Love of Tango Argentina I

GET TANGO, GET HAPPY

Upcoming book By Camille Cusumano

Overview

I went to Buenos Aires in 2006 to stay for two months and get over a broken heart. I ended up staying three years. I found that tango, the way the Argentines do it, heart to heart, was the best therapy in the world. It was like finding the Holy Grail. Tango made me happy. It changed my life forever. I found joy in day-to-day living. Even when things go wrong, I now know there is a “dance step” to improvise to the music. Despite what you may have heard about tango being “a sad feeling that can be danced,” it is a lovely, sensual dance that you cannot do without smiling. I have taught tango to curious friends, to residents in a psychiatric ward in Buenos Aires, to seniors in Calif., to my mother in rehab after breaking her shinbone. Tango is tonic for suffering, mental and physical. I’ve marveled at its subtle, miraculous healing power. Some say it’s in the embrace. Perhaps that is so—after all, this is a dance that raises the common hug to an art form. But there is also the music and the excitement of stepping in time with another to it, and many other intrinsic aspects that make it like no other dance.

I have attended the annual Conference on Tango Therapy in Argentina and met heart doctors, psychologists, nurses, physical therapists, and sexologists who use tango to improve the lives of cardiac patients, to lessen the meds needed for bi-polar disorder, to help troubled couples, to restore balance to those with Parkinson’s or arthritis, and to bring equanimity and confidence to patients with Alzheimer’s. I watched developmentally disabled adults learn tango like nobody’s business. It made me cry. Researchers in North America (at Washington University and McGill) have performed controlled studies to show that Argentine tango (not to be confused with the ballroom dance, American tango) is even better than foxtrot and Tai Chi for all the above. I don’t need the science; I am the evidence. I continue to dance, to bring tango to seniors who are alone, to anyone interested, who believes happiness resides within—and that we’re only dancing on this earth for a short time.

In this book, I’ll tell you more moving stories about many others whose lives have been transformed by tango. I’ll tell you how to get tango into your life. Once you are into tango, inside the sensuality and bliss of it, I’ll talk you through the tender embryonic stages when you are most vulnerable. It can be scary, the intimacy of it. I’ll share my not-so-hidden secrets about the dance. That is to say, everything I know and learned about tango was always right in front of me. And it’ll be right in front of you.

Tango therapy works!

Let me know if you want to be notified when this book is out. Watch for more previews. Next post on Get Tango, Get Happy, here.