Tag:

tango

Karen Shklanka: Spiritual Abandon

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-09-23

As promised, here is another back cover blurb to tempt your appetite for Passionate Embrace: Faith, Flesh, Tango. Karen Shklanka is a local tanguera, poet, and physician. We met in 2009, at the book launch party for her collection of poetry, Sumac’s Red Arms (Coteau Books) and have since become good friends. I was honoured when she agreed to read my manuscript. Here’s her endorsement:
Karen Shklanka, poet, author of Sumac’s Red Arms

“Passionate Embrace is not only a nuanced description of falling in love with Argentine tango, it is a powerful story of healing. Vander Schaaf leads the reader into the dance to share her experience as a beginning tanguera—the spark of curiosity, the awkward beginnings, the surprise of being held tenderly and respectfully in the arms of strangers, and the exquisite moment of spiritual abandon when she inhabits her body anew, awake once again to the unselfconscious joy of movement and beauty of her childhood self. As a professional photographer, Vander Schaaf adds another dimension to the story. Her subtle images transcend tango clichés and capture moments of connection and interiority, inviting the reader to discover this rich and complex social dance and its profoundly textured culture and community.”

2013-09-23 0 comment

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Luci Shaw: Refreshing Surprise

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-09-17

I’m going to allow my brother-in-law, a Manitoba rancher and cattle breeder, introduce poet Luci Shaw’s review of Passionate Embrace.

At a recent family gathering on the prairies, my brother-in-law plunked himself down in the lawn chair across from me, took a long sip of his beer and said, “I hear you’ve written a book.” He’s not a very talkative guy—I’ve known him for four years and I believe this was the first time he’d started a conversation with me. Being a bit startled, the only reply I could manage in the moment was, “Yes.”

“What’s it about?”

Never having pitched my book to a Charolais cattle breeder, I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just trotted out the short version of what I usually say, “It’s a story about how learning to dance Argentine Tango changed how I understand my body and God.”

His eyebrows momentarily disappeared under the visor of his baseball cap. He took another sip of beer, smiled broadly, shook his head and said, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting that.”

I’m not sure what Luci Shaw was expecting when she agreed to read my manuscript, but I love that she found Passionate Embrace to be a “refreshing surprise.” This is what she wrote after reading the book in one sitting:

“This is a sumptuous story, dramatic, literally an invitation to the dance. It made me want to tango along with Sandra. I read it straight through, drawn into it as she was when first invited to tango. She daringly compares learning the dance with learning to pray; each is a movement of faith. That this new venture into physical intimacy was the means of grace that led her to greater spiritual intimacy with God is the refreshing surprise of this striking and moving account of renewal.”

–Luci Shaw, author, Breath for the Bones, and Adventure of Ascent

To learn more about Luci Shaw and her work, go to http://www.lucishaw.com

Originally published on www.passionateembrace.ca, September 2013.

2013-09-17 0 comment

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Celeste Snowber: Embodied Prayer

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-08-28

If books were dancers, I would take special delight in sending Passionate Embrace: Faith, Flesh, Tango onto the dance floor with Celeste Snowber’s Embodied Prayer: Towards Wholeness of Body, Mind, Soul. When I read this inspired book almost twenty years ago, I underlined passages like this:

However we phrase it, men and women are crying out to discover the wildness within them, the passionate, the intuitive, the child, the creative, the part that acknowledges both spirit and body, the part of them that enlivens and fuels them through life. We are tired of being separated from our bodies, we yearn for connectedness, wholeness, and healing.

When I entered the sensually and spiritually rich world of Argentine Tango, Embodied Prayer came off my bookshelves once again, practically begging to be read anew. Fresh meaning infused the words; this time I read it not just with my mind but with my whole body. So it is that I dared to ask Celeste Snowber to provide an advance review of my book. With delight and gratitude, I share her response here:

With Passionate Embrace, Vander Schaaf brings us into a beautiful, vibrant space, filled with visceral details of a life lived authentically. With poetic sensibility, she tells the story of how the beauty of tango lead her on an intimate and profound journey. Vander Schaaf brings spirit and body to all her words, words that celebrate vulnerability, resilience, and yearning. We are led as by a beautiful dance partner, with words that dance on the page.

–Celeste Snowber, PhD, dancer, educator, writer, author of Embodied Prayer: Towards Wholeness of Body, Mind, Soul.

Originally posted on www.passionateembrace.ca, August 2013.

