On February 13 (Sat, 1-4pm), KAM will be hosting a Valentine themed tango dance featuring live music by Tangotta. The dance is free, open to everyone, and requires no prior experience.
Dancers will receive treats of tradable valentines: snippets of verse and prose across the ages written on the subject of love.
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TANGO IS
by Melih Sener
Tango is a dialog in the same way that love is a dialog.
Tango is a discourse between equals, an embrace. a confrontation --
not in order to defeat, but in order to understand one another. In
tango, there is no leader that is not a follower.
Tango is story telling. A narrative in motion. Tango is prose and
poetry, technique and lyricism, calm and passion, all at once.
Tango is exploration. Tango is experimentation, mystery, puzzle
solving. Tango, like science, is based on Socratic dialog. Tango, like
love that lasts, is based on Socratic dialog.
"Tango is a metaphor for life," said Enrique Santos Discepolo, a sort
of Yogi Berra of the dance. From depths of sadness to peaks of
ecstasy, tango can reflect the flow of our lives and loves.
Tango is drama. The three minute catharsis in the course of the
ordinary day. For a moment, we become pretend-gods and goddesses. We
can be heroes just for one dance.
Tango is contact. Tango is balance, pressure, breath, and connection.
Tango is biomechanics and physics. Tango is intention converted to
motion.
Tango is history. But tango is alive. Tango is change. Tango is not
what tango was. Tango is not over and done.
Tango is improvisation. Tango is imagination. Tango is all in your
mind - as love is all in the mind before it is manifested as a shared
persuasion.
Tango is free. Tango is not the shoes, not the dress, not the floor.
Any place is a tango place, as May Swenson argued: "Take earth for
your own large room / and the floor of earth / carpeted with sunlight
/ and hung round with silver wind / for your dancing place." Tango is
not meant to be masturbation for the rich. Tango is meant to be -like
air, love, yoga, or mathematics- for everyone. There is no royal road
in tango.
Tango is what you make it to be.
Tango is choice.
