爱的艺术

探戈中最重要的规则之一是不责备，批评或指教你的舞伴。老舞棍们严格遵循这个规则，因为他们知道后果。最近，我的两个学生大吵了一架。起初也许是出于好心，她对他的带领提了点意见。他为自己辩解，并对她的跟随说了些什么。结果对话升级成了侮辱，并以两颗心的破碎而告终。他们也许不会再与对方跳舞了。

学习探戈就象学习语言，而且需要差不多长的时间。任何学探戈不到五年的人都算是新手，而新手是最沮丧恼怒的人。他们想跳好，但不知道怎么跳。有许多东西他们都不知道，包括规则和礼仪。每个新手都有许多毛病，而且都对别人有看法。有经验的舞者不与他们跳舞。所以他们只能自己一块儿跳，并为各自的毛病互相指责。五十步笑百步的讽刺是同类相讥。当一个人指责对方僵硬时，对方可能也在这样想。等他们学会了步子，感情也伤害了，关系也破裂了。

初学者往往没有意识到，不管你喜欢与否，跟你在一起学探戈的人是你探戈生涯中最重要的人。在很长一段时间内你可能都会与他们跳舞。每个社区中跳探戈的人是有限的。这些人是被命运召到一起来的。大家最好彼此接受对方，并给对方提高的时间。在现实生活中，如果你喜欢一个人，你对她说她很美丽。如果你说她是丑陋的，她不会跟你出去。若想与别人跳舞，你也得做同样的事。即使你被要求说实话也总是赞美一个人的舞蹈。有多少丈夫在说了实话后被妻子踢下床去的？记住，探戈不只是一个舞蹈。它是一种人际关系。它是爱的艺术。

耶鲁大学艺术史教授罗伯特·法里斯·汤普森在他的著作《探戈，爱的艺术史》中说：探戈“是教世界学会爱的舞蹈。”探戈的精髓是欢迎别人进入你的个人空间，接受那个人，向他委身，放弃你的自我，倾听那人内心的声音和感受，做个体贴，合作，谦让，顺应的人，享受两人间的亲密，与他/她合而为一，并给他/她以安慰，快乐和爱。这与我们的文化所代表的观念，即个人主义，独立性，自我利益，敌对好斗，是不同的。学习探戈是学习如何适应别人，不是要别人适应你。我希望探戈能使我们成为更好的人，用尊重，欣赏和关爱对待别人，接受别人如其所是，并把别人，而不是自己，当作生活和舞蹈的中心。在没有做到这些之前，我们没有足够的资格做探戈舞者，而且也跳不好探戈。

The Art of Love

One of the most important rules in tango is not to blame, criticize or teach your dance partner. Milongueros follow this code strictly because they know the consequence. Recently, two of my students had a big fight. It started out of perhaps a very good intention to help. She said something about his leading. He defended himself and said something about her following. The conversation escalated to insults and ended up with two broken hearts. They perhaps will not dance with each other again.

Learning tango is like learning a language and it takes about as long. Anyone less than five years in tango is a novice. Novices are the most frustrated people. They want to dance well but don’t know how. There are so many things they don’t know, including rules and manners. Each of them has loads of problems, and they all have opinions on each other. Experienced dancers don’t dance with them. So they stick together and blame each other for their own problems. The irony of “the pot calls the kettle black” is that they are two of a kind. When one blames the other for being stiff, the other is likely thinking the same. By the time they have learned the steps, feelings are hurt and relationships broken.

Beginners often don’t realize that, whether you like it or not, the people who are learning tango with you are the most important people in your tango life. You will likely dance with them for a long time. There are only limited people in each tango community. These are the people called together by fate. It’s better to accept each other and give each other time to improve. In real life, if you like someone you tell her how beautiful she is. If you say she is ugly, she will not go out with you. You do the same thing in tango if you want to dance with someone. Always say good things about one’s dance even if you are asked for an honest opinion. How many husbands are kicked out of bed after giving their wives their honest opinion?  Remember, tango is not just a dance. It is a relationship. It is the art of love.

