Yerpun Castro
More important than how I teach is why I teach
Like many students, I began tango by learning steps.
Before I went to Buenos Aires, I had no idea what was waiting for me. I thought I was dancing well. I knew the movements. I knew the patterns. I was full of passion for tango.
Then I began dancing in the milongas.
I was alone in a new country, surrounded by people who knew a world I was only beginning to understand.
There were dancers I dreamed of dancing with. Women who seemed almost out of reach. You could walk into the milonga or leave, and they would barely notice.
I wasn’t the dancer they wanted to dance with.
And when you are alone, far from home, not being seen or chosen can feel very lonely.
I had arrived in Buenos Aires thinking I knew how to dance. Little by little, that idea became harder to hold.
So I started paying attention.
I stopped thinking about what I was going to do next. I stopped waiting for the right moment to use something I knew.
I paid attention to the music.
To the embrace.
To my partner.
To what was happening between us.
I began to see that everything is connected.
The dialogue between two bodies is connected to the music, to the space they share, and to all the other couples dancing around them.
Nothing happens on its own.
Eventually, the invitations began to come.
I had learned the dance. But I had not yet learned how to dance.
The classroom taught me the foundations. The milongas in Buenos Aires taught me what tango really is.
That experience changed the way I teach.
When a student is struggling with one thing, I don’t always ask them to focus harder on it.
I ask them to widen their attention.
To see the music, the partner, the space, and themselves as part of the same thing.
Because sometimes the answer is not in the thing you are trying to fix.
It is in the relationship between things.
And when you pay attention to the whole, you begin to see what is possible.
You don’t always need to know what comes next.
My Wish
My wish is that people discover more than tango.
That they discover the joy of giving their full attention to another human being, find confidence without needing to prove themselves, and experience the quiet happiness that appears when two people truly meet in an embrace.
If that happens, then tango has already given us something beautiful.
— Yerpun Castro