From Karate to Tango, or three reasons why tango dancing changed my life

We have heard a lot about Tango, either from movies: Raul Julia playing Gomez Adams dancing Tango with Morticia each time he feels imbued by love, Al Pacino overcoming his blindness and getting a dance from an estrange girl and Robert Duvall portraying an international hitman who falls in love with a tango dancer in Buenos Aires, or from some friend who loves the music of Piazzolla and worship him as a contemporary genius of music. No matter the way we have heard about it, the thing is, Tango is much more than we have heard or even seen. As a music, as a social dance or as a culture is much deeper than we think, is a world full of sensations and codes, and one-way ticket that once I took, through his secrets and his language, changed the course of my life forever.

Here I let you know three reasons why.

But first a little bit of background, lets talk a bit about passions, doubts, questions, callings and life

Some years ago, exactly ten, my life was drastically changing. I had just arrived from some travels and I was feeling a "calling" inside me telling me that something was not good with my life. In those days I was a sportsman, exactly a Karateka; in fact, it was the best moment of my career. After many years of hard work, I managed to be part of the official team of my country, and had had excellent results in my division which led me to be selected to live under the tutelage and guidance of the grandmaster of my karate style (a Japanese master who is one of the most famous figures in karate world's scene) under the figure of Uchideshi. All this in a context in which I had just came back from my first world championship in japan, my biggest dream at the moment. A young black belt athlete with a promising career ahead ...

Everything was going great, right?

Except it was not.

Those callings are strong and they don’t stop with time, obviously you can find a way to shut them up for a while. The thing is, they come back, and when they come back they have stronger and deeper roots in you.

Denial is refresh the demon...

Back in those days my life was all about karate. I started to train when I was 3 years old, and by the age of 19 I was making me serious questions about my future. I must mention I had serious intellectual and artistic curiosities, I loved music, and was trying to learn the guitar by that time, but a training routine of five hours per day didn´t allow me to grab the guitar for a long time. I also loved books but I wasn’t able to read for the same reason. All this derived in a serious shock between what I was doing at the moment and what I felt; in summary, I was feeling the calling of my passions.

And it was stronger than my sportsman life or my routine.

It was stronger than my fears.

In those days I wasted a lot of time feeling like a zombie between things that I have been doing all my life, and things I wanted to do. I used to go to training sessions feeling like one of those Walking Dead´s zombies and had this sensation of being in the wrong place all the time. I tried to talk with friends or family, but nobody understood what was happening with me. Answers I used to receive were things like; “it doesn’t matter bro, we all have those moments in our careers” or “you need vacations” and the famous “don’t worry, just don’t pay attention to that and keep working”. Inside me I knew it was something wrong, but I didn’t have the answer, I didn’t know exactly what to do.

Sometimes contradiction, in some point of our life, express at their maximum, creating chaos. If coincidence appears and decides to dance along with this chaos, following the beat of changes, estrange turns can happen. Without realize it, you are victim of this amazing dance between what you were and you want to be. This is how my history with tango started, as chaos, coincidence, changes and a huge need of express myself and tell about this inner process to the world.

In that moment in my life, in which I had a strong desire to change my path and my doubts were making air unbreathable an old friend made me an invitation. When she asked me to go with her to a tango lesson, my obvious first reaction was denial, and I politely answer her that tango wasn’t exactly my thing. After several rejected invitations in a couple of months, I realize that the assistance of beautiful women, specially a girl that really liked me those days, was something absolutely massive in those lessons so that I said yes to my friend. For this chance I picked up a good book and cup of coffee in order to do something productive until this lesson would finally end. My main goal was looking for a chance to meet that girl that liked me so much.

I didn’t have any idea about what was about to happen.

I started to read when the lesson began, but that didn’t last, instead, something woke up inside me. In the first fifteen minutes I was absolutely attracted for what I was seeing, not only seeing but feeling. They were many things: the music, how close they hug each other, the way they moved and how they were almost crossing their breaths while dancing. To me all this was so real, passionate, new and honest. My eyes went directly to one couple, she was with her eyes shut and he was with his eyes semi opened like if he were in some trance; nevertheless, they were both feeling the music and embracing the other with each atom of their humanities. In that very moment, in that very second, I knew it…I had found my answer.

That very day I started my first lesson (which I did in socks because I didn't have proper shoes)

Since my first lessons to the day, ten years have passed. I have been thinking so much and making me questions about what were the elements that made me find my answers in tango dancing, what is the magic inside all this? why is tango dancing so different? I have many students and fellow milongueros (tango dancers) that have been in the same path than me, looking for answers after a huge contradiction started to appear in their lives. So, after ten years of non-stop dancing, studying, taking notes and digging deep in this culture, here my fellow steemers I let you know three reasons that I believe could help you to understand better, as humans, as artists, as dancers or as readers what is so special about tango dancing.

First reason, The embrace!

I have found many things that are special about tango, things that make this dance unique and special, but the embrace is one aspect that changed the way I feel forever. Tango is danced with a very close embrace, so close that you can’t see your partners feet, but one thing you can do is feel, feel her respiration, the light touch between the cheeks, the way of her back´s muscles moves, the temperature of her skin, the rhythm of the heart in the chest of your companion, the embrace is the portal to a whole new world of sensations.

