Internet offers a virtual confession booth, which is a well-studied fact. What we feel hard to tell to close friends, we confide to perfect strangers in chat-rooms and on blogs. Being an atheist (I believe in atheism, though agnosticism would be more logical), I have no priest to tell. So here I am, ready to part with the fear, shame, and doubt on and by the tango floor pent up in the last few years.
I have ugly legs, as my long-legged mother always said. Ever since I was a child she dressed me in long skirts and wide pants, so as to cover up my natural deficiency. When I was twelve, I had a golden skirt so pretty that I occasionally dared it despite its knee-length. It was a bit worn two years later and mother gave it to a countryside cousin. In college I began to keep long hair. And long dresses. I walked through the season of blossom like a phantom of melancholy. I locked myself up in the boudoir of romantic novels and classical poetry.
When I started to learn tango in the brightly lit Carls A Field Center, the biggest fear was about my legs. Should I wear dresses above the knees? I eventually did, and braved skinny jeans in my daily life too. Then my teachers began to tell me that I too often stepped on the outer sides of my feet and my knees didn’t close. I nodded but thought: oh it’s because my legs are not straight. I overcorrected. I stepped on the extreme inside of my feet and kept my knees extended so as to minimize their distance as much as possible, and tried to remain in control. Then I was criticized for being stiff and not using my whole feet. I insisted my overcorrection. Too often beautiful people don’t know the extent a person with natural deficiency needs to go!
And of course there were those necessary harassments, monkey tricks, and rejections a beginner went through. When you outgrew some ancient leaders who love young meat, you must resign to vegetate in frustration by the floor, watching fantastic people dancing too. And when you did dance, you worked your legs so hard that, even when you were laughing, at the back of your head you knew that you were making a fool of yourself. Superior dancers were looking in amusement and in disapproval. You thought in desperation: but that’s my limit! Maybe I should just give up tango. A monastery is where I belong.
Even though I did begin to dance better and to receive compliments, such feelings never went away. Worse: the deeper I sink into the habit of tango, the more I doubt if such time and effort should be better spent on worthier projects, such as an overdue article, a novel, reading Kant, or, let’s say, learning piano. I realize that it’s the typical struggle of an addict.
Yet I live in small epiphanies, one at a time. And 2013 is a year of small epiphanies.
The first came in Budapest, New Year. I begged to have a private lesson with Mariana and Dimitri, right before their performance in the milonga. They gracefully agreed. When Mariana, a ballerina with slender limbs, told me to close my knees, I blurted out: but I don’t have straight legs! Somehow they started laughing. Dimitri pulled up his pants and showed me his legs: he’s bowlegged! And he was the champion of Latin dance in Greece! So astonished, I laughed too. Somehow all these years of anxiety on my body-type evaporated. It’s not about the body-type. It’s all about the technique. And yes, it’s high time to relax, baby.
Mariana taught me to think of the extension of my legs from the diaphragm, put my heels on the floor, and walk like a proud ballerina. It was the beginning of my departure from the tanguera complex of negativity. The following enlightenments on technicality in Buenos Aires I need not tell. In Salon Canning, I even mastered the art of cabeceo – a deep look into another person’s eyes to show your interest in dancing with him, an exercise that demands brazen confidence. It was not natural to me. But when I finally conquered the fear of a rejection to do so, a miracle happened: that wonderful leader leaning on the bar grinned and nodded back.
Another epiphany was the moment I finally told my “folks” that I danced tango. Tango had been a secret that I kept from my professional circle for years. The sexually overcharged image of tango doesn’t fit into the puritanical academia. I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I let people know my moonlighting as a tanguera. Yet on my way to Argentina I visited my alma mater and was obliged to tell the purpose of this journey with stamina. My professors who so far had only known me as an earnest student of poetry and philosophy were surprised – but with pleasant curiosity, not with the condemnation or disapproval that I had feared. For a brief moment I felt liberated: the two halves of me finally joined.
