The trail grows cold. Ecstasy is an endangered species. But the dogs’ eyes glitter with hunger. Their frantic trotting exhausts me. They become aggressive.
The party endures, heavy-hearted, addicted to a thrill who may never breach again.
Paradigms determine the questions, the answers, and the methods. They break under the weight of data. I have reached the turning point.
The ecstasy is a function of transporting perfection, exact understanding and reachable challenge. Joy floods from gapless communication, mutual desire, and flawless collaboration – a taste and promise of communion with a true peer. Once we start to notice the imperfections, the hope and pleasure fades. The rapture is broken by every discomfort, distraction, and hesitation. Muscles twitching, we seek a better match, another hit.
Ecosystem crisis is inviting human beings into a severe transformation. We can no longer just hunt and eat the wilderness. The new relationship is a mix of compassion and humility. To care for it, we take less, seek a knowledge and relationship which includes the recognition that there are complexities and fragility we will not grasp.
Perhaps tango requires such care.
Indeed this is the way of relationships. Perfection accompanies the flush of first romance. Love is something else, it is to know the imperfections, to embrace them with humor and affection. Intimacy is witness to our real, own deep, whatever it is, and nameless. To be invited on this expedition is a great honor. To be a good companion in such a journey is worthy of pride. This is not something you do to fill your belly, but to be part of the accomplishment. And this is why we train – not to seek perfection, but to have more to give.
There may be moments of delight, but these journeys are an excruciating exercise in knowing everyone’s limits, including your own, while doing your best.
Tango accelerates the process of relationship: connect – thrill – hope – knowing – disappointment – grace.
The challenge is to continue to bring our whole capacity to the final stage, not to reduce ourselves to the level of the partner, nor to carry them along, but to inspire them beyond their limits. This is a part of a dancer’s talent, and part of tango’s grace, to demand that we do not dance our virtuosity alone, nor that we give up our accomplishments to the others’ limitations, but that we make a new dance with each partner.
