doble-ocho

Interview : Komala Vos

by Marij Faessen

translated by Arnoud de Graaff

Tango teacher Komala Vos has been involved for 18 years in El Corte. High time to ask komala how she experienced her time in El Corte, and what tango means to her. Marij Faessen interviewed Komala.

How did you get acquainted with tango?
I lived in Groningen and danced salsa. Somewhere I heard about tango. I started to look for it and finally I found something. I started to dance tango, at first in Groningen and later in Amsterdam, where I met Eric during the Netherlands first and last tango dance competition in 1990. After the competition I visited El Corte for the first time. This was in 1990. For some years I regularly went to El Corte. I didn’t take lessons, but managed to do a lot of workshops. After some years I started to take classes in El Corte. I travelled from Groningen to Nijmegen for the lessons and stayed for a few days. I slept in El Corte. I travelled from Groningen to Nijmegen and vice versa for about 4 or 5 years. In 1997 I managed to get a house in Nijmegen and finally moved to Nijmegen.

What did the dance to you?
It stimulated my feminity. Before that I never wore dresses and never walked on high heels. It has something provocative, it provokes you, it has a connection to how you live your life. It also enriches your life. It challenges you to do things within your self. Tango is never complete, you always make a connection with another person, it also is a learning process. Tango is a connection of the heart. Tango focuses on the inside, the connection you make, the meeting without words. For me it was a drive, I wanted to dance and it still feels like a passion. In time I found more peace in it.


What are your tango highs and lows?
I always find it fascinating to dance with someone who brings you in another dimension, so that you find something new in yourself and that you move together in the music.
A low is not a good word, but you always will fall back on yourself. Old habits will return and you can have the feeling that you are not ‘growing’ anymore. You constantly have to engage something within yourself, if you want to learn something. Your dance is what you are.

What does the dance with people? What strikes you most when you see what is happening?
You see people enjoying themselves, developing themselves through dancing tango, a social developing and getting to know their body. I always find it beautiful to watch them discovering how their body functions in the dance. As a teacher I always enjoy watching this happen, both on an individual and a group level.
You really have to go though phases to progress in tango, a discovery and deepening at the same time. It deepens and at the same time returns in another form. That is why I find followers and following fascinating, because as a follower I experienced it all.

How do you view your role as teacher?
I want to provide the dancers with what they need in order to dance together, while respecting the music.

How did you start to teach?
I never intended to start teaching, but because I was often in El Corte, people asked me: how do you do this or how are we supossed to do that? After that they asked me why I didn’t teach tango. I naturally roled into being a teacher. At first I taught with Eric and after that I started to teach at Tuesday with Miro, with Michael followed taeching a class on Sunday. Now I teach with Eric and Stefan.


What are the most important abilities a tango teacher should have?
You certainly will have to like what you do. You do have to have an insight in the way people move. Being enthousiast is also important. I like to work with people and their bodies, I am a bodily orientated person, but I am also an emotional dancer. I encounter the dance from what I feel, with the courage to feel. I find it important to help people find their own way, so that they can go on. I just transfer and hand out what I know and this is my task as a teacher.

How have you experienced the evolution of El Corte?
I still treasure the thought about the first time I came to the Knollenpad. Eric is a very inspiring person. He hands people a lot of material for dancing. In the beginning only incidentally people from outside El Corte did come to the Knollenpad. Gradualy more and more people found their way to El Corte. People from all over the world (japan, America, etc.) visit us. This has to do with the fact that Eric teaches everywhere and that (as aconsequence) they come to dance in El Corte. What is more, Eric is a perfect host, he knows everybody by name, he is reliable and true to his milongas. He never missed one, he is always there.
That is what it makes it so special for me, I felt welcome in El Corte the first time and still feel it this way. In the early days there were less people, it felt more genial, jovial. Now there are more people and it all feels more structered. Eric had to impose a limit for dancers during chained salons. Also the level of dancing is higher than it was 18 years ago. I think that the highest level of then is the intermediate level of today. In the beginning there just weren’t dancers with 20 years of dance experience. Also Eric has evolved enormously as a teacher in those 20 years.

read the complete interview here