One hundred and twenty beats per minute is a good place to
be. I feel alive. I feel strong. I feel somehow connected to a very deep corporeal
place. Some people mistakenly identify
this feeling as spiritual. However, I
would suggest that to do so diminishes the strength of what this feeling really
is. This hundred and twenty beats connects us with the rhythm of the earth…
with the air… breathing… moving… sweating… a cadence of passion… the pulse of life… This tempo is not worship, it is a dance. One hundred and twenty beats is the heartbeat
of the Tango.
It was not at a dance studio that I became aware of this. It was not as a moved my feet… my body…
myself… holding my wife in frame on a dance floor. No… it was at a fitness center. It was there that this notion occurred to
me. The Tango rhythm is the rhythm of
fitness. Fitness is the rhythm of
health. Health is the rhythm of the
body. The body is the rhythm of
passion. Passion is the rhythm of love. Love is the rhythm of Tango.
As a result of a decision to concentrate all of our efforts
on only the Rumba and the Tango, my observations about a hundred and twenty
beats did not materialize within the isolation of a single dance. With that in mind, it becomes appropriate for
me to compare 120 beats with 100 beats.
I suppose there are some more knowledgeable than me about
the meter of various dances, and they might argue the specifics of beats per
minute for any given dance. It is my understanding that typically the Rumba and the Tango are danced at approximately 100 and 120
beats per minute respectively. However,
for the moment, I would like to think of this in a more non-numeric sort of
way.
One hundred beats per minute is two people connected. It might be a touch from a lover. It might be a kiss. It may be nothing more than a thought… that causes our body to react.
However, the two people do not have to be lovers. It could be yourself and a stranger walking
behind you on a lonely sidewalk at night.
You hear footsteps and you wonder if the stranger is a threat. Your body begins to send out those primal
hormones, and your pulse quickens. You
are getting ready for a flight or fight response.
This is the rhythm of the Rumba. One hundred beats per minute. It is getting ready… it is anticipation. It is being suspended… tantalized… Dictated by the unwavering laws
of mathematics that regulate the music, the dance of the Rumba, the
tantalizing, tormenting, tease of the Rumba constrains us. It gets us close, but then pulls us back. We want to go faster, but can't. I personally think this is one of the Rumba’s
greatest attractions.
One hundred and twenty beats per minute is a completely
different rhythm. It is no longer a
tease, but a pursuit. The fight or
flight reaction has moved from ready to release. It has gone from thinking about it to doing it. Whether it is running away from that stranger
behind you on a dark sidewalk at night, or turning to attack and eliminate the
threat; action has commenced. Raw, primal, animalistic survival has taken over.
It is here that the most basic of human responses become reality. There is, in fact, very little difference between what drives us to defend ourselves when threatened, and that which motivates us to engage our lover. One hundred and twenty beats is no longer teasing foreplay,
it is love’s journey begun. It is love’s
battlefield, where two people are engaged in a struggle. It is give and take; take and give. It is breath and sweat. It is not quitting. It is endorphins. It is pleasure... and if I'm doing it right, when my pulse matches the music, one hundred and twenty beats is Tango… and as
they say, “It takes two to Tango.”
