Tango Is a Relationship

Tango is an intimate dance. It allows your partner to touch your body, enjoy your snug embrace, gentle obedience, attentive leading, accommodating following, and loving protection. It also allows your partner to access and listen to the inner voice of you. In fact, your partner can learn a lot about you by dancing with you. How you connect, move, communicate, respond and adapt tells a lot about the somatic, psychological, ethical, artistic and aesthetic qualities in you. The way you dance unreservedly reveals who you are: friendly or aloof, shy or oppen, emotional or impassive, spontaneous or rigid, musical or unmusical, sensitive or sluggish, calm or irascible, agreeable or disagreeable, coordinated or clumsy, yielding or demanding... all are exposed in the dance.

Tango is a relationship. Like any relationship wherein the well-being of the involved individuals are related and interdependent, you have to be and do your best in order to bring out the best of your partner. In tango, as in any relationship, your ego is your worst enemy. It’s the ego that makes you self-centered, arrogant, controlling, inflexible, irascible, rude and counteractive. Tango is fully enjoyed only when the two partners act as one in complete agreement and harmony. You need to let go your ego, surrender yourself to your partner, listen to their inner voice, follow their intention, accommodate yourself to them, tacitly complement them to bring out their strength and make up their weakness, and let them feel totally comfortable and enjoy dancing with you. If you only focus on yourself and neglect your partner, you will fail the dance even if you can do all the fancy steps in the world. After all, tango is a social act that requires good manners. Learning tango is much more than learning steps. It is, alongside other things such as acquiring a taste, a new set of values, and a different culture, learning to be one with another person. Unfortunately, this very important perspective is often being neglected.