Posts
My post ‘Learning something from trees‘ appears to have interested my dowsing colleagues that explore and exercise their personal energy; but surprisingly also, my friends who dance tango.
For those few that are not yet familiar with Argentine tango as danced in Buenos Aires (in contrast the the European pastiche), let me start by sharing a few truths.
More than the deadliest virus, once infected with Argentine tango, colonisation is rapid. Your social media fills with classes, events, milongas – your vocabulary embraces ochos, sacadas, boleos, colgadas – your wardrobe becomes populated by tango clothes and shoes – and frequently, non-dancing friends fall by the wayside as you become more and more fixated on your new obsession. Symptoms involve a craving that transcends normal preoccupation. It can be a lifelong dependence for which there is no known remedy.
The reason for such obsession is not what you might have thought. Alright, there may be romance – the late night milonga (the social event devoted to tango), gorgeous Golden Age tango music, a beautiful partner in your arms. Yet it is that which happens quite spontaneously within the tango embrace that really triggers this compulsive behaviour. ‘The magic’ emanates from the embrace in which you or your partner need be neither young nor beautiful. It all turns on energy, and how we deploy it in movement.
In dance, electrical events known as ‘action potentials‘ (rapid sequences of voltage differential across a membrane) cause neurons to release the pleasure inducing neurotransmitters of dopamine (movement), serotonin, norepinephrine (brain), and various endorphins (inhibitory neurotransmitters). What is it in dance that triggers that process? And what evolutionary advantages justify the release of such a pleasure hit?
With age, practice, experience and skill, tangueros appear to develop an electrical charge. Atoms and their pairs of electrons line up to create an energy field that is manifest within the embrace, sometimes subtle and occasionally dynamic. Studies show that, irrespective of steps (for Argentine tango is systematically unstructured) or experience, dancers’ breathing and heart rates synchronise.
Sharing of energy through symbiotic synchronicity seems essential for both trees and humans, perhaps because of a long-lost shared heritage where 50% of our DNA is in common with trees. But more staggeringly, our genes and DNA structure more closely associate us with the mycelium that envelops their roots and occupies our gut.
Might it be our shared match with mushrooms that causes us to dance?
