Tonight we went to try out the tango in Les Arcades in Granollers. Somehow the fact that there is a class and a milonga right here, not five minutes away in Carrer Girona, had slipped past my tango antennae. It has been going since January – five whole months in which I could have been walking down our road, turning left then right and then straight into a bar with a dance floor at the back and a group of people who dance tango.
Last year we tried to start a tango class here but I stopped after a term as the effort needed to teach in Spanish as well as advertise it seemed beyond my capabilities. Sometimes I feel that the energy I use to learn two languages, get used to a new relationship, survive being a sort of step mother to a difficult adolescent, drive a car on the right side of the road, try to get health care, worry about my dogs in Cornwall and all the rest……means I just can’t do one more new thing.
Recently I have been feeling very like this.
I didn’t include writing this blog in that list as normally it is something that flows easily and I enjoy enormously. But recently, this too has felt hard. Too many questions like – What am I doing? Who is this for? Does anyone read it (apart from those three people that I know about -thank you, you know who you are), What can I say and what is better to leave unsaid?
I try generally to write about what catches my attention and what I find interesting about Catalunya and the experience of changing my life. Sometimes it is cultural, sometimes it is personal, and sometimes it is a bit of both. But when I am feeling alien and alone here and struggling with the feeling of being an outsider without a strong support system of friends and family on hand, then the words get blocked. I can’t only write happy thoughts here but it is also a bit frightening to write down my doubts and fears and let them drop into this void.
What is this to do with tango, I hear you think.
Everything for me. This is what took me to tango in the first place and this is what I bring to tango when I dance. Connection. Longing for connection. Risking connection.
Tonight my dear man accompanied me to the class and the milonga, He isn’t really interested in tango but came to make me happy. We danced together. I had a bit of a glitch when the female teacher started to tell me how to do the cross but I remembered my friend Tiffany’s advice and just smiled. The male teacher came and danced with me twice and then, just as I was taking off my shoes to leave, the man with the black and white shoes and fedora hat came up to ask me to dance. When he first arrived in the bar I thought he would be too flashy but actually he was just very good, very attentive, very connected.
It was a good evening. I came away feeling happy.
The people were friendly, the music was lovely, and we were dancing tango in Granollers.
Which made it feel more like home.
Speaking as someone who has two left feet, I can appreciate the beauty of a tango dance. (Just don’t ask me to join in unless I’ve had at least 3 vermuts!) The need for connection, community is thrumming at my heart too. I crave it, need it, feel it’s lack. The city where I live isn’t big on community unless it’s formed for a negative reason and I long to fly away for that reason. Finding my tribe (my pack as Clarissa would describe it), and I howl for them. Do they hear me, I wonder? I think we have heard each other howl and have responded.
There is a moment to just smile! It can be handy to simply ‘not understand’ sometimes too.
Glad it feels more like home and that your man went with you. Was the level good enough that you’ll be coming back and back? Convenient for sure…and there may be more going on. Even in my tiny village I continue, after 5 years, to discover stuff that is happening that I didn’t know about.
Every little bit helps, no?
As ever thank you both for responding! Yes, ever little helps when you are in a strange place. and sometimes granollers only feels full of strangers. Apart from Tiffany of course. Kim you say this so well – the need for community is strong and the inner wolf sometimes howls in lonliness – sending out a call, just in case there are others near enough to hear. The tango wolves are not necessarily of my pack but they do connect in a different way through the dance. Kx
Hi Kate,
yes, we all need community and connectedness. How deep do the connections need to be, however? I suppose that in dance, they are intense though transitory. Is that safe, or saddening when the dance ends? Esoteric questions, perhaps. What if we never dance with the same dancer again? Is it enough that it happened?
Aldous Huxley once wrote (forget where) that humans are a “moderately gregarious species”, and that we can’t relate well to more than about 40 people max, which is about the size of an average village.
But the internet gives us access to many more than that. And perhaps the dance does too…
what do you think?
Pearl x