Overcoming your fears – learning the milonga

I remember the time when I couldn’t dance to either milonga or vals. Every time a tanda would come up with one of these two, I would sit it out, because I didn’t know what to do – I liked the milongas but they seemed way too fast for me, and vals I simply didn’t get.

The silly part is that I decided all of this without having actually tried dancing to them, and I realized this when I noticed some of our beginners dancing to them, even though they’ve been dancing for only 2 or 3 months.

I know how they looked at us when we, the “advanced” dancers, danced, with the same sparkle in their eyes which I remembered when I was starting out “They are amazing. When will I be able to do all of that?”. And yet, I don’t know if they were aware that they were currently a lot more courageous than me.

That’s because of the main reason I wasn’t dancing during those tandas: I was becoming fairly confident with my tango, and suddenly, in front of everyone, I had to become a beginner all over again. I felt like I had a lot more to lose than our beginners. My ego wouldn’t allow it.

Then one night, I was dancing with Milena to a good, strong tanda, and when it was over we were really energized and looking forward to the next one. An unusual song started, familiar in the tip-on-your-tounge sort of way, but one I haven’t heard often enough. There was something strange about it, but I had no idea what it was, so we started dancing to it.

Halfway through realization dawned, but I think I waited until the end when I said “Wait, wasn’t this a slow milonga? A milonga?”. “Yes, and we danced to it! You danced to it!”, she said excitedly. Another one was coming up, a faster one, and we decided to carry on. By the end of the tanda we were having so much fun, and suddenly milonga was no more a bogeyman for me.

On the one hand, you could say I learned how to dance milonga by accident. But in fact, there were a lot of circumstances which were just right: a strong first tanda to get the energy going, my partner with whom I’m the most confident and a slow milonga to ease you into the faster ones ahead.

Also, I was good enough to be able to pull it off, without really knowing it. What I did notice at the time was that my dance was getting simpler, with short, rhythmic steps, lots of changing of weight and so on – like it was adjusting itself for a milonga. So, when I danced it for the first time, it all simply clicked.

I had everything going for me, but all that time I lacked the courage to make that one small first step. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I had any real idea of when I would start dancing the milonga – I guess I wanted to practice it in class first, until I felt I was good enough to dance it at a milonga.

But good enough for what, for whom? For my expectations of myself? For the expectations I though other people had of me and my dance? Instead of being proud of having the courage to try something, even if it means first fumbling a bit, I was being held by such misplaced thoughts and fears.

At the time I believed that in what we fear lies the path of our growth, but now I had a better idea of how to face it in the future. Sometimes the only thing you should fear is fear itself. Always try to see what the source of your fear is, and whether it is really that big of a deal, whether it’s worth holding you back. In the end, I think most fears aren’t.