Enjoyments and sorrows, or it's not always just a walk through the rose garden

When we started dancing, we expected it to be a beautiful journey full of beautiful memories. It wasn’t and it is still not true. Tango is like a life, there are ups and downs, and all of those up and downs have their common denominators. When dancing, you have to exist "Here and Now", "Accept", be "Patient" and especially not to be afraid of "Stagnation". This paper will be about these denominators.

“Here and Now”

Every dance is difficult not only physically, but even mentally. Especially Argentine tango,you need to know yourself to enjoy the dance, or tango will help you to get to know yourself. You need to leave all your problems behind the door of the ballroom dance floor and “just” exist.

It is very difficult to stop thinking and concentrate only on the “Here and Now”, however to achieve the clear improvisation, there is no other way. Dancing is the greatest pleasure not only for an individual, but for both. On the other hand, when you’re not able to be “Here and Now”, tango helps you to reveal your feelings, desires, and current mood. The partner can easily recognize that you are happy or that something is bothering you. Although lack of concentration during the dancing is a significant obstacle, for relationships, it is a great benefit. You do not need to ask what's bothering your partner, because you can feel it.

The “only” thing needed is an embrace (the main element of argentine tango) to take away all clouds and to become present, when only you, your partner and tango exist. All problems, sorrows, enthusiasm melt away and you slowly lose yourself in the embrace of your partner. It is not for nothing that Argentine tango is used as a treatment of relationship issues or various diseases. Abroad, the Argentine tango is beginning to be used as a treatment process of certain types of diseases.

The Argentine Tango is not only the treatment for the soul, it is also a way to find yourself in the infinity of being.

Patience

Nowadays, we lose patience as everything is quickly and easily available. Whether it's a series, we don't have to wait for the next episode, or it's food delivery, or an incredible selection in stores. We do not want to say that it is something bad. Time evolves and we evolve with it.

However, we let ourselves be robbed of quality. Everything is quickly available and this affects us in everyday life as well. When we learn something new or read something, we want to know it quickly, we don't want to "waste" time by learning, reading, searching. We want someone to open our head and pour all the information into it, like in the Matrix. But it doesn't work like that. We have learned to enjoy the result, and we have stopped enjoying the journey.

It is difficult to be patient. Especially when you see perfect people, dancers, athletes in the media who can handle everything so easily and effortlessly. However, the fact that is not advertised and is not presented much is how much effort, time, energy and self-denial they had to invest to be where they are. And although we all subconsciously know this, our consciousness is still trying to get closer to them.

We want to achieve the results in a week that the professionals trained for years. If you're not a former athlete or dancer, like me, you'll probably get frustrated if something doesn't go as you expected. Fortunately for me, my partner used to dance and I know he had a hard time with me at the beginning, but he was the one who tried to keep me grounded and reassured me that to be a good dancer takes time.

What I have a problem with today means that if I don't give up and I'm patient, tomorrow I will be better at it and the next day will be even better. This is how I learned patience, which I use not only in dancing, but also in life and work. When you are patient, it is no longer just about reaching the goal, it is about the journey itself, about every day, every minute of your life, which will enrich you. You will start to enjoy even small things. Because life is not one big goal, life has a lot of small and beautiful moments.

Even Edison when a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."

"Great success is built on failure, frustration, even catastrophy."

Acceptance, or a mathematical puzzle

In tango, once you understand the math puzzle, you start to dance tango. The puzzle is simple and contradicts what we learned at school, but it has its own meaning and justification.

"In tango one and one do not make two, in tango one and once make one. A man and a woman constitute to couple, so much so that the moment we pose our attention on one of the dancers, be it the man or the woman, this is the indicator that the couple has started to lose its oneness." (Tango an anxious quest for freedom, 2000, Gloria and Rodolfo Dinzel, ISBN 3-00-006119-3)

For me, this concept of oneness is the acceptance. In the acceptance of myself, who I am and who I am becoming, and in the acceptance of my partner, who she/he is and who she/he is becoming. This acceptance continues throughout the dance, throughout life. We dance tango for ourselves and at the same time for our partner, we try to achieve oneness together, it is the time when we get lost in the movement of the other, and it is no longer me who leads or me who follows. Every step, every movement is guided by the feelings of both of us, not just the individual.

At first beginning, it was a big obstacle for us we had to overcome, not to forget the other, to accept and perceive each other. To realize that in life and in dance, in the couple everyone plays their own role, creates and exists for yourself and the partner.

