Often doing the opposite of what you're told produces great dance results. You need to go up? Try going down! You want weigh nothing at all and caress the floor like a cat floating on rose petals? Try reaching down into the centre of the universe and becoming a super-gravity sponge! Your step is supposed to go to the left? Send all your energy to the right!
But what about all those thousands of times you've heard, “don't think, feel.”
Well...what if someone finally gave you dispensation to think? Because you're doing it, aren't you? No matter how much you want to shut off the old brain, it's always up there, ticking away, even in our most intimate of moments.
It's so embarrassing to admit that we think during sex. We're not supposed to; it seems impolite. How can we think and also really be in the moment? And yet we all do it.
And perhaps this duality is the dance. Top half for you, bottom half for me, with me but on your own, feeling but...thinking. Always that little bit of removal. It's just like yoga: are we ever truly flowing? Or are we always straddling a delicate balance of awesome-flowy-grooviness and concentrating-like-the-dickens?
Since joining the world of tango I've encountered an unusually high number of men who remain standing for the sorts of things for which lesser mortals, with less wonderfully honed balance, prefer to recline. For a long time I thought this meant they just weren't fully present in the moment, but recently I figured out: that's part of it, for them. They like that balance, and, perhaps, seeing how far they can push that balance. Makes sense...leaders are always thinking. Perfectly led sacadas do not happen by themselves.
So perhaps what I had always considered a tango failing on my behalf is actually a mark of supertangosity. I'm never going to be all yours because part of me is always standing by, thinking, alert, nerding out on technique. And perhaps this makes all of us much more desirable. The chase is never really over because no one ever really gives in. We just come awfully close, the game of dancing on the razor's edge. Just how close can we all come without crossing the line? How much can we let ourselves go without losing ourselves altogether? How much can we challenge the other person to let go?
How much can we dance?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oKUTOLSeMM