Robert Farris Thompson, professor of the History of Art at Yale University, said in his book, Tango, the Art History of Love, that tango “is the dance that teaches the world to love.” The idea of tango is to welcome another person into your personal space, to accept that person, to surrender, to let go your ego, to listen to the inner voice and feelings of that person, to be considerate, cooperative, yielding and adaptive, to enjoy the intimacy, to be one with that person, and to give comfort, pleasure and love. It is a different idea from what our culture stands for, that is, individualism, independence, self-interests and aggression. Learning tango is learning to accommodate yourself to others, not asking others to adapt to you. Hopefully, tango will make us a better people who treat others with respect, appreciation and attentiveness, accept them as who they are, and put them, instead of oneself, at the center of one’s life and dance. Until then, we are not qualified as tango dancers, and cannot dance well anyway.

妇女在CABECEO中的作用

当一个男人被一个女人所吸引，他第一件事就是盯着她看。他的目光被她捕获，无法自拔。这女人若不想鼓励他，可以忽略他的注视。如果她对他也有些兴趣，便会望着他。受到鼓励的男人若想接近她，或许会对她挤眉弄眼。但他若决定不追她，便或许会把目光移开。这种男女之间的游戏每天都在发生，随处可以见到。

在布宜诺斯艾利斯的探戈舞会上，男人和女人也玩这种游戏。一个男人环顾舞厅，想找一个舞伴。如果他发现了他想与之跳舞的女人，他就凝视着她。这个也在寻找舞伴的女人很快会注意到他。如果她不想同他跳舞，她只需简单地将视线移开。如果她也想同他跳舞，她就把目光锁定在他身上，等待他的邀请。他于是向她点头请舞，她也会点头答应，接受他的邀请。所有这些都是在无言之中远距离完成的。

用这样的方式邀请女人跳舞叫做CABECEO。CABECEO之所以成为阿根廷探戈文化的一部分，主要因为探戈是一种性感而亲密的舞蹈。阿根廷探戈用的是贴身拥抱，在跳探戈时男女双方有相当密切的身体接触。一个女人若要与一个男人有这么亲昵的行为，她必须先有愿望并同意这样做。否则，即使她不情愿地接受了男人的邀请，她也会有所保留，冷漠乏味，不会完全委身于他并满怀激情地同他跳舞。这就是为什么在阿根廷，CABECEO被视为探戈舞的必要组成部分。一个老舞棍不会同一个女人跳舞，除非她明确显示想跟他跳舞的欲望，看着他的眼睛，并以点头微笑回答他的CABECEO。

与口头邀请相比，CABECEO的长处是它允许妇女参与舞伴选择的过程，使她们处于有利的地位。一个女人得有与她舞技和乐感相匹配的舞伴，探戈跳起来才过瘾。要找到这么一个舞伴，她不能在那儿坐等，而必须积极搜寻，而且她得在所有的男人中挑选，不能只在来到她桌前的少许男士中选择。一个阿根廷女人不会坐在那里守株待兔。她会主动出击，率先显示想跟自己选定的男人跳舞的愿望。这样，她吸引那位男士对她做CABECEO，同时也防止自己被她不想与之跳舞的其他男人困扰。

对于男人来说，CABECEO也是邀请女人跳舞的便捷方式。要口头邀请一个女人，男人得绕过舞池，走到她所在的地方。如果女方拒绝，他不但得忍吞尴尬，而且还得绕回自己的座位。界时其他女人可能都已被邀走，要等到该组舞曲结束后他才有下一个机会。而使用CABECEO，他却可以在远距离以外迅速找到愿意跟他跳舞的女伴，不用担心被人在女友们面前在当众谢绝。

要让CABECEO起作用，妇女必须参与其中。如果女人不积极寻找舞伴，男人即使想对她们做CABECEO也不能。但是，要使妇女积极参与，探戈对她们来说必须是非常亲密的私事，以至她们不想跟任何非自己选定的男人跳，就好象她们不想跟任何非自己所爱的男人睡觉一样。CABECEO在美国尚未通行，是因为我们的探戈还没有达到这个水平。大多数本地女子都是探戈新手，尚不能在跳舞时将自己深深陷入。她们采用开式拥抱，与男人很少或根本没有身体接触。她们不委身于男人，也没有感情上的投入。她们坐在那里聊天，对想跟她们跳舞的男人毫不在意。她们既不敢注视男人，也不知对男人的CABECEO如何应对。结果，她们只好坐在那里被动地等待男人前来，并接受任何口头邀请。

