Dancing with your Angels and Demons (Vilnius)

For some reason that i am yet to understand, any tango event has, invariably, a moment when you find yourself wondering why you keep doing this: spending so much time, effort - and money - to travel to places where you suddenly feel like a total outsider, the one who doesn't belong. Why, after all these years, it still doesn't seem to be getting any easier, why, the more you discover your own voice, the fewer people seem to "get" what you want to say. Any why does everybody else seem to be having so much fun, while you are cursing yourself for all the events you already booked and paid for, if this really is the end.

Obviously, you have been there many times before, down this road of desperation and utter loneliness. You remember very well that it did pass before, but somehow, this time it feels more final, more irreversible. You ask yourself what you will be left with, now that *tango is gone*.

And then, as if by a miracle, a secret door opens, letting in first a flicker of light that pulls you towards it. It is maybe just *one* step where you suddenly find the perfect resonance with your dancing partner and the music, or a fleeting sense of being seen as you truly are, heard for what you are trying to say. Perhaps it was there all the time, but for some reason, you focused on your own faults, on what you *don't * enjoy in your own or your partner's dancing. But once you have found that resonance, it tends to grow stronger, until finally, there is just a pure sense of completeness, acceptance - and love.

Suddenly, it is not just about your own pleasure or enjoyment anymore. Rather, you feel as if you were a part of something much bigger, something that flows through you, like a lightning will need a tree to reach the ground. And you understand why there is such a thing as the dancing dervishes, those holy men spinning endlessly in search of the divine.

For in those moments, you are not only dancing with those physically present in the room. In those moments, you are dancing with your angels and demons, with your ancestors and your unborn children.

And yes, often it is to Pugliese.

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