” I honestly don’t think that you are worthy of dancing with.”

(in his slightly annoying British accent)
(from an imaginary TV scene after overloaded with X Factor and 18 year old single malt.)

In between the songs, We remained embraced. Magnetically.

The frantic circus of festival milonga disappeared. Magically.

The only awareness I had was the softness of her embrace, as if I were in the cotton field.

…

She is now gone for a tango tour in other countries.

Several days after…

The warmth of her embrace, however, is still lingering in my dreams.

Here is an excerpt from the interview that I like to share:

Q. You dance with pauses, whereas many kids of your age don’t do that.
S.

It has to do with what we were saying before about introspection. It’s when you know that what you’re doing has an expressive purpose and comes from a feeling, you pause to seek that feeling and from that feeling comes the movement. But when one believes that it’s only movement, then one isn’t bothered about seeking what it is that it provokes, lo hace de manera intelectual. Yo no les creo a los phibes hoy!

He is touring in the US this month: this week in San Francisco. Next week in Baltimore.

Here is a recent performance of him and Mariana that I like very much, to a song that I love: Fresedo con Ricardo Ruiz “Buscándote” 1941

I had a conversation with an acquaintance right after I got back from Baires. We discussed the different attitudes about tango from different cultures: western European, eastern European, Russian, Asian, Northern American…. He made an interesting comment:

All these people (from this city where he lives) go to BsAs and they embrace differently. They embrace like everyone embracing down there (more or less).  But once they return home, they go back to the old way: distant, courteous and even cold. And that is pretty F%^&ed up.

I had to admit that he had his point.

… I remember we were talking, then we embraced each other and in that moment I felt 40 years of tango. In the embrace, do you understand? We hadn’t taken a single step! It was simply from the way in which you held me. For me that was the most powerful moment of the tanda. The we danced for a long time. It was great, we did all sort of things. I enjoyed myself. But the moment of that embrace, like the one of my first class and some others, have marked me in regards to my relationship with the dance. I’m talking about the intimacy of the embrace. With very few people have I been able to feel the same way, much has been lost. My wish for the dance of tango, then, is that the shared intensity returns, in the soul. Not to stay in the surface, but to feel it inside. That the genre evolves from that intimacy. The essence of tango is in the embrace and the person you are dancing with.

Coincidentally, I wrote a post not long ago about my own similar discovery. Tango is internal. As the subtitle of this blog, in my mind as always, tango is a feeling in the embrace, the music and the sound of breaths. Simple.