Tango

Tango is meant to train the mind...indeed to bring it into contact with the ultimate reality.

When we are dancing, as soon as we reflect, deliberate and conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought interferes.

The dancer does not dance just to perform certain rhythmical movements of the body...the mind has to be first attuned to the unconscious.... this state of unconsciousness is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill.

But an ability whose origin is to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aim consists in achieving a spiritual goal, so that fundamentally the dancer aims at himself and may even succeed in finding himself.

It is necessary for the dancer to become, in spite of himself/herself, an unmoved center.

The dancer's experiences, his conquests and spiritual transformations, so long as they are still "his/her" must be conquered and transformed again and again until everything "his" is annihilated.

The dancer is a thinking being, but his great dances are done when he is not calculating and thinking...childlikeness has to be restored after long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness ... 

When this is attained, the dancer thinks yet he does not think...he thinks like the rain coming down from the sky...he thinks like the waves rolling on the ocean...he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens...he thinks like the green foliage shooting forth in the gentle spring breeze.

Tango becomes the search for art ... imagine that the floor is the artist's canvass...our body is the brush...the color comes from our soul.

Out of the fullness of this presence of mind, disturbed by no ulterior motives, the dancer who is released from all attachments must dance his art.

While doing Tango, I experienced and learnt:

Breathing exercises based on yoga

Psychological preparation utilizing concepts from Zen and Jung

Energy- Chi to be felt from your partner like in Tai Chi.

Variety of exercises with eyes closed for developing perfect equilibrium

Utilizing space and movement...each movement creates a specific color

Proper technique for walking .... proper embrace .... the magic of changing weight

Passes, figures

Proper conduct at the dance hall

For the dancer, this state in which nothing definite is thought, planned, striven for, desired for or expected, which aims in no particular direction and yet knows itself capable alike of the possible and the impossible so unswerving is its power – this state, which is at bottom purposeless and egoless, was called by the master "truly spiritual". It is in fact charged with spiritual awareness and is therefore also called "right presence of mind".

And now occurs the ultimate and supreme thing ... art becomes artless art ... tango a dance without a body.....the teacher becomes a student, the master a beginner ... the end becomes a beginning and the beginning a creation.

"Paint with the point of your foot; each step is a nuance,  the shades of the rainbow, equilibrium within ourselves, harmony through dancing with eyes closed" Truly, in just one evening I felt myself conquered by the magic of tango, which is passion! "We should dance with the whole soul, paint, create!" Beautiful! 

The dancer seeks not something external but internal, within himself...the movements, the figures, the passes are only a pretext for something which could even happen without them...they are a path to the goal, not the goal itself....they are only support for the final and decisive step.