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I have been experimenting…

For the past few months, I have been trying to forget everything that I’ve learnt of how to dance tango. I’ve been trying to come to the embrace without thinking about how to dance: how to move, how to walk, how to turn…empty my mind.

When I could actually do that, without thinking about how to dance, the experience was great, memorable. Most of the time, I did what I did the best, I danced: walk, turn, pause, walk, turn… I felt uninspired.

Cecilia Garcia, of formerly Horacio and Cecilia, was in town. I used to be unimpressed by their performances. It was not my kind of tango. So I didn’t take their workshop when I attended Chicago tango festival last year. I didn’t even know who Cecilia was…until I saw her dancing in the milonga with Claudio Gonzalez and Pablo Villarraza. Wow…

Anyway, I took a private lesson with her. The essence of the class was how to use energy in the dance, so it matches the expanding and contracting energy of the music. After dancing three songs to three different orchestras: Di Sarli, D’Arienzo, Pugliese, I worked alone under her guidance. Listen to the music, through breathing, move my axis, connect to the ground, and find freedom by relaxing my body, my mind. As in meditation.

Then we embraced.

Don’t do anything, unless you feel you have to. And do anything that you feel you have to do. She said.

I didn’t take a single step, just changing my axis in place, embracing her and feeling her energy. At certain point, however short it was, I felt that our energy met… together grew and grew, expanded infinitely… it was magical!

What makes one dance? No… what makes me dance? I asked her, at the end of the class.

The music and your energy from music. Her answer was essentially the same as Pedro Sanchez’s.