Buenos Aires (Argentina), the 9th May, 2010

Last class of Tango in Buenos Aires


Have I become a prude? A little bit muslim, perhaps?
Am I a control freak?!

Yes, I am (the answer to this one is kind of obvious). I control all my life, the direction of my career, my work team, the private relationships I cherish and protect from harm,etc. I control everything around me except for the part where God/Destiny/Universal Order commands (which is 80% of it all, I presume...).


Why am I perceived as a sexy tiger released on stage - not my words, folks! - and perform in what it seems to be, in the world's public opinion, the sexiest dance in the world and, suddenly, I feel so shy to dance TANGO?!

I've mentioned it before: As I dug into Buenos Aires Tango scene, I found out what I already suspected: Tango is 1000 times more sensuous and sexual than Oriental Dance.

I also found out another tricky question: being an Oriental Dancer who is used to choose what to do with the music, how and when to move on my own terms is not easy to enter a new dance discipline where the MAN (not me) decides where we will go, when and how. Letting someone else take me by his arms is a difficult thing to do, in life as in dance. Tango, as opposite to Oriental Dance, is a male-authority dance and, therefore, a huge challenge for someone - like me - who totally denies any kind of authority over herself.
Here's a new territory to explore!

Back to the sensuality part of the subject:
More flesh is exposed in Tango, the woman is carried around by the man in what it seems to be a poetic preparation to passionate love making and both feet move along speaking of fire and encounters one on one.
Compared to Tango, I feel Oriental Dance - or Belly Dance - could be a recreational activity for nuns and priests at their retreated monasteries backyards. I am not joking.
Angel Coria (www.angelcoria.com) - the wonderful dancer and teacher - who gave me this last tango session practicaly had to drag my hands towards his body and make me hug him like they do in Tango...it was all so unnatural to me...the kind of attitude, feeling and movement I exclusively have with my man, in the privacy of our intimate space, in the context of a personal, loving relationship. Not in dance, not on stage. This resulted very hard and strange for me.
Now here's the thing: I am a professional dancer and actress. I've been doing this all my life and dance is, I suppose(???), just dance but I still had a hard time letting go and felf shy and uptight all the way.
In a dim lighted dance school in the down town of Buenos Aires (in the Broadway zone of the city), I challenged myself - again - and all my tabus towards my body and my own sexual expression.
Then I asked around and commented the subject with another dancers of the event and one of them came with a curious possible solution to the dilema: In Oriental Dance, the sensuous relationship I establish is between me and my own body so it doesn't feel so openly sexual. At the same time and because I am directly exposed to the audience, people perceive it as openly sexual.
In Tango, that same relationship happens between two separate bodies and there is an actual sexual chemistry between a man and a woman. Now that feels sexual, all right!
From the audience's perspective, though, this sensuality shared between two bodies is not so openly felt because it happens between these two bodies and not directly between a woman's body and her audience.

I get that. I may even agree with that.
What challenged and irritated me was my own limitations when it comes to sharing such intimacy with a strange man, even if this is done through dance and with artistic purposes.
I am supposed to be the belly dancer, the woman who has it all figured out when it comes to sensuality. Right?

I was so shy and blocked that I decided: as soon as I return to Cairo, I'm gonna work on this subject. Tango lessons it is.

Cause I might be an unexpected nun hidden in belly dancer's cloth but I am not a looser and this bull has to be grabbed by its horns.