...from heart to feet

(me and Tango)

I met Tango in 1997.
I met the embrace in 2003.

From the first moment, I never stopped studying.
From the second, I never stopped choosing the embrace – one single breath.
Contact, connection, silent dialogue, subtle and deep listening.

Continuing to study is pure joy – and dancing even more so. I never stopped!
Besides, I find that continuing and deepening the study is a way to explore the infinite tools we have to communicate with the other – the countless others;
to practise and refine listening and connection – with the other, the countless others – and so… together, within the music! Tango.

From the very beginning, the milonga was the only place I knew where I was sure to find it.
For us – so far from its place of origin, and from that history – separated by an ocean and more than a century, strangers to those multitudes that became culture, habit, family ritual, everyday life…
for us, the place of tango is the milonga, every mirada, every tanda, every embrace.

Then I found another threshold – I looked up and saw that tango is also “beyond”:
a painting, a photograph, a comic, a film, a poem, a story, a theatre play, a concert, a landscape, a village, a castle…
Tango runs through art, through beauty – and reveals itself elsewhere.

Maybe this happens to me because I’m so far from its place of origin, and from that history – an entire ocean, and over a century apart – a stranger to those multitudes turned culture, habit, family ritual, daily life? I don’t know.
My story is another one – and my place is another.
(Though now it’s also a little bit Buenos Aires – even if only its scent…)

What I do know for sure is this:
my place is the embrace.
My places are study, books, art, beauty.
That’s where I think I find tango – more and more tango.

But maybe it’s an illusion – or, more precisely, an utopia.
Maybe.
Still – just like when sharing an embrace – I like having many places where I can feel like I’m meeting it again.

And in fact, that’s what happens every time:
I return to that essential emotion – subtle and immense – that brings us together and reveals us to each other in every place,
even if that place is only the soul.