A friend: I can often tell how long someone has been dancing from how strong and dogmatic their opinions about tango are. Its always like that, right? The less experienced dancers want certainties, it makes them feel more secure. And the longer you dance, the more open you become to a wider range of possibilities. I wouldnt say this was universally true, but pretty damn close to it. And it applies to all kinds of things: from what embrace you think is the correct one to what techniques are better, to how good or otherwise performances are, to what people must be feeling when they dance in a certain way. The longer you dance, the less you believe that there is one correct way of doing things. This is inevitable because most of us find ourselves changing our minds on these issues a number of times and hearing excellent teachers speak equally convincingly on opposite sides of a question or realising that two equally wonderful dancers have diametrically different approaches and techniques. It gets harder to believe you are infallibly right about things once you have changed your opinion a few times. And, perhaps, what also happens is this: it becomes more deeply personal. A particular technique or a way of walking, an embrace or an attitude towards how to express the music or a feeling about follower decorations stops being how everyone should I dance and becomes, instead how *I* dance *my* tango. And even that stops being one fixed way and becomes, instead, a process of development, of experiment and of exploration. This has happened even to me. My views are in constant flux, though I am fiercely committed to an ever dwindling number of principles. As newcomers to tango, many of us regard its different branches as different religions and those who worship at alternative shrines as heretics or apostates. But, as we get to know it more, we realise that its a polytheism. Different tango gods have their worshippers, their cults. We choose who to address our prayers to. But its all one pantheon.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 15:46:06 +0000
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