具有讽刺意味的是，在“男权主义”的阿根廷，妇女能通过使用CABECEO决定与谁亲近，而在女权主义的美国，妇女在如此私人的事情上却没有多少控制。CABECEO只能产生于成熟的探戈群体。它是妇女积极参与选择的结果，也是她们在探戈中成熟的尺度。这是老舞棍们只用CABECEO来邀请女人跳舞的另一个原因。

Women’s Role in Cabeceo

When a man is attracted by a woman, the first thing he does is looking at her intensely. His eyes are captured, and he cannot take them away from her. The woman may respond either by ignoring the man, if she doesn’t want to encourage him, or looking directly into his eyes, if she too is interested. The encouraged man then may wink or nod at her with intent to approach her, or he may move his eyes away from her if he decides not to pursue. This game between men and women happens everyday, everywhere.

In the milongas of Buenos Aires, this is also the game men and women play. A man looks around the dance hall to search for a partner. If he finds a woman he likes to dance with, he stares at her. The woman, who is also looking for a partner, will soon notice him. If she doesn’t want to dance with him, she simply turns her eyes away. If she wants to dance with him, she fixes her eyes at him and waits for him to invite her. He does so by nodding his head at her, and she responds with a nod of her head to accept his invitation. All these are done remotely without any verbal exchange.

This way of inviting a woman to dance is called cabeceo. Cabeceo becomes a part of Argentine tango culture mainly because tango is a sensual and intimate experience. Argentine tango is danced in a close embrace with considerable body contact between a man and a woman. For a woman to involve in such an intimate activity with a man, she must first have a desire and agree to do so. Otherwise, even if she reluctantly accepts the dance, she will be reserved, cold and dry. She will not completely surrender herself to him and dance with passion and feeling. That is why cabeceo is regarded as a necessary part of tango in Argentina. A milonguero will not dance with a woman unless she shows a clear desire to dance with him—by looking into his eyes and responding to his cabeceo with a nod and smile.

The advantage of cabeceo over a verbal invitation is that it puts women in an advantageous position and allows them to participate in the partner selection process. For tango to be a satisfying experience for a woman, she needs a partner matching her in skills and musicality. To find such a man, she cannot sit there waiting. She has to actively search for him, and she has to search among all men, not just a few that come to her table. An Argentine woman does not sit there waiting for a man to come. She takes initiative in the process by willingly showing her desire to dance with the man of her choice. In that way she invites him to cabeceo her, and prevents herself from being bothered by those whom she doesn’t want to dance with.

For men, cabeceo is also a convenient way to invite a woman. To ask a woman verbally, a man needs to walk across the room to where she is. If the woman rejects him, he not only has to swallow the embarrassment, but also has to walk all the way back to his seat. By then other potential partners may all be taken, and he has to wait till the tanda ends for the next opportunity. Whereas using cabeceo he can quickly and remotely find the woman willing to dance with him without risking being publicly rejected by someone in front of her friends.

For cabeceo to work, women must participate in the process. If women do not actively search for men, men cannot cabeceo them even if they want to. But for women to be active, tango must be an intimate experience so personal to them that they don’t want to do it with anyone other than the men of their choice, just like they don’t want to sleep with anyone other than those they love. The reason cabeceo doesn’t work in America is that our tango hasn’t yet reached that level. Most women here are new to tango and they are not able to dance tango in a deeply personal way. They dance tango in an open embrace with little or no body contact with men. They do not surrender themselves and intimately engage themselves with men in the dance. They sit there chatting and pay no attention to men who want to dance with them. They are too afraid of staring at men, and they do not know how to respond to a cabeceo (See Tango Etiquette: Eye Contact, Talking, Clique and Hierarchy). As a result, they can only wait passively for men to come, and accept any verbal invitation.

It is ironic that in macho Argentina women get to decide with whom they want to be intimate by using cabeceo, while in feminist America women have so little control on a matter so personal to them. Cabeceo is a product of a mature tango community. It results from women’s active participation in the partner selection process. It is a measurement of their maturity in tango. That is another reason why a milonguero only use cabeceo to invite a woman.