A gift

Yes, I still like to dance.  But not often because one wants a compatible partner. In the guiding role, it is not so much now that I want to dance, it's that I want to explore and for that you need a practica with willing, likeable, compatible, non-didactic, non-forceful people that you choose to learn from, who have a similar mindset and who are available at the same time.  This happens almost never! And I also want the right conditions: the right kind of hosting, the right music, volume etc.   Apart from which, practicas are usually either overly pedagogic (more on the Continent) or milongas by another name (everywhere) - sometimes with very good dancing and sometimes not. If you know of a good one, do say.

So I chat and dance a little. And that is what I was doing, chatting about 'profiles' about my companion's difficult, relatable experiences in the milongas, trying to ease her trouble because there are many women who sit in the milongas, who sit, unhappily, hiding their trouble.  So one tries to lighten that burden with perspective or just company.

The tanda came to an end. Two women stood in front of our table, during the cortina which is rare in Scotland and annoys me so vertiginously I might normally have hidden that seething lava and politely asked them if they would mind moving a touch.  But instead I indicated to the new woman this height of bad manners.  

What's wrong? she said.

Well, we can't see, for invitation, can we?, I muttered, crossly.

Ah!  No...

At that moment, without, I think, I hope, hearing, the women realised they should move and did.  This realisation dawns much less at some some supposedly polite milongas in the south of England. 

A man close by looked our way.  Hissing Look! to my companion I glanced away so that she might be invited but she missed him.  

Where? she said.  

He was right there! I said, amused. Two metres away! 

We were in a busy corner.  But when you are fearful your subconscious often doesn't let you see.

In this flux of emotions, I was waiting for the cortina to end so that, if she was not invited, we might fall back into chat when a slight, tanned man appeared, unmistakably but not disconcertingly close to our table. He smiled, quietly in invitation. 

I found myself charmed. 

You fool! I said to myself.  I had the seen him, a visitor, dance, a little. He seemed OK, maybe good.  I had recently pointed him out to my companion. But I had not been paying the kind of close attention I would have if I was sussing someone out to dance.  Visitors usually go for the girls in dresses and heels on the edge of their seat and I was fine, I was already having a nice time. And why would a visitor in a milonga that regularly pulls in about 80-100 people choose a tall, not young, trouser-wearing woman who doesn't dance much and that he would only have seen in the guiding role? As this didn't occur to me until much later I never did ask. 

I can remember another memorable dance from ten years ago in which just the same had happened: an eventual falling into unconscious chat then being drawn from that by a focused gaze on the one hand and an unconscious glance upwards on the other. 

Rising, this time with trepidation, I realised I had been caught and did not know what was coming my way. Experience says 98% of these experiences are somewhere between poor and unbearable. 

But if you are caught and you have accepted, manners must carry the day and one can only continue with good grace until something happens: he pushes you, forces you, alarms you, treads on your toes and then everything is up for renegotiation, which is to say, you can leave although one might try first to indicate "no" with the body and with space [The use of force].  From his accent in his first few words  I wondered if he was Scandinavian. Then I realised where he was in fact from.  Yes, he said, surprised. 

Some Italians and some Argentinians have a particular genius for their sense of a woman.   It is the way they hold you, the way they move you, they way they support your back, your movement and in that, support everything else, that is not tangible. You feel profoundly safe with such men and our drive for safety in life must be one of the most essential. Many things can happen that can only happen when you feel safe. I don't know how these men learn to create this feeling of being safe, treasured, almost, for those minutes, but I find it rarely outside these two nationalities. 

Update 3.7.24: An Italian woman I met was from the same city as this man. She told me that in the tango school she attended, which was not a particularly famous one, the men are taught how to hold women this way and how to change the embrace. She confirmed the teachers were Italian. She said they spend three months learning to walk.   

