What else is important besides dancing? (Tallinn)

Returning from Viejo Tallinn marathon, and for the first time in a long while feeling a need to write about tango.

For so many years, my biggest motivation for these trips was the hunger for strong emotions, deep feelings or intense connection to my dance partners. The way to achieve those goals was through a lot of dancing, and the only obstacle was the way your dancing was perceived by others. There was a lot of frustration in those years, and often, you thought of giving up, as you obviously weren't the kind of a dancer you should be.

But as frustrating as it was, the occasional moments of feeling accepted, cherished and somehow "included" in the mystical tango bubble were a powerful incentive to keep going. As those sensations became more and more sporadic with each year gone by, you found yourself struggling for a motive, questioning the sense of continuing, but still unable to let go.

This past weekend, I may have stumbled upon just such a motivation: while your own sensations fade in intensity, you have more room to notice the struggles, triumphs and moments of bliss of those around you. You feel compassion when your friends are feeling defeated, enraged for the injustice they encounter, jubilant for their happiness. You notice their moments of self-doubt, witness their earth-moving tandas and breath-taking connections.

You begin to enjoy more the comraderie of those moments of physical exhaustion when your body has long since given its best but you stay at the milonga in the quest to squeeze out every last drop of whatever may come. You may regret it the following morning, but you decide to stay because you are in this together with others who are going through similar things, people who know what it's like to spend your life chasing the unattainable.

But the really interesting thing is this: as the dancing itself becomes less important, it also becomes better. For being free from *needing* it, from caring whether you dance or not, whether others like the way you dance, also makes your mind clearer, your body more an accomplice and less of the enemy it used to be. You also cherish the simple beauty of movement more when you don't read things into it that aren't there.

And occasionally, you still can be moved to tears by it.