Roles and relief

Back home, I enjoyed the wildflowers out of a packet the council had planted in the local park. They reminded me of the contact tango dance weekend: disparate strangers crammed together, all a bit contrived, not all natural bedfellows and yet don't they look good? Aren't they doing amazingly well together and for the wider environment: the insects, the people who enjoy them? Haven't they come together, unconsciously, to be more than the sum of their parts?

At Cacu’s workshops, more than anything it was such a relief to find someone else seeming to value the things I value, which are often not considered important or relevant to dancing tango, especially to learning to dance tango:

(from here)

I have only encountered similar ideas in queer tango or dual role tango groups, and then not to the same extent. I am sure it is because these dancers dance both roles. It seems to me that they are often better, in the sense of more sensitive, more aware of the partner, than conventional dancers.

I know next to nothing about tango-contact bar what I saw that day from people who were almost all new to one or both dances. Yet almost by definition it seems to transcend the idea of 'roles' and it is that transcendence I already love & espouse dancing tango. In my case that transcendence has less to do with gender; it is more that without predetermined roles dance becomes about response & exploration & presence, absolutely not about leader, follower & figures, words I have always resisted.