sudden progress

Today we went to a concert of Gotan Project here in Belgrade. I haven’t heard the new album and didn’t know what to expect, but we had a blast – one tanguera organized a special space for all of us for dancing, and so we swayed excitedly to the sound of Gotan. So, I was very inspired, but I noticed something more in my dance: A feeling of improvement.

It’s one of those feelings when you suddenly realize that you can feel the embrace more deeply, or you move a lot more easily or something else entirely. These moments are becoming more and more rare, but at the time when you’re about to start missing and looking  forward to them, you also find out that where you are right now is quite nice and enjoyable too. Still, they’re as wonderful to feel as ever when they do appear out of the blue.

What I’ve noticed is that tango is possibly the only place where I simply know those moments will occasionally happen. I dance for pleasure and I practice in class, and so they’re an logical and inevitable occurrence. On the other hand, at the same time I can’t think of anything else in which I’ve had this feeling lately. I’m very capable in activism, but who knows how much better I can be – I am yet to systematically practice what I preach. My Japanese is deteriorating and I really want to (and need to, due to my final exam) work on it. I started and loved doing kick-boxing, but after the summer break I got sick and two months later I’m still not cured enough to be certain I can do intense exercise.

Forgetting my current circumstances for a moment, I can’t really remember the last time I made such visible progress in something. Perhaps in Japanese, a year or two ago, but I didn’t get anywhere near the point where you’re confident in using the knowledge you have, even if perhaps you’re still not at an intermediate level.

This is bad, because that feeling – the sudden awareness of progress – is evidence of your focus on a certain thing, which I think is one of the most important parts of a human being. Yet, while there seems to be no reason to avoid focused work which can bring you so much joy, somehow right now I manage doing it only in tango. Why?

to be continued

 

unpredictable change – learning vals

While I started dancing milonga pretty much by accident, with vals it was a different story. I wasn’t afraid of dancing it – I just didn’t get it. There would be a few songs that I liked, but in general they all sounded similar and, well, uninspiring. I couldn’t connect to them in any way – until about two months ago, when suddenly I  could.

They just started to make sense. I could feel the emotion in them, the way they build their energy like a grand spiral, a swooping continuous pulsation, not stopping until the last beat. I loved it.

What I find amazing is how sudden and unforeseeable this change was. Like learning a language, one day a certain sentence is meaningless and the next it just makes sense. Our problem, I would say, is that I think we often forget this – just because a change isn’t clearly visible as some continuous, gradual improvement, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening.

What we should remember, then, is that if we are putting in the hours, doing the right things and being present while we do so, change will happen. We might not be able to predict when, mostly we have no idea what our work will bring in the future and sometimes we’re also not sure if what we’re doing will produce results at all. But that’s the beauty of it, wouldn’t you say?