Tamas Fülöp Award - The network - Towards Unity For Health

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A Passion
for...
The passion of Paul Akmajian,
Marketing and Outreach Officer,
School of Medicine, University of
New Mexico, USA:
A famous Argentine teacher of mine once
said, “You don’t find the tango. The tango
finds you.” Well, the tango found me and it
became a major passion of mine.
It all began rather innocently in 1998,
when my wife and I decided to try to get
out of the house more and we started taking
some swing dance lessons. They were
quite fun, and one day through a casual
conversation with a friend, the idea of
branching out and trying tango lessons
came up. My initial reaction was “Tango!”.
It seemed very old fashioned and exotic….
I knew virtually nothing about it and questioned
whether or where we would ever get
the chance to dance it outside of classes.
Nevertheless, we signed up for a six-week
class series, and my amazing tango journey
began.
At first, as we struggled through those
early classes, it was maddening and frustrating.
This was social, couple dance requiring
that I lead every step. Many times
I decided that this was it; I was quitting.
I just was not going to get it. Yet, something
kept me coming back… Perhaps the
sweet, sad, nostalgic sounding music, the
social interaction, the wonderful feeling of
embracing your partner and moving around
the floor, or just simply moving your body
to music. Little by little, with time, I gained
confidence and finally reached a point (after
more than a year!) to ‘think’ less and
‘feel’ more. As the vocabulary of the dance
became part of my body memory, I had
fewer tango ‘crises’ and I was able to relax
and enjoy it more.
Little did I know then that this was just
barely the beginning, and that it would
take years and many miles more on the
‘You don’t find the tango. The tango finds you.’
dance floor to get even close to mastering likely Afro-Argentines and Afro-Uruguayans
who originally came over as slaves.
the dance. Nor did I fully realise then how
it would change me and how far it would They brought with them African rhythms
take us, how many wonderful people we such as the candombe, and later, via Cuba,
would meet and wonderful times we would the habanera. These two rhythms form the
have.
earliest origins of the milonga; a dance
predecessor of the tango.
So exactly what is it about the tango that
hooks people How is it that someone As the century progressed, immigrant
like me, who had never done any couple dockworkers from Italy, Germany and elsewhere
in Europe arrived in Argentina in
dancing per se and never even thought of
myself as a good dancer, became addicted great numbers. Living in the poorer barrios
to and adept at a dance so intricate and (neighbourhoods), they brought their own
complex as the Argentine Tango - that now music and instruments, and through mixing
with the residents of the nearby black
I am even teaching it to others
barrios, the tango was born.
The answer is complex and mysterious, but
I think the best explanation I can give is It is said that to become an expert at
that it combines so many things I love into something (anything) requires doing it for
one activity: nice music, hugs, a bit of theatricality
and spontaneity with a physical over my ten-year tango journey, I can say
ten years or 10,000 hours. Looking back
challenge. Combined with that you have a that I have probably become an expert,
unique opportunity to connect deeply - to but I also know how much more I still have
become one - with another human being to learn. It is difficult now to conceive of
for the three minutes of a song.
even a week going by without dancing two
or three times. Tango has taken me to unexpected
places, and in the process I have
Argentine Tango itself has a fascinating
history, going back perhaps as far as 150 made lots of friends and become part of a
years, with the form we are familiar with network of people all over the world who
evolving in Argentina and Uruguay just before
the beginning of the 20 th century. The I have heard there is some good tango in
share my passion…and speaking of that,
very first musicians and dancers were most Bogotá!
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