In spite of the amazing diversity of people bitten by the tango bug, reading the scores of blogs about their experiences reveals something interesting. While each individual's journey has it's own flavor, with assorted twists and turns, we all basically appear to experience the same three phases.
1. Obsession
Rather self-explanatory... Our lives are transformed into a breathing, eating, dreaming muchness of tango. The lists describing the signs we are "tango junkies" abound all over cyberspace: entire wardrobes are donated to charity to make way for attire that can double for tango-wear; we no longer buy shoes that cannot also be used to dance (because you never know when they're going to play a tango in the parking lot); on the street, we watch the feet of approaching strangers - in case they might be potential tango partners and we can break out into spontaneous dance (since we're already wearing appropriate clothes and shoes and listening to Tango on our iPods); shopping carts become tango partners; we change directions with an enrosque; we turn into proselytizers and blithely abandon non-tango friends.
We all believe Tango can help achieve world peace.
This obsession phase can last from a couple of years to a lifetime. The lifers make EVERY life decision - work, play, mates, home town - with Tango as their main consideration. The fear of those in this phase is that this exhilarating, breathless, life-affirming feeling will disappear if we blink or turn away from Tango to do anything else - like work.
2. Disenchantment
Just when the world couldn't get any better, it takes a sudden, very unexpected nosedive into disenchantment, which most often coincides with Returning From Our First Trip to Buenos Aires (although it can also happen just before we decide to go to BA). This phase is just as intense as Obsession, but mercifully, doesn't last nearly as long. However, it can be so depressing that some cannot survive it and leave Tango. Sometimes for good.
During this phase, we believe we have arrived at a knowledgeable level of tango, having dominated the hand/eye/foot/ear coordination, matters of axis and musicality, great feet, and perfect posture.
And nobody else has.
Ok. Maybe just that one person who never looks at us anyway. There isn't even anyone worth watching (except perhaps that same person - and they're always dancing with someone not nearly as good as us). The connection that originally seduced us has gone on hiatus. The DJs have not blippin' clue what constitutes danceable music. We've been to Buenos Aires and are now seriously considering moving there because it is the ONLY place that ANYONE knows how to dance.
3. Contentment
If we are fortunate enough to traverse the Gloom of Disenchantment, we may arrive at the peace of Contentment. This phase is characterized by an understanding and an acceptance that Tango is a deeply personal thing which will never be experienced the same way by two people. And this understanding allows us to be more generous about the way others dance. We discover the thing about Tango that nurtures us personally, and are able to extract it from almost every Tango encounter, making it possible to "connect" with more partners. We can forgive the sins of others, even if they are not brilliant, visiting, tango masters because we know they are not the only ones that can take us "there".
Tango ceases being an obsession, and becomes our sustenance.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
The Three Stages of Tango
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5 comments:
wow. 'achieve world peace' - exactly the words that i was looking for to describe that feel. so true. so true. evidently the stage for me is still obsession .. it feels so good :)
Johanna, thank you for a brilliant post! I will save it and re-read it often. I have traversed the three stages not once but multiple times. Your nutshell will be a handy reminder of where I am and where I am heading.
Anonymous - enjoy all your stages! Even Disenchantment, when you get over it, will make you appreciate Tango all the more. Maybe we should make "World Peace, One Embrace at a Time" t-shirts?
Gentimiento, you're welcome. You are absolutely right: one can go through these stages several times - back AND forth!
I should add that it is also possible to enter Disenchantment WITHOUT having gone to Buenos Aires.
Great post!! I'd add that I'm not sure that one necessarily has to evolve from one the stage to the other and stay there... but rather, can travel back and forth. As nothing is static in life, personal needs and what Tango means to us can change--first intensify and then lose importance, and viceversa--many times. I would say that this is most likely to happen between stages 1 and 2, but I feel that I have gone, sometimes, from 1 to 2 to 3, and then back to 1. :P
Another point is that, perhaps for the same reason, the disappointment is not always related to the difference between BAs and US tango. To me, the disappointment stages have been triggered by disenchantment with the "Tango people" more often than not. It has to do with the desire to belong to a community that we discover to be different to what we thought initially. Maybe because we connect through the dance, but it often takes longer to know the *person* we are dancing with... And sometimes, once we do, we don't like what we see. Luckily, the Tango world is very wide, that there is always space to find wonderful human beings with whom to connect at other levels.
Yes Tanguera! Like Gentimiento said, we do go through the stages more than once. In addition, I think we can skip around, not necessarily progress from one to the other in a linear fashion.
As for Disenchantment, I did not mean to imply it was produced exclusively by the way people dance. Absolutely, it can be induced by tango people, the encroachment of "new" and/or "different" styles than the one you fell in love with, etc. Disenchantment can befall for any number of reasons. But it still SUCKS being disenchanted with your obsession.
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