I still separate two facebook groups and make sure that tango-related content is only viewable by “the tango people.” We are a secret cult, with shibboleth and a set of elaborated liturgy. Only people in our church shall know that tango is about breaking boundaries – regional, cultural, and physical. (Oh yes, and that’s why dancers who only dance with people from their community amuse and annoy me.) Perhaps I will never become a Zen-master in tango, wearing an air of superior wisdom. Nor do I want to. But I will try to let go: trust the person dancing with me; trust my body to be its tranquil and graceful self.
P.S. This blog seems to have incurred some misunderstanding among my friends. But you don’t have ugly legs, they protested. Perhaps. Maybe. But this blog is about self-perception, not about the “truth” – which is relative. I also always consider myself a medium-size woman of medium height, though scientific measuring always tells me wrong.
I developed that complex of physical inferiority since when I was a teenager mother had been hard trying to cover up my legs with her fashion choice. Of course she didn’t mean to shame me. She would be mortified if she could read this blog. It’s just the way Chinese women dress: they cover up their sub-ideal body parts. Swimming suits sold in China are mostly one-piece with layers of ruffles. My mom still covers her collar bones because they are too bare and her upper arms because they are too thick. Neither is true. When I first came to America, I was shocked to see girls sporting tight T-shirts and skinny jeans that, to put it mildly, reveal their sizes. Yet what confidence! And it was beautiful. I began to embrace my body. Nowadays I wear bikini in pool only. I still don’t consider my legs to be pretty but they are how they are, and it’s just the truth of me. The fact that I can say it aloud means that I have already – if not completely, then largely – put the baggage of fear, shame, and doubt behind. And this blog is really about liberation – a keynote that somehow gets lost in translation. I will proceed in my next blog to discuss “power, trust, and grace.”
A Caterpillar's Tango Diary 
Emi, very thoughtful blog entry about the power and misery of self-perception … just my two cents as part of the happy crowd of leaders:
Tango is about dancing. Dancing is about sharing precious moments where two individuals come together to experience joint moments of movement, sensations, interpretation, impressions and expression. Dancing should be fun!
Being a leader I have the privilege of being in the natural position to ask followers for a dance (although it is fully acceptable for me to be asked for a dance). So how do leaders usually chose the followers they would like to ask for a Tanda, be it by Cabeceo or verbally?
There is no universal answer to this, but for me I do not chose along the lines of “good looking”, “tall”, “blond” or any other outward appearance. I rather spend some time watching who of the dancers might be compatible with the way I feel about Tango. Is there a commonality on how to move and interpret rhythm, phrasing and melody? Do you see something like a resemblance of your own preferred way of embrace? Does the dancer seem to have fun and at the same time the required openness, focus and willingness to engage into a venture of joint interpretation and expression? Is the dancer generally speaking an amiable person and is she at ease with herself (at least from what you can judge from a distance)?
By applying these criteria I usually aim at the dancers that are compatible, and even if I have never danced with a lady before (and I try to do this at least once in each of the Milongas I participate in) I generally experience great tandas.
Silke and myself often do photo shoots at Milongas and the magic of the moments that we have the pleasure to capture is completely uncorrelated to the looks of the dancers. It is this very moment of bliss and closeness that is the result of the awareness of having temporarily engaged with someone you are compatible with and will share the next couple of dances with.
It is one of the very satisfying things in Tango to come to a city you have never been to before, find a Milonga, listen to the well known music, smell the well known odors and find someone you can be compatible with even if you do not speak the language fluently. Dancing (and not only Tango by the way – this holds true for most types of social dancing) is a universal language!
And even if everybody dresses up and tries to look as good as possible (which is heavily aided by the usually soft red illumination and relative twilight in many Milongas) for me at the core of it is this universal language and resulting mutual interaction and understanding that can make Tango such an enlightening experience. And the desire to experience this drives how and to whom you issue or by whom you accept invitations to dance.
So be yourself and be willing to engage open-mindedly – these are the things that define personality and beauty and should contribute a substantial part to self-perception.