Dance by who they are

I believe some people don’t understand some of my actions. I have been fortunate to get dances from what are generally perceived to be (among US tangueros that is) top-notch followers. I am grateful for it, believe me, I am. And that is all good.

Most people expect me to be dancing much more with the best dancers from my city, namely, with the younger crowd that have worked really hard. They are – in all honesty – technically formidable to dance with. And I like dancing with them. Alas, not as much as they would like to. All this would be fine if this didn’t have any social backlash. However, as my fellow readers know, this is after all, first and foremost, a human affair. An interaction of sorts. I have never discussed these matters with anyone except my closest friends in tango world. They’re not that many and not very prone to talking it seems, as I still feel misunderstood by a lot of people.

What most people don’t get is that I don’t want to always dance with a great follower. I don’t always want to show her and myself how far we’ve come along in our tango journey, padding ourselves in the back and holding each other as if we were the answer to humanity’s tango (wait, what?) if a war were to kill every tango dancer in the world except us. What I want is to have meaningful dances with people that I believe are nurturing a mutual respect and passion at that precise moment, to dance that tanda. I want it to move us both forward, either in our friendship or in providing us a new insight into what tango is all about, or even, life.

I cannot repeat over and over on this blog how much I love dancing with people that are truly happy to be dancing. At all. Some have had so many misfortunes in their lives that they feel the luckiest person in the world to even be able to walk, let alone dance. You feel it. You feel that thirst for the dance and how meaningful and fulfilling it is to quench it with your heart, with your humanity. You better be at that precise moment the best human being you can be because the whole interaction is raw. The dance becomes raw and real; it may hurt and mutual trust reigns for lack of better way to handle the whole thing.

Javier Rodriguez says at a point in a interview for some tango movie/documentary I can’t remember now that dancing with an old milonguera is special. It’s not a simple dance. You’re really just not dancing with a friend casually, you’re dancing with “80kg of tango!” (free translation). And this is my message. Don’t just dance with someone’s technique. Dance with someone’s 20 years of sadness due to a lost son. Dance with someone celebrating their cancer survival every day of their life. Dance, dance a lot. But with them, for them and by who they truly are.