any
age. As such, it can already make one feel better, and it is more fun than many
other workouts. Tango is also automatically therapeutic due to the physical
connection with another human being that it involves. In modern culture, more
and more people feel isolated and lack physical contact, especially if they are
single. Being hugged by another person for the duration of a dance can make a
big difference in one’s mood. But a much greater therapeutic power of tango lies
in how metaphorical it is of all our
relationships, and especially of the ways we relate to the opposite sex. Tango
has been justly called a three-minute love affair. Because the tango embrace is
so close and because the dance is improvised, one inevitably expresses one’s
character and relationship patterns through one’s dancing. Such things are not
always easy to see from the outside, but they are perceived very clearly by
one’s partner. With a little effort, one can also begin to notice one’s own habitual
attitudes and how they affect the experience of both partners. Just becoming
more aware of that can teach one a lot about one’s relationship patterns in
general, and can thus be greatly therapeutic (it has been for me). But even
more can be gained by learning how to transform one’s patterns creatively.
Tango is a model relationship in which one can experiment and learn more
safely, for failing to dance a good tango is not as terrifying as failing in a
real-life love affair. Another therapeutic value of tango is that it is
inevitably a creative act – every dance is a spontaneous, unpremeditated
interaction. As such, it develops our creative potential, puts us more in touch
with our instincts and intuition. In today’s world, where many people do not
find enough room for creativity in the workplace, having a more creative hobby,
where one expresses oneself more freely, can make a big difference in one’s
well-being.
The greatest reason to dance
tango, in my opinion, is that it can be practiced as an evolutionary art form – the concept that I discuss in detail in the
Tango and Conscious
Evolution section. Tango is an interaction that involves our senses, our
motor skills, our instincts, our feelings, our intuition – our whole
psycho-physical totality – to such a degree that it can be used as a tool for a
general development of a human being (especially
if “being” is used as a verb). Tango is a creative interaction
which can teach us deeper principles of interacting
in general. In this way, like the best of Eastern martial arts, tango can act
as an instrument of positive transformation of an individual’s mind, body and
spirit. When practiced with this goal in mind, tango becomes a culturally
significant art form of a rare kind, improving the well-being of individuals
and of culture as a whole. But in order for this potential of tango to manifest
fully, a correct approach to it is necessary. It started for me with the
realization that the biggest key to progress in this dance was improving such
fundamental abilities as standing, walking and controlling one’s mind. After
that I started trying to understand how to practice this art form in such a way
that it most directly connected to a general self-improvement. This is, in my
opinion, what it means to purify an artistic practice. It is through this
approach that I ended up experiencing the biggest improvement in both my
dancing and my general well-being. Developing such an approach is the main
motivation behind this website.