2013-08-28 0 comment

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Carl Leggo: Gifts Given, Gifts Received

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-08-23

I have been witnessing a cascade of miracles over the last several weeks. In truth, I suppose it’s the same miracle happening over and over again, just with different people.

I spent over five years of my life exploring and trying to put into words the miracle that happens in the space between two dancers as they share one song, one breath, together in the spirit of tango. It’s a miracle that never grows old, one that inspires and sustains a yearning for more of the same. What a delight to discover that this same kind of miracle can happen between a writer and a reader on the dance floor of the written word.

As a lifelong book lover, I am no stranger to the sweet communion that sometimes happens when I immerse myself in a good book. It’s the only reason I go to book signing events—to tell the author how much I enjoyed the time we spent together. The thing that’s strange to me is being on the other side of the relationship. Over the last several weeks, at the urging of my publisher, I’ve been sending out review copies of my book with a view to getting comments to serve as back cover blurbs when the book comes out in September. The comments I’ve been getting in response to the book are as dizzying as the most exquisite tangos I’ve experienced on the dance floor. I feel simultaneously overjoyed and humbled, which is a pretty common reaction to a miracle.

In the coming days, I will be posting some of the advance reviews I’ve received for Passionate Embrace. Yes, I’m hoping you’ll be enticed by the comments and eager to get your hands on your own copy of the book, but I also want you to understand that I’m posting these words to testify to the miracle that can happen in the space between two people, whether on the dance floor or between the pages of a book. It is a beautiful thing when a gift is received as it was intended.

Here’s the first blurb:

Passionate Embrace: Faith, Flesh, Tango is a profound song of love, a lyrical testimony to living with humanity, humility, and humour. Vander Schaaf invites us to engage enthusiastically with mysterious questions about identity, desire, and faith, in the midst of memory, disenchantment, and fear. Passionate Embrace pulses with the body’s rhythms as it encourages readers to dance with hopeful wisdom.

–Carl Leggo poet and professor, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, author of View From My Mother’s House

Originally published on www.passionateembrace.ca, August 2013.

2013-08-23 0 comment

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Dancing Tango with Pope Francis

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-03-14

What could Christianity possibly have in common with Argentine Tango? Good question.

Yesterday afternoon, soon after the announcement of the election of an Argentine pope, a CBC reporter and cameraman showed up at the home of local tango instructors Santiago Yanez and Deborah Lynne for an interview and tango demo. Naturally. If the pope is from Argentina, there must be a tango connection, right?

I hope so.

Argentine tango is a dance of improvisation, an act of beauty created by two people in an embrace of mutual humility, mutual generosity, and balanced strength and tension. It requires that the partners be profoundly attentive both to each other — body and soul — and to the spirit and movement of the music. When it all comes together, something exquisite comes into being, and the dancers know they’ve experienced tango at its best.

It was tango at its best that first drew me into Vancouver’s tango community. It was the beauty I witnessed and came to experience — a powerful, transformative Beauty — that kept me coming back, over and over, night after night. Tango inspired me to live a more fully embodied life, healed my broken femininity, and taught me about trust and balance and respect in relationships. What else did I learn? I learned that like any other institution that involves human beings, the tango community can be a place of unpleasant rivalries, hurtful gossip, twisted power dynamics, mean politics, and bad behaviour. And that exquisite embrace? Sometimes, in spite of the most beautiful music and sweetest ambiance, the embrace can be experienced as a place of unwelcome dominance, manipulation, and control, a place where power is willfully exerted over another’s body and spirit. This is tango at its worst.

I’ve tasted the best of tango. I’ve tasted the worst. I persist in my love of this dance because I crave more of its best, more of its beauty, more of its power to change me and to remind me that I am body-soul whole, and beautiful. This is why I am ever hopeful when I step into the embrace of a partner on the dance floor. This is why, when the bandoneon rushes in with its invitation to dance, I dare to hope that we might, together, taste something good and right and true.

At its best, Christianity is a dance of improvisation, a way of life that fosters mutual humility, mutual generosity, a community of servants not power-mongers, a gathering of people who commit to be attentive to each other and to the Spirit of a God of grace, mercy, love, compassion, hope, and transformation. I have tasted the best of this faith. And I have tasted the worst. Christians have made a shameful mess of it more often than not. I am embarrassed to be associated with a religion that has such a long and ongoing history of shameful, shameful, shameful failings. But I can’t ditch the faith. I tried. The thing is, there’s something beautiful here, something holy, something that has taught me that I’m body-soul whole, sacred, and beautiful, and the world is too. And that gives me a hope I can’t explain and can’t let go of.

