Now we will show you - two sweaters!

For those who really enjoy our posts in the "Irene and Man Yung are too busy to write anything proper and will therefore exhibit knitted goods" series, here's another one - replete with tango action figures and hardcore fair isle knitting!

Two sweaters!  Ta da!

I finished Coca's Westerwick Cardigan about a month ago, had a load of yarn left over and started Man Yung's vest with the same colour pattern.  I finished Man Yung's vest only five days before our flight to Buenos Aires - it was such a rush I didn't even have time to block the sweater.

Was Osvaldo jealous?  No, in fact - I don't think you could pay him to wear a pink multi-coloured sweater.  "How about one in orange - or yellow?" I asked.  Osvaldo stared at me in fright.  "No! No!  Brown, Navy and Burgundy only!"

Old Friends

We were enjoying Martha and Manolo's delicious asado at their pretty little white house in the barrio of Jose Ingeniero when the conversation turned to steps.  Whenever Man Yung is around Manolo, that's where the conversation always leads - no matter whether we are at having dinner at their house, resting in between classes at the Camicando festival, or walking to our car after having buffet at the Mandarin!    Man Yung always wants to learn more from Manolo's own personal style of Milonga and Tango Salon of the 50's, as well as the distinctive styles of dancers who have passed on into history like Manolo's best friends Juan Bruno and Rodolfo Cieri. Manolo is a living encyclopedia of tango.

So there they were, gesturing away and pointing here and there to locations on the floor where they could put their feet (Don't ask me, the only things I know how to do is translate or follow) when they came across a complex series of corriditas.  Manolo's face lighted up.  "It reminds me... this is a lovely corridita to do - I always do this when I dance to Milonga Brava!"

Man Yung has encountered this phenomenon too.  Whenever we are dancing to a tango that we have a particularly strong feeling for, I get this sense of deja vu - because Man Yung is doing the same things that he always does for the same tango/vals/milonga, to the same phrase or accent in the music!  It's like he is hypnotized - or perhaps the music is telling him to do this?

In Tango, sometimes the music, the body, the mind and the soul merges.  It's the memories and associations we have that makes tango like a time machine, carrying us back to the scents, sights, sounds and emotions we had the first time - or the hundredth time - we had danced to the music.

That's why the porteños could keep on at it, dancing and performing to the same beautiful nostalgic melodies for half a century, or more.  The more we dance to our favourite tangos, the richer the feeling becomes, and the greater the pleasure.  Volver...they say.  Tango is an old friend, who understands us and knows our secrets and desires.  It's there for us to come back to, to become again as we once were. The people we have loved, the places that we have lost, the times that have gone by - magically appear again to us in the embrace.

Why wouldn't we want to return?  Why should we always be on the hunt for the trendy and new, reinvent ourselves, and bid goodbye to everything that made us who we are?  There's something that Martha and Manolo always say when it is time for us to part again.  "Hasta mañana, hasta mañana!" they say as we hold on to each other in tears - see you tomorrow!  It is never a farewell - because we will always see each other again.

Here is Martha and Manolo, performing to Donato's "El Adíos" at La Baldosa last Friday. Manolo will be turning seventy-nine next Tuesday. We wish them both good health and much happiness, and may they always dance together whenever their favourite music plays:

Graduation

Wow, congratulations...After three years of Cosmotango, they have all graduated and become "Tango Pros"

We were changing into our shoes in the change room at a local Toronto milonga one weekend when an unfamiliar Toronto Tanguero piped up and asked us a question.

"How long have you guys been dancing Tango?" he asked.

"Oh, we are entering into our eighth year," was our remarkably snark-free reply.  We thought it would be polite and friendly to ask him back.  "How long have you been dancing?"

"Five years."  He paused for a moment.  "You guys must be pros by now."

"Absolutely  not!" we said.  "We are definitely not 'pros'.  We are dancing only to enjoy ourselves."

How shocking.

Indeed, in most gringo tango communities, there seems to be an unspoken assumption that the longer you have been dancing, the better you must be - and by golly you should put those skills to good use! If you are persistent, put in long hours, accumulate an impressive resume of workshops and classes  - you will definitely 'graduate' some day and become a 'Tango Pro'.  Four years and automatically you have a Bachelor's... Give it another year and a half, and you'll have a Master's.... a few more years (and you don't even need a dissertation) and you are practically a "Doctor of Tango!"

In fact, when observing particularly obscene dancers gyrating on the dance floors of Toronto, I have been known to say reassuringly to the disgusted onlookers: "Just give them enough time - with a couple of decades under their belt, anyone can become a Milonguero!" 

Well, I was joking.  It's not true.  Time is guarantee of neither quality nor "Pro-worthiness" in Tango. We have persons entering into their first or second decade of Tango here in this city - and getting to be worse tango dancers every day.  Conversely, we have terrific dancers who have been only dancing for a year, two years, three years.  Then, there's the strange phenomenon of dancers who learn so rapidly they seem like "Tango Geniuses" at nine months - but unfortunately never progress any further than that initial growth spurt.  Or those who are fine dancers at year five - but have gone completely downhill by year seven.
   
So, what to do, what to do?  What good is Tango if you can't wave your years of experience around like a big stack of diplomas, opening doors to Tango fame and fortune?

But why should we use Tango as a means to an end?  The only thing we need to do is to enjoy Tango. This does not mean "enjoyment" from learning how to execute fancier steps, or how to gain admiration or attention by putting on a show either on stage on on the dance floor.  It does not mean the "enjoyment" of boasting or bragging or feeling superior because your tango is more sophisticated/athletic/authentic/more like this style and less like another.  It doesn't even mean the "enjoyment" of making a tidy profit from teaching dazzling but impractical moves or forming your own tango cult using psychological manipulation and new-agey mumbo-jumbo.

Enjoy by dancing for no-one but yourself.  Enjoy by going where the music takes you. Enjoy by protecting yourself and your partner on the dance floor - and by respecting and showing consideration for the other dancers sharing the same space.  Enjoy by dancing lightly and gently, without being weighed down by any burden.  Enjoy by making every dance and every embrace meaningful.

Then, with each passing year, Tango friends will become more beloved.  The sensation of Tango in your heart will be sweeter.  Tango music will be a life force.  Your body and your soul will be younger and stronger and more exuberant every day.  That's the moment when we graduate - but we will all be too busy dancing to care.