doble-ocho

Interview with Toine Straatman, one of the teachers of El Corte

Toine Straatman has been dancing tango for 15 years and together with his wife Monique he teaches tango in El Corte. Toine has been involved with El Corte for many years now as a dancer and a teacher. Marij Faessen interviewed Toine about his life in El Corte.

How did you start dancing?
I always liked dancing. My whole family loves to dance. I wanted to become a balletdancer, but my father put a stop to that. I often danced in school musicals. I often was the only boy who danced, but that didn’t bother me at all. When I was 15 I started ballroom dancing. I was very enthousiast and, together with friends, we rode by moped to places where dances were organized.
I completely lost myself in Astor Piazzolla’s music. After a short braek from dancing, I felt the need to start dancing again. I had seen a documentary of Wouter and Martine when they visited Buenos Aires. It really moved me. I started to look for tango in the Netherlands. In Arnhem tango lessons were given, but I was too late; the course had already started.
During carnival in Huissen I met an acquaintance who told me that there was also a tango school in Nijmegen. She gave me Eric’s phone number. Next day I immediately contacted Eric. Next sunday (I seem to remeber it was 3-3-1993) I went to the Knollenpad and watched the lessons from the fishbowl.
At the end of the evening Piazzolla’s Milonga del Angel was played. It made my flesh creep, I was hooked on tango. I started to dance and after a few months, I visted my first milonga, where I sat in a corner and just watched. A woman made eyes at me and finaly convinced me to dance. That was Komala. She was the first ‘strange woman’ I danced with during a milonga.

What did tango do for you?
At first tango was a creative expression, purely the dance itself. Soon I noticed that the dance, the emotion, the music and the social context also had an influence on me. Apart from the steps I gained insight how other men and women reacted to me and vice versa. This is a multi layered phenomenon. Tango is a mirror of your soul. I experience tango as a catalyst for emotions, which enriched my life and became a tool for achieving a more harmonious life. Tango opend my soul.
I have always continued dancing and teaching, also during dark and confronting phases in my life (such as the death of my parents). This only made tango more valuable to me.
As a tango teacher I sometimes notice that dancers get into a personal crisis (and sometimes even stop to dance tango), because of who they are, how they feel, but also because how a partner responds to them. For me, this confrontation is the challenge to find myself in a way that is otherwise impossible. It sounds therapeutic, what certainly is not a goal of tango, but something I experience as inherent to the situation.
Now I realise that tango is more than a dance, the technique, the steps, choreographies but also the emotional aspect ... and where they meet. I find it intriging to see all those layers in other peoples dancing and how they deal with it.

In what way did tango change your life?
Tango made it possible for me to become a more harmonious person. It taught me to get to know myself better and also to see and value other peoples’ inner beauty. It became clear to me who I am and what I can mean for others.
As a dancer I noticed that I can give other people a lot of happiness ... or not. Because tango is extremely dualistic. Tango has two sides: on one side there is euphoria, but on the other side you see frustration. The music, compositions and lyrics show great variations, for every emotion there is a matching tango. For me tango is a dance I sometimes want to dance, sometimes want to listen to or just watch it and also there are periods that I want to put some distance between me and tango.

What was your tango high? And what was your tango low?
Tango is a series of highs for me, because I soon learned to enjoy the the smal things in tango. My tango low was when I had a hip injury which made it impossible to dance for three months. I really did miss it. In summer I often take a tango time out, but when a time out is forced on you it feels different.

Can you define tango in one sentence?
Tango is a way of achieving total harmony in 3 minutes time span.

read the complete interview here

Interview :Marije Faessen

Translation : Arnoud de Graaff