The tanda was D'Agostino which is an orchestra that particularly needs gentleness, subtlety, sensitivity, finesse. His eyes crinkled in a smile against my cheek as we embraced.  Is there any nicer feeling, than to be appreciated, enjoyed, a source of pleasure?  He began, in no rush, by not doing very much at all. He moved me, very slightly, from side to side, seeing how I responded.  That is how what was left of the first track ended. 

Words in dances like this, with someone with whom you have a special kind of connection, simply fall away. Not just in the dance, but in trying to describe it.  

Because I dance so rarely guided, let alone with men who dance so well, I am out of practice.  There was also the limiting factor of being afraid of damaging my knee.  Embarrassment and worry shouldered their way between us like jealous children of the ego.  But men like this are understanding, patient, kind, unpatronising, accommodating. They calm and defuse.  

When frustration and its siblings crowd in, the only thing you can do is acknowledge them, bid them stay, if they must, whereupon they quieten down. If the person accepts you as you are, then you can only accept yourself. Conversely if you accept yourself you give space and permission for the other person to accept you.  Because it is odd how much we can self sabotage, we do not allow people, even though they are willing, to see us, to accept us.  

As I told my new and struggling friend sitting on the side, I still struggle with the invitation by look, twelve years on.  I realise now I allow people I am happy to dance with to see me, but don't let myself see or be seen by the people I really want to dance with.  If you won't risk rejection, it is ego (pride) or insecurity. Ego is really a barrier caused by fear and insecurity, is a sense you are not good enough.  And the question to ask there, is For whom? 

You can sense when people accept you.  There are guys, even good dancers, in a way, who test you, who assess you. This isn't acceptance. There are plenty of guys who lecture, harangue or criticise you though I don't come into contact with them much and if I do, the relationship ends forthwith. 

But when someone accepts you, you feel understood, you feel gratitude and peace and compassion.  Things can grow between you in that soil and even radiate outwards. We don't have a word in English that encompasses these feelings.  Maybe in other languages they are ubuntu, agape, metta, old English frith. 

From this, grows confidence in oneself, in the other, in the shared movement.  And though not all will go perfectly, those moments are opportunities to repeat the cycle of feelings, different each time, with their own nuance. Gradually, as you discover one another, you realise what works best, what might be possible, what is possible and so you explore and discover and it is a kind of magic.

The track ended and I looked at him with absolute wonder. He looked back calmly, I think happy.  He mentioned music, how that is all there is, all you need. Later, he said how music is like the movement of water in the sea.  

Like a wave, I said. 

Yes. 

With wonderful serendipity, el dominicano would later say, that same evening, how music, or maybe he said dance, is like the movement of wind in the trees.  

It is very hard to express the feelings one has after such a dance, or what has happened, but it is like a gift, from the partner or from you, or between you, or perhaps from the world.  It is something beautiful. Maybe it is all of this. Maybe it is an exchange of something precious, not transactional, but free. You are left with a sense of awe. 

There is so much ego in the milongas you get used to not having expectations, or forgetting about them altogether.  It is such an effort, why would you want to be part of that? I don't want a struggle to dance, would rather pasar un momento musical o social.  There are much better experiences that way. 

This is what I was trying to pass on to the lady who wanted to dance but wasn't.  It wasn't put in these terms that night but if you engage in that struggle to dance you will pass many unhappy hours. If you do other things then you may or may not dance but you will have had other good experiences. 

I remember the ache and the longing to dance and the frustration of not being able to do so, of not being chosen to dance. It is a bittersweet feeling: the sweetness and the anhelo of the desire to dance and the amargura of it not coming to pass. Maybe that bittersweetness in itself is a bit addictive. But you let go of that when you realise there are other good things in the milonga.  That is an attitude of moderation and it is easier when you accept it.  If you tie yourself up in tight knots with the anxiety, the anguish of not dancing it cannot do your health any good. That is how a year or more can and regularly does pass, quietly, without rancour and with good times, between one great dance and the the next.  

And that is why when something so wonderful comes so unexpectedly your way, the lasting impression is of gratitude and great good fortune.