Like many people I came to Tango at a time of crisis, when the faster moving, and more shallow times of my youth were fading.

I loved it. I grew with it. It has taken me a decade to get even a sense of what it is really about.

In this troubled year I found great tuition and friendship, and have worked even harder at uncovering the complex layers of this wonderful thing.

I enjoy the energy of youth being applied to Tango – of course – but this world that I am in now does to me feel in so many ways like the ultimate do-over.

In the timeless moments of the dance I can go back to that age when I didn’t understand what was important. But I can look at it from above, without painfully reliving my simplistic emotions and thoughts.

I have been given the framework and vocabulary to share once again the potential, relive it, and this time to turn it into something positive, creative and wonderful.

I can put youthful energy firmly within the perspective of wisdom.

In my world of the Tango student I can try to do things correctly, and at the same time love that I know I am failing, but learning.. moving forwards again. Reinterpreting.

Looking back with increased understanding is exactly what Tango is all about – in itself. It always seems to be yearning for something else, calling for an explanation, a missing context.

And so without this perspective and sense of loss that our own age and life experience brings – we are always outside of it – looking in, trying to understand.

What is so optimistic for me now? That I am completely in love with it, increasingly inside it, and I may even have another few years to progress and interpret even more.

Tango is showing me a glimpse of what it has always been about. Thank you.

Photo by Guillermo Velarde on Unsplash