Who Can Live Without Passion?

Years ago, my wife and I joined friends for drinks in the local botanical garden. A ‘World Music’ event was about to take place, and as a group of musicians was preparing for their set, we enjoyed our conversation and a pint of cold beer.

Suddenly, I noticed a staggering number of beautiful women. They all looked athletic, wore high heels, and revealing dresses. When the musicians started playing, I realized that a couple of women were staring at me. I smiled politely and got back to the conversation with my friends.

After a couple of minutes, I felt a tap on the shoulder. A beautiful young woman asked me to dance. It was only then that I noticed the tiny dance-floor where a few couples were now entangled in a sensual embrace. Stuttering, I explained that I was not a dancer. I also asked what the accordion music that they were dancing to was. She replied that it was 90-year-old Argentinian Tango music, and the instruments were not accordions but bandoneons.

We chatted a bit, and she told me about the subtle codes that dancers use to find a partner, using only their eyes, and the rules that regulated the now heavy but ordinate traffic on the small dance-floor. She advised me to take up tango lessons because, being tall, I was the kind of guy she was looking for. She left with a wink and threw herself in somebody else’s arms. They looked amazing, and I had a plan!

Three weeks later, I surprised my wife with the best birthday gift ever (her words): tango lessons for two!

Looking back, it was just what we needed at that moment. Working had become routine, and while we were comfortable financially and had a great and passionate life together, something was amiss. The energy we had previously channeled into raising our children, building our company, and restoring our houses needed a new outlet.

This new hobby seemed like an exciting challenge.

Being middle-aged and quite heavily afflicted by the crisis that gives this blog its name, the perspective of being able to find good looking and talented dance partners all over the world was very attractive, to say the least.

Taking dancing lessons together, physically attached to each other, is a test for a couple. Tango is not an easy dance to master, and there are many moments of frustration that require patient and kind reactions. Obviously, it didn’t always work well, but we survived those first years and after a while, became good enough dancers to start traveling for tango.

There are so many subcultures outsiders know nothing about, and it’s very interesting to become a part of one. There are secret codes of behavior to master, different scenes to distinguish, and to find the one that fits best. And of course, the exciting sensation when you find people who share the same passion in spite of coming from different continents.

And I’m not talking about subcultures that explore transgressive sexual fetishes. Even stamp collectors might have the same exhilarating experiences when they go to one of their international events. Tango is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and that makes it a bit more attractive to me than collecting stamps.

When you know about its existence, you realize that tango is everywhere. Discovering it made us realize what a dull life we had led so far. Before tango, traveling meant sightseeing, eating out, and a nightcap in a bar at 10 pm. Now, we go out to dance at 11 pm and get home at daylight, have breakfast, and go to bed. The Internet gives us access to events in glamorous but more often quite obscure venues, where we dance our sensual dances with complete strangers till dawn.

Sightseeing is overrated anyway.

We met an incredible amount of exciting people, and our rapidly growing network came in very handy when I started organizing my own tango parties or ‘milongas’ as they are called. After a crash course by a famous tango DJ, I also was on my way to becoming a tango DJ myself.

What a great story to tell the girl sitting next to me on the plane!

Until now, when they asked me what I did for a living, they started yawning three seconds later. Now I’m flying to a huge tango festival in Minsk as a tango DJ and dancer. Picked up at the airport like a VIP, everything is taken care of.

Living in Venice, I was lucky with the high-level international tango crowd that visited the city and, being tango addicts, often organized the timing of their weekend in Venice so that it coincided with one of my events. Being passionate not only when dancing but also as an organizer I didn’t rest until I had 13.000 international dancers following my events. In tango, that is a huge number.

The dancing with my wife was a great new way of being close, and that was exciting. We became a well-known and inspiring tango couple, and this was the cherry on the cake of our already great relationship. Our house was filled with guests who came for our ‘milongas,’ and I enjoyed having the image of the sought after organizer, dancer, and DJ.

After a few years of this, I was sharing playbills with the best DJs in Europe and decided to stop DJ-ing before people would find out that I wasn’t that good at all. It didn’t change a thing. I had already stopped taking tango lessons a long time before. It didn’t matter.

After seven years, I stopped organizing tango events, and that didn’t matter either. The ‘organizer-dancer-DJ’ image was rock solid, and we were still invited to tango events all over the world.

At first, I thought that my extraordinary dance skills were the cause of this success (all starting tango dancers pass through this delusional stage), but later I understood what the secret of our success was. It’s not the technical part of the dance that is valued most by dancers.

The secret to tango dancing lies in transmitting the emotions and in the quality of connection in the embrace. It’s my personal conviction that passion trumps technique. Many dancers don’t acknowledge this.

In the international “Tango World” thousands of addicts fly around the world almost every weekend, spending all their money and free time to celebrate this passion. Many are alone, and couples don’t always survive when there are so many temptations (and there are!).

People in the tango world know that they will find new partners next weekend and don’t feel the urge to settle. Women outnumber men, and that can be tough and lead to competition. A passionate and happy, well-dressed tango couple that radiates positive energy is welcome at any event. I finally realized that it was also thanks to my beautiful and patient wife that I was a popular dancer – and of course, this was symbolic for my entire existence. Lately, our son started dancing too, and it’s great to meet in faraway places and share this passion with him also.

In tango, as in life, it takes time to understand that yes, it is important to apply yourself, study and invest time and energy to become a great technician. The difference between a good technical dancer and a dancer who shares emotions while dancing is comparable to the difference between someone who is good at building a career and someone who understands and helps the people around them.

We eventually accepted and appreciated that we are getting older, I guess. The advantage of having some life experience in tango, as in life, is key. It makes one understand their (dance) partner better, and that offers a better connection and often deepens the emotions. I am very thankful and proud of the good things life brought us, and this insight made any trace of midlife-crisis disappear. No crisis can beat the effect of all the positive attention that comes my way when I walk at the side of my beautiful wife. The positive confirmation received by astonishing tango-ladies might also help a bit.

Generally speaking, sharing a passion with your partner is very important to survive the decades of luring temptations, boredom, or other threats to a good relationship. Learning to trust each other completely, enjoy each other’s happiness without being jealous is not always easy.

Arriving at that point took us some time, but now we have a powerful feeling that nothing can separate us. Not even rumors spread by the envious or ignorant few that exist in every subculture can harm us. If only they knew how we beat that crisis and celebrate life now!

Tango dancing at a certain level gives you all kinds of satisfaction. At a tango marathon weekend, we dance 40 hours with many different dancers. Being happy for each other when you see your partner having a moment of ‘Tango High’ is priceless. The admiring and understanding wink from her when I dance turns very good tango into tango bliss and thus a very good relationship in a spectacular one!

I guess this sense of joyful “complicity” in a couple can be achieved by sharing any other passion, and therefore I strongly advise you to go and find one!