My Tango Diaries

We've danced before - though not often. He visits rarely, and I'm always a little nervous when we dance. He is one of a very few dancers I know with who grew up with tango music. He was not always a dancer - but the music is his heritage and I can feel it. On those rare occasions when he visits Austin, and asks me to dance, I silently pray to the tango gods that every song in the tanda will be one that I know well. Though I know it is the leader's job to shape the interpretation of the music, when I don't know the piece, it feels like he can tell. (Now, this little panic is entirely my own making, as he's never said or done anything to make me think he was being the least bit critical of me - exactly the opposite, in fact.) Despite my case of nerves, I was very pleased to see his cabeceo. As I accepted with a nod and stood by my table, I noticed the dance floor was so empty. I suddenly felt very visible. I was even more nervous than before. My partner for the...

They held me like they meant it . I received a cabeceo from far across a dance floor that nearly knocked my socks off. I waited , I surrendered , and I found my tango. I stopped trying to dance, and started looking for the sweet spot . I'll be honest, I don't know how to do it in open embrace. I don't know how to find it. In close embrace, it's all I need. It's everything I need. The sweet spot is, for me, that place on a man's chest that, when you connect, you get the most information. Not just about his lead but about his music - what he's hearing in the music, how it's affecting his breathing, his heart beat, the intention radiating through his torso. Once I've found it, even the tiniest changes are completely clear. Now, instead of evaluating and analyzing, all I do is listen to my partner's breathing, and feel for the "sweet spot". When those elements come together, I have no idea what he's leading or what I'm following ...

"The thing is, what we find if we're not used to sitting quietly with ourselves, not used to meditation, not used to having any inner solitude in our lives, we find that we're very threatened by nothing happening." Pema Chodron, author "When Things Fall Apart", in her interview with Bill Moyers . Sometimes, when we do nothing, we open the door for everything to finally find space within us. We empty our cups. In tango, in the milonga, so often it's the next step, the next step, the next step, what now? What now? . . . Then the tanda is done and where did it go? Lost in the steps. The pause, a breath . . . the time to connect to each other, listen to each other, hear the music through each other's bodies. Suspended, floating, in the space between one moment and the next. In that space, in that moment, are all the wonders of the dance and the music - the duende, the energy. Entrega happens here. Not just the surrender to our partners, but to the momen...

Wait... So much of my tango education has revolved around learning to wait. To wait until something is led. To wait for the music. To wait for my partner to open the space before moving into it. In my abrazo apilado class with Daniela Arcuri, she stressed the importance of followers waiting until there is a clear invitation to lean into their partner before doing so. The leader invites the follower to share her weight, often by stepping back slightly. If I lean on my partner without that invitation, I just feel heavy and off-balance to him. During the next practica, I felt for the invitation in the leaders who had taken the class with me. I knew they would be practicing it, so it wasn't a surprise to feel the tiny step back, or the slight dip in their elevation. What did surprise me is when I felt the invitation from another dancer, El León, who had not been in that class. Had he always been inviting me and I just kept closing the distance? I was so surprised, I didn...

“The great living experience for every man is his adventure into the woman. The man embraces in the woman all that is not himself, and from that one resultant, from that embrace, comes every new action.” -- D. H. Lawrence (Photo credit: New York Times article "Argentine Nights" by Denny Lee back on March 16, 2008.) Over at J'ai mal aux pied , Stephanie has written a thought-provoking entry asking readers what it is that they most want to feel in an embrace. Johanna, at Tangrila, author of The Tao of Tango, sums up what does it for her with her post, "I'm so easy to please." What feels best to you? How do you want to be embraced? Is it different with different partners? Different music? The picture above, from Tejastango.com shows the most obvious characteristics of my favorite embrace. I like to feel the man's right arm all the way around my back - and I like it pretty firm compared to some followers I've talked to. One woman who shares my love of ...

"I remember one night at the Club Gricel, shortly before his death. Mariana, his dancing partner, leaned against him, held up by nothing more than Gavito's forehead and the tips of her own toes. It was an act of absolute surrender. The slightest error would have brought them both tumbling to the floor. That photograph has become, for me, the absolute definition of eros: I surrender to you with absolute certainty; you are my balance." --Photographer, Pablo Corral Vega