A Beauty of an Argentine Tango

I just came back from my private dance lesson Denis Labelle, where the Argentine Tango is my favorite thing to do. But after watching this tonight, I decided to just let the memory of it linger…and do the Bolero instead. However did you find it? I comb YouTube for different tangos…this one eluded me…

My pleasure Bodhipaksa. But I tip my hat to Denis Labelle for sharing with me first. The thing about the Argentine Tango is that I believe one has to be introduced to it by another person who loves it. Then you’re hooked by its beauty, its endless mysteries, the music, the complexity and simplicity of the movement, the dancers, the whole thing of it. So now we’ve ensnared another in our web and I’m happy for it.

Denis Labelle and Bodhipaksa indeed – the dukkha in dance. I have felt similar attachments to different dance partners, interestingly for me the attachment is the most profound with the Tango, and, I would say, my own attachment to the Tango is the most profound of any of the dances.

Yes, dukka is pervasive, and it’s all too easy to get attached to ‘doing it right,’ or looking ‘beautiful’ while doing it, or ‘using’ the dance as as surrogate means of connectedness or even a replacement for it or any of a number of other things. I see many dancers do this…they constantly looking for the ‘Tango’ in life, can’t find it, and spend all available free time with the Milonga group.

On the other hand, there are so many things one gets out of it – the creation of beauty and loving-kindness – but also understandings about relating to a partner, following and leading, improvisation, trust, self-expression and allowing a partner to do the same, the list goes on.

And then there are the many things who watch and appreciate the Tango get, which is another thing entirely and its own version of – creating beauty and loving-kindness.

Bodhipaksa it’s never too late. Some of the most exquisitely tuned Tango dancers are older. There is a movie out called Our Last Tango about Carlos Copez (my own teacher’s mentor) and his wife and partner Maria Nieves Rego. Watch for it. I think it is in wider release in Europe than in the States.

I second your suggestion to Denis Wallez Denis Labelle. I didn’t know Astor had a limp. Lessened by the Tango? Disguised by the Tango? Hidden by the Tango? Soothed by the Tango? None of the above?

There ought to be a movie about this particular composer’s life Denis Labelle. I begged the producers of Our Last Tango for a DVD…but was not successful…I will have to wait wait wait wait wait. Ah…but perhaps that is a Tango lesson itself, isn’t it? 😉

Off topic – Parles-tu francais, Denis Wallez ? 🙂

Rhone wine + tango = paradise

Bravo for the beautiful Dharma House, Denis Wallez ( I am looking at your website)!

Bodhipaksa for reasons to numerous to list here I’m particularly interested in you have written. The simplest of my reasons (perhaps not so simple) is my interest in what it means to age, aside, of course, from the physical aspect of it, and aside (I think) from the assumed psychological/spiritual aspects of giving back, the wisdom…you know…that direction.

I am thinking of it the way I think of the particular beauty and grace in, for instance, tulips that would be considered past their prime, their beauty (when cut and in a vase of water). There is a moment when something extraordinary happens when they begin to droop, to lose their brilliant color. You can see the inevitable process toward total demise happening right in front of your eyes, but there is a moment when the bloom will also openly fully and relax and everything is revealed.

I can give you many example of this, but none, I think, more poignant than those found in nature.

I feel this way about dance. I began when I was 6, and it was all about prowess then. I left it for many many years after serious injuries caused by, Yes, prowess-issues, to practice Yoga. In these last ten years I have returned to dance, primarily ballroom. I don’t have to struggle with prowess issues anymore because, well, I cannot do and will never again be able to do what I once was capable of.

I would be lying to you if I were to say that I don’t miss it. I do. But what I am more interested in now is that full expression, the one I see in the dying tulip, the rose, the mandevilla bloom, that moment when everything can open up, to the sun, to the heart, to the partner, and you can find an expression of the movement that is beyond flexibility, musculature, physical tone or any of the other things we associate with dance and the beauty of dance (normally).