We are getting better at it and it shows in our connection throughout dancing, when neither of us can tell who leads or who follows, when we are so connected that every expression is a manifestation of our own expression of music and our feelings as a one. We are no longer, the partner who leads and the partner who follows. We are the one that perceives ourselves, that accepts ourselves, accepts its current physical and psychological state and allows it to manifest ourselves as one in a couple. You're not listening to each other anymore, you just exist. It is a feeling as if at that given moment your hearts, your feelings, your desires, your mind are connected into one being, when it is unknown where the leader begins and ends and where the follower begins and ends.

If you watch a couple in which such a concept of oneness and acceptance, as an observer you perceive a uniqueness that no one will ever repeat. This uniqueness, this moment, will not be repeated even by this couple. If you ask the couple what steps, what figures they danced, they won't be able to answer you, because they didn't dance the steps. During the dancing, they "danced" feelings, "danced" music, "danced" themselves.

It may sound too poetic to you, and if I hadn't experienced that feeling myself, I wouldn't have believed that something like this is possible. Once you experience such a dance for the first time, you do not want the Tanda (a group of 3-4 songs finished by Cortina - "break") to end. Over time, when you experience the feeling of acceptance in dance more and more, you begin to get to know yourself more and the end of Tanda you feel that this is the beginning of something new, a new ME, your new adventure.

Accepting and getting to know each other is one of the most important elements in tango dance, which can help you to progress not only in dance, but also in life. Assert yourself, your own desires, prevents us from flying. Maybe it's more comfortable for us because it's easier to express what I want rather than what my partner wants, but I guarantee you that the moment you leave your self-confident zone and once you start to communicate with your partner, your dance will move into the realms of infinity Your mutual being and there will no longer be a leader and a follower, you both will be one.

Argentine tango is not a dance of figures. Argentine tango is a dance of endless possibilities, which you can achieve only by accepting each other, actively listening to each other. You solve the puzzle and in a given time one and one will become one.

Stagnation

At the beginning of any learning, the learning process is very quick and suddenly there is a moment when you start to stagnate. You stop progressing.

Beautiful example is the learining of foreign language. At the begining we learn words and gammar very quickly and then "it" happens, you can spend many hours to learn however you do remember nothing, you're not progressing. We stop enjoing it and we give up. However, those who keep going and don't give up know that after this phase of stagnation, the new phase begin when everything will fall into place, like gears in a watch, and then suddenly everything is understood, they just start talk.

I call this phase of stagnation emptiness. Why emptiness? Because this is the time when people can finally review the information already learnt, practice and focus on important areas. It is important to understand all the information already learnt as you are ready when the moment of progressing starts again, and you can start to enjoy this learning path and after that stagnation time you will realize that the "empty" period was not a waste of time. At the same time, it is also a time when our passion and desire to learn and progress will be tested.

There will be many moments of stagnation during learning of argentine tango. This is the time when tango tests us and verifies how much we want to continue this life journey of education. Yes, we really do learn tango entire life. Tango is not just figures, tango is not just a dance, tango is also music, partner, desire, emotion. It is everything and nothing at the same time and that's why it is so beautiful and at the same time so challenging.

We also went through the phase of stagnation several times. First time, it was difficult to deal with it and realize what was actually happening. We're not going to lie, we've been even playing with the idea to stop learning tango and only attend Milongas and dance.

What has changed? Why didn't we give up and continue our learning path? Maybe because we were stubborn and didn't want to give up, maybe because we felt we could achieve more, or even because we started training with other maestros who opened up new horizons for us. The great advantage of the Dinzel system is that you will find several well-founded maestros in Slovakia who, on the one hand, offer you the same system, but on the other hand, each of them is unique and brings their own beings into tango. This is how we survived our first crisis of stagnation, together with all the maestros of https://www.tangoclub.sk/.

After this experience, it was easy for us to deal with other phases of stagnation. And now we know that whenever we start feeling stagnation, we look for new points of view, new possibilities and we discuss. Because those of us who don't give up and will continue to learn, tango will endow us with new experiences, unrepeatable inspirational moments. And last but not least, it will improve our relationship towards ourselves, towards our surroundings and towards our partner.

Tango tests us during the entire life and in return it opens up the most valuable thing for us, the knowledge and realization of the value of ourselves, and although life is not easy, tango will always be here with us and for us.

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