Distance: What have you learned about tango by not dancing?
In this Distance from milongas, I dance alone with the ocean. What are you doing and how are you feeling about tango, with the perspective of some Distance? I created a workbook to help us think about this.
Alarm
Some readers have responded to recent posts with alarm. They perceive a darkness. That’s because I decided to take a serious look at tango. While
Pain games
Is it my ochos? Is it my smile? My friends are skinnier and younger and more charming than me. Is it my dancing or my personality?
The Merry-go-round
I watch the milonga. What are we waiting for? An angel to fall from the ceiling into my lap. Because none of these mortals here
The strength of a Tanguera
This is a cycle we are all accustomed to. We tango dancers pride ourselves on managing our jealousy with strength, with retribution, with ritual games, with “codes” of etiquette.
We believe this strength and savvy calculus buys us something valuable and precious.
Buscamos – The Search
She imputes joy to my movement which is in fact the urgent beating of wings to fly aimlessly in a storm that never ends.
If tango were a videogame…
If tango were a video game…Level 1: Roses … You are invited to the Grand Ball, full of unknown delights. You are having such fun and you are grateful!
Level 2…
Black Magic White Tango
I believe that there is a black tango and a white tango, like black magic and white magic. If we recognize that tango is a powerful thing, then we realize we can use it for selfish purposes or generous ones. We can realize people who are using it in different ways. Tango is not this or that. Tango is power, and a practice for relating to other people. You wield it.
Fairy dust
Femininity is always a fantasy. There is no lasting escape from our strength and men’s frailty. (There are other ways to understand it, but these moments are also rare.) The respite and pleasure you receive from tango is a precious gift, a facet, a moment of “altered perception”, and an addictive drug. Like every drug, like every addiction, it is not reality, it is damaging, and you will come down. To get real with this retrograde gender activity you’ve got yourself hooked in to, you need to decide that you are not going to suffer. And there are other ways than leaving the milonga when there are too many women.To stop suffering the absence of fantasy-ecstasy-femininity requires that you accept all of who you are.
Better than Sex
When Argentine Tango is good –when the partners are able to maintain a sublime level of connection, moving as one– it is absolutely rapturous.
How to be a Good Man, as you become an Advanced Tanguero
Congratulations! After years of hard work, you are now mastering this dance! You can make girls feel really good and happy. Girls are starting to
The Hug to Break a Thousand Hearts
This was posted in February 2016 to the Milonga Popular/Tango Kollektiv Facebook Discussion group as part of a conversation about seduction in that milonga. (deutsche
Code of Ethics for Tango Communities
A code of ethics has three parts, the preamble which gives it context, the fundamental moral principles, and standards of conduct.
Emotions on the dance floor
Muscle control is just the entry ticket to the party. We still have choices to make about how to interact, what parts of ourselves to share, and how deeply we seek to connect.
Medical report: Tango alleviates symptoms of depression
In the last few years, health and medicine journalists have seized on the idea that dancing is good for you, not only physically, but emotionally.
Couples and tango partners
Somehow, in tango we are especially vulnerable to criticism. Perhaps it is because dancing tango means working at about 125% of not only our physical capacities, but our intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual ones as well. In what other moment of our life is so much of ourselves on the line?
How do dancers manage the intimacy of tango? (the codigos)
The codigos of tango are a set of “codes” that make some structure around the intimacy of tango.