My own teacher introduced me to the few videos available of Juan Carlos Copez and I’m grateful. When I watch him dance, it is that expression I am speaking of.

Would it surprise you to learn that I feel writing is thus? The full expression of the dying flower???

Bodhipaksa I am indeed familiar with Wabi-Sabi. I have a book on it that I keep by my bedside. I first became familiar with it when I started designing fine jewelry and was (only) interested in manifesting what I was calling perfect imperfection. The concept of Wabi-Sabi gave me courage.

And it’s interesting you mention it here because I think it absolutely applies to dance, and specifically, to the ‘art’ inherent in the Argentine Tango particularly, because the American Tango and competition Tango do not come close, in my view.

I’m intrigued and smiling at your observation that as you get older you are more able to know what is right for you and your body and that it’s easier to experience physical pleasure. Yes. I feel that, too, which is something that has come as a welcome and wonderful surprise.

Unfortunately, I do not feel that the world that women live within and it’s enormous pressure to look forever young physically, allows for the discovery of what you are talking about. And, I would also say that the effort to fight against aging in certain purely physical ways makes it impossible to discover the beauty of dissolving into bliss (I love that, thank you).

My thoughts about all of this as a writer are vast and coming together for me in ways that result directly from a serious accident I had a couple of years ago, after which I think that for the first time in my life I allowed myself to fully explore and express all of the emotions, sensations, feelings surrounding the mystery of life and death. Yes, of course, still in a story telling sense, a narrative sense, but more, sometimes, just in the presentation of a thought, a poem, one line, a noticing of something.

When I was younger (and pre-accident) I would have felt bound to beat my noticings into the submission of some accepted ‘writing’ form. I no longer do, following the lead of a dying flower dissolving into bliss, each of them in the remain individual expressions of life and death.

If any of this makes any sense. It’s an entirely other and welcome conversation and I am grateful to you for showing up here.

You guessed right Bodhipaksa…I did indeed mean that focusing on the external makes it (more) difficult to focus on the internal. And I think women being drawn to a spiritual practice is the same as tending a vegetable garden, preparing dinner for her family, nurturing children, constructing, growing, creating.

As for your distant and hopefully future life partner, I understand her. When I am alone I don’t see my own blemishes. Because I never think about what I look like, or whether I’m pleasing to anyone. Never. That happens only in the company of others…men and women.

I mean, here we are on this medium dominated by being plussed and followed or blocked and ignored! 😉

Beautiful tango is a process of transference – your love for the music will be transferred to her, and she will be enchanted. I love my class. It is like being in a dream :) Giselle Minoli​

Elizabeth Millard I think dancers come to style/genre that suits them the same way artists find their medium, be it painting, sculpture, photography, installation art. There has to be a blending of the many voices within. I was introduced to Modern through my half-sister (much much older than me) who had studied dance at Bennington. There were all of these great women of the modern dance movement, Duncan, of course, then Graham and Ruth St. Denis and Hanya Holm and Doris Humphrey and one of them Elizabeth Waters migrated to UNM where she started the dance department and I studied with her starting when I was six. Then to ballet. But something serious was missing for me. I needed to speak, but it wasn’t being done in dance, to my knowledge, until much, much, later when Pina Bausch began to use words and dialogue in dance. But I had long before that left to act, direct and write. Years later I was introduced to certain dances, the Bolero, the Argentine Tango…and the words within the movement were suddenly there for me. All that was missing I found.

It’s an art form that has deep cultural roots. Like hip hop, which I also love. I don’t think Modern and Ballet come from that so much…and that is what I needed, wanted and missed.

You are a dancer. Once a dancer always a dancer. I believe that. Me too. It’s interior isn’t it? A silent language.

Thank YOU Giselle Minoli​. For sharing your love of the dance. I found it awe inspiring. We may have all found kindred spirits.

You are welcome Samantha Sanjeewanie. And I hope you do get the chance to learn dances from all over the world. What a great life-time project!