Shelley DeLayne:
I have a theory…
People often say that humans are social beings, but I don't think we truly grasp the degree to which that is true.
We are not meant to be separate and isolated.
If you are face to face with a stranger and you make eye contact and imitate their facial expressions, both of your hearts will shift their rhythm.
In a moment of shared understanding in a conversation, people often report goose bumps, or a certain sensation on their arms. This is a measurable change in the electric current on each person's skin — it synchronizes literally and you can feel it and it can be measured.
There are all sorts of ways in which humans have induced attunement and coregulation for millennia without realizing we were doing it:
Drumming, singing together, praying or meditating together, reciting a sincere pledge or oath together, experiencing theatre and storytelling… we are designed to do it: to attune to each other. To physically connect with others (even without physical contact).
When an elderly person is hospitalized, and their long-time beloved enters the room, very often, all of their vital signs improve immediately.
Hugs, especially extended ones, typically have a measurable positive impact on both people both physically and emotionally.
We live for connection.
And tango induces autonomic attunement to a degree that nothing else could.
It's a physically intimate, walking meditation for two people with polyphonic music… it literally contains all the most reliable attunement triggers: embrace, music, moving together, paying close attention to one another, the acceptance and agreement of each weight shift, the discovery of commonalities when you recognize that you've both responded to the same thing in the music, the mental space made possible by knowing the 'rules' of it… and it removes the specificity of faces.
You have an immersive autonomic attunement experience, but you aren't looking at their face — and because of the context — it transcends identity and social roles and masks.
It is an experience of your inclusion in the one-ness of humanity.
And I believe the world would be a vastly better place if everyone had regular access to that experience.
(Actual relational attachment changes tango — think about how different it feels most of the time with a friend you know well or with a lover. It *seems* like that should make it even better, but it doesn't always. Sometimes it does… but it's often quite a different feeling.)
Anyway… I used to think that dissection would ruin the magic; that it's better not to know the mechanics of the trick… but then I came to believe: it is truth, not trick, and we can talk about it and measure it and study it and discuss it all we want…
Nothing can destroy the magic of tango.
Comment on a post about The Twelve Minute Enigma
TWELVE MINUTES' ENIGMA
A successful but lonely man in his forties spends evenings at milongas, dancing with women he'll never get any closer. A middle-aged woman plans her flights a year in advance to tango events, family and business are not a hindrance, she has only one problem - how to be everywhere. People from different countries of all ages and genders celebrate the New Year out of home on the dance floor.
A young, beautiful girl spends hundreds of hours, kilometers and euros to learn how to walk around her partner in four steps. Private lessons and seminars seminars with maestros, Yoga, Pilates and much more, just to advance a little. And disappointment from own imperfection, from refusals and imbalance at milongas. And also shoes that cost as if made of gold by the dwarves of Uberwald. The reward is 12 minutes of something that is difficult to describe and impossible to take away.
Why is this all? What are they looking for in tango? And what, judging by the insatiable hunger, they never find enough? There is not so much sex in tango, drugs are scares, almost no rock'n'roll (but some D'Arienzo). Few manage to earn decent money with tango, and for romance-flirting-getting-married there are less costly ways.
"Because this is tango" is not an answer, it is a return to the original question. Yes, there are things that are beautiful in themselves, like hedgehog's heels, buzzing fat bumblebees, the smell of fresh grass or bakery. There are flowers that seem beautiful to us for unknown reason. But tango was created by people, it is not "a thing in itself". It was created out of some specific hunger.
No one ingenious and pathologically humane would sit on a chair and invent tango. It was born from the air and light of the lanterns of that special time and city, from the disappointment and nostalgia, the dreams of those people. They say tango was a socially acceptable way to embrace a woman. Women were few, decent — even fewer; the severity of manners terrified even the English Puritans.
But all this is no longer there. Neither time, nor people, even the city has changed. You can embrace as much as you like, almost anyone, even men, thanks to the sexual revolution and contraception. But for some reason tango is more and more needed by people from completely different cultures. They cannot repeat that music, it is already unrealistic, but "12 minutes of something that is difficult to describe and cannot be taken away" they re-create over and over again, not satisfying their hunger.
They say there is some personal or rather interpersonal problem that pushes people in tango and keeps them there. And this problem is somehow solved in tango. Or not. As a psychotherapist, I am fascinated by this idea, but still it is even more vague than the absence of an answer.
They say people need tango to satisfy sensory hunger. Plausible. In disembodied culture sensory hunger prevails over everyone. But why not massage? Perhaps the tangueros' hunger is very selective, it can be satisfied only in the most subtle and refined way. Or is sensory hunger not only about touch, but also about shared feelings?
Or maybe tango is an opportunity to satisfy your polygamous needs in a monogamous culture? After all, they say, we have both. I'm not talking about sex, but about intimacy, at least symbolic. It is also banned in our culture, except in special ritual forms.
Once I thought that in tango people hope to actualize the original and deprived gender roles. A man leads - expresses his forbidden aggression, a woman follows - does what she rarely can afford in her life. Then I saw with what pleasure women lead and with what pleasure men follow. And saw kizomba and bachata, where there may be more male-female. But what if in tango we are looking not so much for our deprived gender roles, but for our human ones?
Now psychotherapists are talking about desensitization. But they don't say how to stay sensitive and survive in the city. And they themselves do not cope very well.
It is true, dissociation with the body and feelings greatly impoverishes life. But switching feelings and sensations on is often painful, unbearable, especially without the ability to arbitrarily switch them off. Is tango a safe way to become sensitive again, physically and emotionally? For a short finite period?
One can easily rationalize and even know the answer to the question of why other people need tango in general. It's harder to understand why I need it. And the easiest way is to dismiss this question after some reflection. It is also an option. The most pleasant, interesting and tasty things in this life generally have no reason or purpose.
But still. Why do you need tango?
c) Igor Zabuta, Emma Kologrivova, "dancing psychotherapists"
More tango-essays in our book "Embrace me", available at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3tWC2YI
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