The art of Tango (and of letting go)

I had my first Argentinian Tango lesson last week and it blew my mind.  I’ve always loved to dance;  I love the feeling of fluid movement and the focus it takes for balance, control and strength to come together to form movement that (hopefully) appears effortless.  I’ve taken dance lessons in one form or another since I was 6.  At some point in my teens I think I lost the joy that, for me, is inherent in dance due to dancing for competition’s sake rather than dancing for dancing’s sake.  Thankfully, I’ve rediscovered that joy as an adult.  It doesn’t matter anymore if I’m better or worse than anyone else, dance is my body’s expression of true joy, my personal bubble of happiness.

So why Argentinian Tango?  Latin dance has both intrigued and confronted me – its earthiness, rawness and sensuality suggest that to be comfortable doing the dance is to be comfortable with who you are.  Perhaps that’s why it makes sense to me at this point in my life – I’m confident in the person I am and how I look, attributes that often come with age and life experience.  In any case, Argentinian Tango isn’t the ballroom Tango you may be thinking of, it’s a social dance and is less locked up and structured than its ballroom counterpart – it’s what real people dance when they dance Tango (or so say the experts!).  It’s also best described as flirty or coquettish, it’s a subtle advance and retreat, much like a new relationship.

My initial hurdles were all technical – posture and feet and arm positioning.  Once that’s sorted, most of the challenge is in your head.  My instructor Rosemary wasn’t wrong when she said Argentinian Tango is as much for the mind as it is for the body.

The biggest challenge for me, and I suspect for a lot of women, is the almost total surrender of control.  Yes, you have a choice as to whether you allow yourself to be led in a particular direction (resisting the man’s attempt to lead you is called bricking or blocking) but as a general rule the men lead and the women follow.  This means you’re often travelling backwards, and so can’t see where you’re going and you don’t know what step you’re doing until your partner begins the dance (and you succumb to his lead and direction).

The dance finds its fluidity when you listen to your partner’s body language and, for the most part, let him chart the course.  For an independent woman used to doing almost everything for herself, this is easier in theory than practice!  

The only way I could move fluidly and with purpose was when I abandoned my need to see and move in a forward direction, to know exactly where I was going and let someone else tell me where to go.  All things completely contrary to the way I generally live my life which of course got me thinking….

I’ve tried to control my life’s direction, in fact have been so desperate to find some direction over the last few years that it was both challenging and empowering to relinquish control and let someone else make the decisions for a change.  The times in life when I’ve planned and directed things to the nth degree haven’t always worked out whereas the times when I’ve allowed myself to drift along and have reacted to unexpected changes as they occurred, rather than trying to anticipate every single variable, have been the times I’ve learned the most about myself. 

I’m also not good at allowing myself to need other people – my general philosophy has always been that if I’m capable of doing something for myself then I’ll just get it done.  It’s not an attempt to prove anything to anyone, it’s simply my independent and practical nature - I can, therefore I do.  But as much as I’m capable, I also realise it’s really nice to be needed and it’s nice to let someone else make decisions sometimes (even ones that affect you).  This doesn’t have to mean completely ceding control but there’s an intense freedom in not knowing what’s coming next and not feeling the need to plan for every possible eventuality.  So as well as learning to live more in the moment, I’m using Tango to let go and just let life happen while I enjoy the potential excitement of the unknown.