For a 19 years old young man who is looking for answers this was and interdimensional travel.

For a person with a huge need for express himself this was a bomb of mass creation.

Tango dancing gives you the chance to be one with other person while dancing, the chance to disconnect from the world for a few songs, allowing you to create with your partner moves that have deep roots in the way you feel. Amazing thing is, the main source of all this is the embrace. This element of tango, and the sensations it creates, changed my life since day one; it was the one thing that showed me how to be one with someone else.

Tango taught me to trust in what I’m feeling not in what I’m seeing.

It gave me the chance, after many years, to be myself through embrace other person.

Second reason, The music!

When I discovered tango, I was first hooked up by the physical aspect of it, the fact that I could use abilities acquired through years of karate training to express my feelings was a shock for me. Back in that first year of learning, movement was my number one concern, and everything else was accessory. Those days I was learning with a teacher who focused mainly in expression while dancing, in the ability to say with the body those things that are difficult to say with words. Because all this and the fact that I didn’t have any rhymical ear, the music I was dancing was just a beat that sometimes I followed or not depending of my mood at the moment.

But after sometime digging deeper in this dance I had an unexpected discovery, I found out something called music. In some point of that first year I started to learn from a teacher, who at the moment, was national tango champion in my country, top ten in world championship of that year and a super cool guy. I went to his lesson and my mind was totally prepared for learn new movements or a magical recipe to dance tango like him, instead of that, he put some music in the stereo and told me “please walk along with the beat” I can’t tell you how bad I felt when I realized I was unable to hear the beat that I didn’t have any rhymical ear; in fact, I wasn’t dancing because I wasn’t following the music. It that very moment I started, for the first time, to be aware about something called MUSIC.

After many years, a strong addiction for tango dancing and many hours of hearing, I can tell you, the things that you start to hear in the music are just something else: the lyrics, the subtle nuances in the voices, the tone dense and expressive of the bandoneon, the sudden stops, the subtle changes in tempo. Such elements create sensations and evoke feelings, and the beautiful thing is, you can turn all this into movements.

Tango taught me that a dancer moves because he is hearing. To me this was like discover a new galaxy and it turned me into a different person. A person who listen not just the music but the bodies moving, a person who tries to hear before talk, it opened me the door to understand better with other people in dancing and non-dancing situations. Tango taught me to dance along with what I’m listening.

Is not about do, is about hear and feel…

Is freedom………

Third reason, The non-thinking!

“Rafael when you dance, you don’t think”

Used to tell me all the time one of my favorite tango dancer and masters …

To me, as a very “rational minded” person, this was just impossible. I was obsessed with learn this dance from the perspective of learning steps and sequences of steps, using the rational thinking to find solutions to my difficulties while danced. The thing is, I was forgetting something call “feeling”, this little item is what makes you follow your instincts not your reason in order to be able to improvise.

Improvisation is something that we have to deal with in many different aspects of our life. Our ability to adapt to the context and solve unexpected situations says a lot of our flexibility as person and our understanding of reality. It could happen in any situation; talking with friends, walking on the street, solving problems in our job, in a middle of a trip in some new place, improvisation is always there, is not different in tango dancing; in fact, tango dancing is all about improvisation.

Your ability to improvise in the dance floor defines you as a dancer. Tango, as a social dance, is not about sets of steps that u have to repeat in certain order, is about your ability to create a flux without form in the dance floor. Because of this tango is far from being a logical succession of steps, and is more about those instinctively, non-rational feelings that find their expression in a couple using a common language.
Is like Jimi Hendrix playing a guitar solo. He wasn’t thinking in chords, scales or arpeggios, he was feeling, and translating those feelings into music using his guitar. A language, a format, a bunch of feelings and an instrument to express them, are fundamental tools for the artist. They make possible improvisation, in the form of guitar solos or in the form of a couple dancing tango. And in this process, there is always the state of non-thinking, that fundamental part of improvisation.

This lead us to the fact that a dancer is not thinking, is feeling; in fact, thinking is one of the worst mistakes in dancing, no matter your experience, level or knowledge. A dancer never thinks, he feels and those feeling are the raw material of improvisation.

I have felt this in my own flesh. I have experienced moments in which, at the end of a song when I break the embrace with my partner, I can’t remember what I did during that song, or how I moved even what were my feelings at that moment, is like wake up from trance state. In those moments, I have the sensation of break the rules of time, the song just lasted 3 minutes but I feel I have been dancing for so long. I think that this state of abstraction is what my master was trying to teach me when he told me

“Rafael when you dance you don’t think”.

Have this chance to cross the door of rationality and be free from thoughts, the chance to exist beyond time, opened to me a whole world of possibilities.

To the day I don’t want to come back from this travel through tango

Indeed, I want to go deeper, lose myself even more in this dance, lose myself in the music, the embrace, in the non-thinking….

Such are the powers of tango, such is this experience of self-knowledge.

If after this post you go to take a lesson, or you collect your courage to visit a milonga and experience some real tango, remember my warning, is a one-way ticket to know yourself better.

A big tango hug for your steemers !!!