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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Tango is a Love Story

Tango is just a walk with love in your heart
By Elena Pankey



All who love Tango have their own Tango stories. I think, I came into this world because of Tango. My mother met her only love (a Greek man) on the dance floor of a small town on the Black Sea,South of Russia. My parents liked to dance Tango.
Tango gave them love passion and love,
and it gave the life to me.
Argentine Tango music deeply talks from heart to heart about different sides of life and love. It is constantly changing; and like in real life, it has difficulties. My parents did not stay for a long time together, and my mother did not live a long life.
Tango later came to me in several different periods of my life. Only now, looking back, I can connect all these small separate pieces for the whole picture and see why and how I came to Tango or why Tango chose me.
First, we had a bandoneon at home. My grandfather brought this strange (accordion like) musical instrument from Germany after World War II, even tried to teach me to play it.

- You need to open it widely and take the air. When you close the sides, I it can plays the music, if you know which bottoms to push...

Later I learned how to play the real and big accordion ...

Then when I was ten years old, I attended a Young Pioneers summer camp.
In the evenings on the dance floor people gathered for dance and talk, and on some days children were allowed to come. Tango was very fashionable at that time.
One night the crowd was especially tight and noisy, reacting very strongly to what was happening on the dance floor. I also tried to come closer, but saw just crazy and strange leg movements, which were doing different tricks under the exciting and passionate music.
Finally, I could look up and was shocked by the intimate and very close positions of a man and a woman. This couple looked disgustingly sexy. They awoke my interest. Their heads were slightly turned to the side like they were watching someone inside their embrace. Someone was between them, someone whom they tried to impress, compete with, or seduce.
At the end of the dance a man put a woman on his leg and a little down and posed... And at this last moment with the last chord of music, he suddenly looked directly in her eyes.They posed and posed. Silence, dream and love mesmerized everybody. Then the whole crowd exploded and yelled. A man and a woman walked, faded away and disappeared.
Next evening the orchestra started the Tango. I was invited by a boy and forgot about the whole world. He gave me his hand and Tango came to my soul for the first time...However, I did not danced Tango again for a long time.

My
second tango sensation I experienced in CA, while watching a performance one well-known professional tango company from Argentina. In the intermission, we found an invitation for some lessons. It was the beginning of my new and strong Tango passion. Later I tried to watch every show they would bring to CA, and learned from them. For several years, I was persistently trained with some great Tango Masters of the world.
For a while, it felt like I found everything that I did not have in my real life, in the most exciting and complicated music of authentic tango. In the movements of this dance lies all feelings, all twists and plots of real life. My mother's first love lived forever there.
Tango is about love. My husband's generosity and love brought finally tango to my real life while we were cruising to Alaska. One evening we enjoyed a show by "
Los Pampas Devils." Next day we asked Pablo Juan Vino and Hugo Daniel to teach us.
Then we fallowed this professional tango-gauchos group for many cruises, and I performed with them on some ships.

One day, we registered our own TANGO CAMINITO SCHOOL, and began to teach Communications, Energy and Connections in the Embrace of Tango. During our lessons we use some metaphors that precisely talk about the hidden sense of steps. For some special students we try to open a very special, mysterious world of tango.

What goes around, comes around. Life made its circle again.
In 2004 was invited to give my Special Tango Lesson before the show Tango Passion at Escondido Center of the Arts. And in 2005 I finaly got again a chance to learn and dance with Los Ocampo...

For some tango is a dance with the invisible third person, who is inside our frame, and whom we are constantly looking at... How many new discoveries tango hides?


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