Quotes on Connection
“Striving to be ourselves while we learn to pay attention to others can be a transformative experience. As a result of the creative process of learning and dancing the tango, an encounter takes place between what is inside you and what is inside your partner. This connection is magical and uplifting… To date, there seems to be no limit to the depth this shared experience can reach. Enthusiasts sometimes resemble spiritual seekers as they work to refine their lead and follow sensitivity, so that they might detect increasingly more subtle changes in posture, position, or energy. This heightened sensitivity awakens our deepest intuitive and creative forces, and sets them to music.”
- Sharna Fabiano
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“I play with my partner; we listen to each other; we mirror each other; we connect with what we hear. He doesn’t know where I’m going, I don’t know where he’s going, yet we anticipate, sense, lead, and follow each other. There is no agreed-upon structure or measure, but once we’ve played for five seconds there is a structure, because we’ve started something. We open up each other’s minds like an infinite series of Chinese boxes. A mysterious kind of information flows back and forth, quicker than any signal we might give by sight or sound. The work comes from neither one artist nor the other, even though our own idiosyncrasies and styles, the symptoms of our original natures, still exert their natural pull. Nor does the work come from a compromise or halfway point (averages are always boring!), but from a third place that isn’t necessarily like what either one of us would do individually. What comes is a relevance to both of us. There is a third, totally new style that pulls on us. It is as though we have become a group organism that has its own nature and its own way of being, from a unique and unpredictable place…”
- Stephen Nachmanovitch
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“In playing together, there is a real risk of cacophony, the antidote to which is discipline. But this need not be the discipline of ‘let’s agree on a structure in advance.’ It is the discipline of mutual awareness, consideration, listening, willingness to be subtle. Trusting someone else can involve gigantic risks, and it leads to the even more challenging task of learning to trust yourself. Giving up some control to another person teaches us to give up some control to the unconscious.”
- Stephen Nachmanovitch
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“The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.”
- Mikhael Baryshnikov
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“Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully, and with inevitability.”
- Martha Graham
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“I would like to see more awareness of two people, really, truly connecting with each other. Not just the physical connection, not the eye contact, but something coming from inside, from their souls until they become one. This true emotion, and motion that the partnership brings out that richness of a dance. They become strong and intense through that connection. And they draw the audience with them.”
- Hanna Karttunen
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“To dance is to be out of yourself and in yourself at the same time. Those whom you encompass need only to look . . . because they are inside of you when you dance.”
- Eva Cernik
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“Tango dancers have the opportunity to become, in a sense, intuitive experts in body chemistry and body language. The tango connection, or embrace, is a way to develop tremendous sensitivity to the movement and language or the body as we synchronize with each partner. If our objective is the most comfortable and expressive dance possible, it’s in our best interest to pay close attention to the subtle gestures of our partner’s body, how he or she takes a particular step or simply the position of his or her shoulders. Noticing these details, often unconsciously, helps us to establish a better sensual connection, or better chemistry with that person. This highly tuned sensitivity and ability to adapt and synchronize is a defining characteristic of the very greatest tango dancers in the world. If, in addition to becoming sensitive, we deliberately apply positive intentions like enthusiasm, generosity, and sweetness to our dances with others, the tango becomes exceptional, even transformational.”
- Sharna Fabiano
