ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY BEATS PER MINUTE

One hundred and twenty beats per minute; that’s what I saw on the heart monitor as I rode the elliptical machine at the fitness center.  I was about 10 minutes into my workout and glanced down to the information / control panel to check my stats.  My heart rate was 120 beats per minute.  For my age and weight that was perfect.  I was in the zone… a little fast for fat burn, a little slow for cardio.  In another 10 minutes I would be drenched in sweat.  In another 20 I would be gliding along almost effortlessly as the endorphins would begin to kick in.

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.”