Talking with a friend:

– I want to go into something new. Maybe tango?

– Well, that’s somewhat pederastic. Come on, maybe we should go to the sauna?

***

Men inhabit car service, boxing gym, or a pub. There are a few of them in the tango. Men are sentimental, they move through life knocking down pillars. Often with a lump in the throat.

Men inhabit car service, boxing gym, or a pub. There are a few of them in the tango. Men are sentimental, they move through life knocking down pillars. Often with a lump in the throat.

It is difficult for a “real man” to survive his incompetence at the beginning of training, and it is difficult to compete openly with other real men. And he is pathologically afraid of contact, especially with a living woman, especially in clothes.

Some men betray themselves and come to tango, often not realizing their motives. There is a certain psychological problem that needs to be resolved. It lifts the man from the couch, from the gym bench, from his sparring partner, and leads to the tango school. There the man will be disappointed.

It turns out that tango is not the dance of passion as in the movies. Where is the red carnation in the teeth and the rose in the.. ass, or where it should be?! Couples are stomping as penguins to a boring hissing retro music. Followers are much older than 17. There are beautiful ones, but so refined and inaccessible, scary to approach.

If a man stays in tango, he has a chance to become genuine, instead of “real”.

***

In tango, a man re-learns his role – leading. This role is insurmountably difficult for delicate boys. They lack confidence, responsibility, and brutality. This role is new and incomprehensible to the male head of the family, and even to the harsh foreman. They will have to understand with their bodies that leading has nothing to do with directing and that the one who leads is neither the main nor the most important. The leading role is also initially difficult for men who are aware of their physical strength: they are afraid to apply even a small part of it to a fragile woman (naive).

If you know the difference between leadership and directing, you just have to understand this difference with your body. Add to this an understanding and a sense of following – the role of a woman, and your understanding of leading will be more or less complete.

In order to lead, you need to learn how to spontaneously make a decision where and how we will move. Your decision must be clearly and unequivocally proposed. Wait for an answer, make sure that you are understood correctly and that the intended movement is convenient for your follower. Make sure that we do not interfere with the other couples. And finally, give the follower enough energy and as much of your masculine strength as she is willing to accept. And finish the movement so that the follower is in a convenient position, in a safe place, and at the same time looks beautiful. As a rule, somewhere in the middle of this complex process, the music ends and you can go home. And it is the same in real life.

Decisions must be made a few steps ahead, taking into account the movement of the surrounding couples. And music. This hissing retro nagging and monotonous tuts-tuts will soon become for you a multidimensional universe of shades of emotions and feelings previously unknown, it will acquire colors and even tastes, smells, and texture. You will live this music with your whole body.

***

By mastering leading, you will inevitably learn contact. The contact is studied by psychologists, psychotherapists, and philosophers, many volumes have been written about it. In tango, it is represented by a dynamic four-dimensional organic model – a dancing couple. And while reading Buber “I and You”, you will say to yourself: “Well done, you understand a lot, but you have not tried it with your body.”

***

Your understanding of sexuality will change. Tango is not sexual at first glance. Everything below the bra closure is a risk zone, everything below the waist is a taboo. If esoteric terminology is not alien to you, we can say that sexuality in tango is not at the level of Svadhisthana, but somewhere above – Manipura (leading) and Anahata (contact).

You will also learn that tango happens beyond sexuality and age. You can dance with a woman who suits you as a grandmother and, if you listen to her, you can join the wisdom and love that she has accumulated over her entire life. Or with a girl who could be your daughter. And leave with a piece of childishness, brightness, and immediacy of perception. You may learn that tango is also beyond sex.

Having realized all this at the level of the body, you will learn how to hug and touch in a different way. And not only in tango.

***

If you practiced martial arts, you will learn that tango requires even greater control, awareness, and accuracy of movements. They are simple, comfortable, and natural, but they are performed in a couple and to give pleasure to a woman, which is more difficult than just knocking out a man. If you’re lucky, in a few years you will learn to stand, step, and turn.

***

You will have many women in tango. Not the way you are used to.

They will be your practice partners with whom you will learn to accept your own incompetence, clumsiness, flood them with your sweat and trample on their feet, be annoyed and annoying. Уou will take the first confident steps with them, and find out what an overdose of dopamine and oxytocin is. They will be dear to you, and you – to them. Not the way you are used to.

There will be unfamiliar, wonderful experienced followers at the milongas. In front of them, you’ll feel shy and excited to trembling. Over time, they will want to dance with you. And then you have to pin down your self-esteem with a concrete slab.

If you listen to these women, especially to their non-verbal messages, they will teach you a lot. Not only how to “feel the woman”, but also how to wash shirts with odorless powder, use less perfume, combine decisiveness with delicacy. And if you give them freedom, they will make you a macho man with the manner of the English lord. Resist!.

Soon you will start noticing that tango has many parallels with “ordinary real” life outside the dance floor. There is also leading and following, there is also contact, male and female roles. Gradually, you will integrate what you learned in tango, transfer it into the relationship, into communication, into any social interactions. Tango will change you, you will change your life.

***

In tango, you will meet many lively, beautiful, interesting people. Tango is more than a dance, and it does not exist as something static and mummified somewhere in Buenos Aires. There is no academy that establishes what is right. Tango is created by people who dance it. They develop dance, enrich traditions, and bring new content, create those special relationships and the atmosphere inherent only in tango. Everywhere, in our city, all over the world. They are the tango. You can become one of them who create tango, which is more than a dance. In your and someone’s life.

c)
Igor Zabuta, izabuta.com; 
Emma Kologrivova, kologrivova.com;
dancing psychotherapists

P.S. The original text is in Russian. Please contact us if you can improve this translation.

More tango essays in Russian: tango-therapy.com.ua/wp/