Why is Pugliese hard to dance

Can you dance to Pugliese?

I had a very interesting conversation the other day with a friend of mine who is dancing for some years and he told me that he doesn’t like and cannot dance to Pugliese. He reminded me of myself a few months ago when I was writing a similar opinion in a post.

Given my previous post about the motion, musicality, and emotion in dancing and my recent experiences in Pugliese tandas. I think I can now give a better explanation of why many people find it difficult to dance to Pugliese and enjoy the dance. His music is deeply emotional… dramatic… going to the extreme points of passion, anger, pain, love, etc.

If you just try to move your body and do the steps based on the moves you learned… it’s certain that you will not feel any pleasure in your dance. If you get to the next level and manage to analyze his music and pick elements to synchronize your dance to… you can feel a bit more pleasure when you finish the tanda but still, you will think that something is missing.

I love Pugliese!

Pugliese’s demand

So, I believe that, since Pugliese’s music goes to the extreme, it requires you to go to the extreme too, to really enjoy him. His music doesn’t ask…. it demands from you to open up your soul, rip your heart into pieces, and expose and present yourself to your partner in a way that makes you vulnerable. Then… when both of you really open up yourselves and trust each other not to hurt you (physically and emotionally) in those ten minutes of the tanda… then… and only then… you can really enjoy his music and your dance.

But then it is not even a dance… it is something so much deeper I cannot even explain in words. Only when you experienced it you can understand it. I did not have many such tandas so far… but the few of them I have danced, I know I will remember for as much as I can.

The real difficulty

The problem we have, however, is that we usually feel difficulty opening up so much, especially at such an intimate level and even more so to a stranger. Our societies today tend to not pay attention to our emotions… do not encourage this openness… and often hurt us when we do open up… many of us have such wounds hidden in our souls… thus it takes a lot of work with one’s self in order to be able to reach this level of emotional peace that will make you comfortable with opening up… and this is why we find Pugliese difficult.

Tonight’s Goodnight Tango

We find his music difficult to dance to because he challenges us as the title of tonight’s Goodnight Tango says to follow him if we can. He demands everything from us, doesn’t compromise with anything less than that, and promises us a state of dance we will never forget.