Feeling, music, dance

I’m beginning to suspect the mystery is prior to music/dance. I think it may lie in feeling and kinesthetic expression of feeling. I think it is time I reread this book

Author: Damasio, Antonio R.
Title: The feeling of what happens : body and emotion in the making of consciousness / Antonio R. Damasio. Edition: 1st ed. Publisher, Date: New York : Harcourt Brace, c1999. Description: xii, 386 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

I’ve got these chunks and I’m trying to figure out a relationship so that I can then fill in the gaps. I might have first encountered this puzzle metaphor in this book

Author: Gendlin, Eugene T., 1926-
Title: Focusing / Eugene T. Gendlin. Edition: 2nd ed., new rev. instructions. Publisher, Date: New York : Bantam Books, 1981. Description: xii, 174 p. ; 18 cm.
Series: A Bantam new age book

I’ll start by naming a continuum: outer dance and inner dance. Outer dance is the dance we see when we watch a couple dance tango. Outer dance is the dance that we learn in class, the walk, ochos, giros, ganchos, etc. These techniques have a developed vocabulary. My confession is this. I’ve danced with dancers much better than myself who did all these things really well. I was miserable and bored. I admit the necessity of the outer dance but it is not sufficient for me. If the outer dance were all there was to tango I wouldn’t dance it.

The inner dance has a language of allusions, “tango moment”, “tango trance”, “tangasms”. (I’m not sure “allusion” is the best word here but then maybe it is.) I think the inner dance is much more closely related to the music and to feeling than is the outer dance. The inner dance is not separate from the outer dance it is rather a further refinement of it. It is the quality with which we do the steps and moves of the outer dance as well as other things. Are we listening to the music? Are we aware of our breath? Our partner’s breathing and heartbeat? Feeling our feet against the floor?

The outer dance allows us to dance kinda sorta with anyone else who shares our vocabulary. The inner dance discriminates strongly between those we have a rapport with and those we don’t. No rapport, no inner dance. The inner dance is why I bother to learn and dance the outer dance. The inner dance is the only reason I dance tango. My feeling that I don’t spend near as much time dancing the inner dance as I do dancing the outer dance is my motivation for this writing. My problem is I want a lot more inner dance than I’m getting. I don’t have the solution. More classes isn’t the solution to this problem. There are dancers far more advanced than I who won’t or can’t share the inner dance with me. I don’t have a solution. This writing is part of my search for a solution.