Doubt and kindness

It was two flights and over eight hours of travel from Perth to my hotel in Stuttgart for the milonga weekend in Tango Loft. I had slept poorly and arrived tired with a growling headache that had developed during the afternoon. With little opportunity to rest before the dance the worries surfaced easily as I got ready to go out: What was I doing here?

Was I going to be too unknown? I thought of Cambridge where on the Friday night my best dances had been with three guys I already knew. 

Was I too old ? I thought of Berlin where the good scene was mostly young, where I found out later a friend had been told by a regular dancer there that it is hard to break in there. Then I thought of the vivacious women bailarines I had seen in Buenos Aires, older than me by thirty years or more, popular for dance, looking fantastic.

Was I experienced enough? The advert had said the event was suitable for “experienced dancers”. Four years is not that experienced. But I had seen often that time can mean little in dance. What did this particular place mean by experience anyway? Taking classes? Doing as you are told? Practising “women’s technique” in a way I once heard described unforgettably as playing with herself? No particular slur intended to this woman.  I could have picked any of the splurge of these on YouTube. Did they mean experienced in looking the part, playing the games? Or experienced simply in response to different partners on the floor, to tango music you both know and love? 

Was my dance too poor? I remembered many lovely things men and women have said over time and recently and an evening of marvellous tanda after tanda at a milonga with a friend visiting from France not long ago - dance as it can be. I might feel stiff and out of practice but even so I did not think my dance so catastrophically awful that I would not dance at all.

The doubting self muscled in again insistently: but was I going to be too tall, were my clothes too unpresentable, was I too personally unembraceable?  Despite the misgivings I  did not think it wholly so.  I remembered a young guy and great dancer I had recently danced with several times and who had complimented the very dress I was going to wear that night. Another guy was to make another compliment on a different dress that weekend. 

In the milongas and in life I see time and again it is the kindnesses of people which can be the things of real value that shore us up when we need it.