Maybe it’s because I don’t like to conform to what’s typical and expected, I find myself challenging the common idea of “seeking the perfect tanda” in Argentine tango, a dance that I found myself falling in love with over the past year.
A tanda is a set of 3-4 songs or music pieces people dance to in a tango social.
Argentine tango is an improvised partner dance with little to no set patterns. Hence connection is critical. Maybe that’s part of why the convention is to dance to more than 1 song at a time in order to better establish connection.
From what I hear and read, dancers tend to seek the “perfect tanda” - the transcendental experience of full rhythmic synchrony, 2 units moving as 1, and the ultimate state of flow of forgetting time and space.
Who wouldn’t want to be in the state of flow?
However, I don’t look for the perfect tanda, and I propose that dancers stop looking for the perfect dance.
Someone said that a grandiose goal shouldn’t be where we are going, but where we are coming from. To me, this is about how we set our in-the-moment intentions in the journey of “going”.
While we all make choices to whom we dance with - on the dance floor or in life, once we have decided to go for the dance, our intention should be on bringing the best presence to the dance, as if we come from a place of already being in the best dance.
Without this intention, I find that 2 things typically happen: (1) self criticism, and (2) criticism of the partner or the circumstance.
For so many months I felt nervous about dancing tango because I felt I wasn’t good enough and I would let down whoever was dancing with me. I was so critical of myself that I couldn’t relax. I found my body rigid from the over-thinking - before, during, and after the dance. In that state, there would be no chance for me to feel flow with the dance.
It’s also easy to become subconsciously critical of our dance partner or the dance venue or environment (circumstances), all the while our minds are busy feeling bad for ourselves.
I wonder how similar this is to other parts of our life and to leadership? How we bring our presence and show up for a performance review, a conversation with the boss, a discussion with spouse or child...
While it’s very important what we say yes to and who we dance with, but once we decide to dance for this moment, the best thing we can do is to show up fully, with all of our being. Come from a place that this is the best dance at this place, at this time.
I propose: It’s not about you. It’s not even about your dance partner. It’s about the dance - the dance of tango, the dance of life, or the dance of leadership.
In that, you can set an intention to show up as your best self, your full self. There, maybe you will create some flow.
