Le Chemin du Tango

Seriously, it is! No matter what some Argentines, jealous of their cultural heritage, might say;)

How else would it be possible to walk into a milonga in a town where you don´t know a single person, and feel immediately at home?

I speak from experience. I travel a lot. Sometimes too much for my brain to keep up with. I am often surprised to find myself in a different place than I had expected when I open my eyes in the morning. I mix up my plane tickets (I have tried to board flights with a ticket dating a week earlier or two weeks later – one from the pile of tickets I had picked up in a hurry when leaving home), my friends never know where I might be (and so just wait for a call rather than call me themselves – thank God for email!) and my closest family members often have an only hazy idea of my current whereabouts (it changes all the time, anyway). Certain airport lounges and other most un-homely places have a distinct air of homeliness to me – some kind of a mental defensive mechanism, I assume; although I have always applied the word ‘home‘ very loosely to places where I can sleep, eat, have people I like (at least sometimes) and where I feel well. A childhood remnant, I suppose – I spent a lots of time in hotels in that critical age when children learn to speak, and it appears that I had a difficulty attaching a precise definition to this word – its meaning kept eluding me and upon arriving to new hotel rooms I would excitedly inquire of my parents whether THIS was home, only to be told ´No, no, this is a HOTEL´. The nuance, of course, is irrelevant to a child travelling with her family and all her favourite toys...

However – for an adult, travelling is both mentally and physically exhausting, and travelling by plane is also boring and unpleasant (especially since the ban on gels and liquids in hand luggage – how can a woman entrust the air carriers with her nécessaire, I ask you? my suitcase got lost – well, that´s a euphemism – twice in the past two months). I like to think I can endure the strain better than others, seeing as I have grown up this way and would probably go crazy if confined to one place; still, travelling all the time is bad, both for your private and for your social life, it is bad tout court – except for TANGO.

Travelling is good for my tango: it has enabled me to dance with many many many different partners, thus extending my following ability; it has enabled me to observe and learn different styles of tango; it has enabled me to meet and make friends with tango dancers from other countries and tango communities, which is always interesting (well, that doesn´t go for tango only, but in general; I am, however, trying to stick to the subject, for once!).

And tango is good for my travelling! You can dance tango in practically any big city (apart from the capital of a certain grand duchy which I have always suspected to be an overgrown village rather than a small city:) and I have discovered interesting places in pursuit of milongas, places it would have never crossed my mind to look for, otherwise.

And the best thing is that you walk into a foreign milonga and all of a sudden you find yourself in a familiar environment, where you can move with ease, and where all that matters is that (and, maybe, how..) you dance tango! This overwhelming feeling of affinity with completely unknown tango dancers and the unexpected impression of being at home which I experienced ten days ago as I arrived, melancholy and in denial about Dutch reality, to a milonga in a small Dutch town - what could it mean but that tango is truly international? :)