Yes, judge Christianity. Judge the Church and its leaders and followers. Judge the leaders and followers of every organized religion. But don’t mistake their atrocious failings for the Truth and Beauty they are meant to point to. Don’t mistake the flawed messengers for the message.

One of Pope Francis’s official titles is “Servant of the Servants of God.” This puts him firmly on the same ground we all stand on. He is just as capable of crafting something good and true and lovely in the world as the rest of us. And just as capable of failing miserably at it. Can we see His Holiness as one who is — like us, and with us — invited onto the dance floor to try to bring something beautiful into the world? He will fail, just as we fail. He will succeed from time to time, just as we will. He will hope for more — more grace, more wholeness, more healing, more transformation. Will we?

Originally published on www.passionateembrace.ca, March 2013.

2013-03-14 3 comments

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Hospitality

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-03-01

This week, I spent a lot of time pondering the notion of hospitality. Hospitality is what converts community halls, church basements, cafés, auditoriums, studios, and living rooms around the world into welcoming spaces where tango can happen. I am privileged to live in a city where tango events are hosted every night of the week. Without the dedication of the generous few who book rooms, recruit volunteers, sweep floors, decorate, cater, and clean up when the lights go on in the wee hours of the morning, there would be no milongas. Without their grand embrace, there would be no place for tango’s more intimate embrace. In a world where territoriality and violence between competing interests dominate the headlines, it is good to consider the places–the sanctuaries, the sacred places–where strangers are welcomed and invited to create something beautiful together.

Rebecca Niemier, Rebecca’s Tango Life Milonga (Bellingham, WA.)

Originally published on www.passionateembrace.ca, March 2013.

2013-03-01 0 comment

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Hunger of the Soul

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-02-27

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“We probably have wondered in our many lonesome moments if there is one corner in this competitive, demanding world where it is safe to be relaxed, to expose ourselves to someone else, and to give unconditionally. It might be very small and hidden. But if this corner exists, it calls for a search through the complexities of our human relationships in order to find it.” -Henri Nouwen

Loneliness. In the past few days, on three separate occasions, three friends confessed to me that they often feel unspeakably lonely. I say “confessed” because their words carried a note of shame, as if they were to blame for their own affliction. It’s hard to acknowledge loneliness when the evidence (busy schedules, full-time work, demanding families) seems to point to a life rich with social possibilities. The experience of loneliness among the crowds, or in the midst of hectic lives is nothing new.

In the early 1900s, Buenos Aires was a city on the fast track to economic prosperity. Vast agricultural wealth and rapid industrialization drew immigrants to the city by the tens of thousands in those years–with everyone looking for jobs and the promise of better times. Tango historians point to the vibrant mix of European immigrants, African slaves, and indigenous peoples to tease out tango’s musical and cultural roots. But I dare say that the thing that pulled tango into being was not the coincidence of these varied traditions, but, more fundamentally, the deep loneliness experienced by a city of displaced persons. As author Christine Denniston put it, “The unique pressures of this extraordinary city, in this extraordinary moment of its history, formed the evolving Tango, and made it into something more than just a dance. The Tango became an expression of a fundamental human need: the hunger of the soul for contact with another soul.” (The Meaning of Tango, page 15.)

What is it about tango that invites soul-to-soul contact? What conditions foster the potential for mutual vulnerability in tango’s embrace? What conditions undermine this potential? And, how might the answers to these questions influence our relationships off the dance floor? Food for thought.

Originally published on www.passionateembrace.ca, February 2013.

2013-02-27 2 comments

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Embracing Risk

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-02-01

MD workshop-2495

It should not have been a surprise to discover that writing for a brand new blog is just as daunting as setting down the first words for any creative project. The blank page has a long history of intimidating writers and artists of all stripes. This week, I worked hard to chip away at the excuses and face the fear.

As usual, lessons from the dance floor came to mind. I remembered that I didn’t learn to dance by sitting on the sidelines. I remembered that tripping and stumbling and sweating and making mistakes is part of the process. And, I remembered that when you count on grace to be there to catch you when you fall, wonderful things are possible.

I would love for this blog to be consistently brimming over with evocative insights, vibrant conversation, and gentle wisdom. I would love it if the words and images shared here would never offend, never be misunderstood, never hurt. And, since I’m baring my perfectionist ego here, let me add that I’d also love it if I never made a single grammatical or spelling error for public record. This is the excellence I’m aiming for. Clearly, I will need a lot of grace to catch me when I fall.

In the spirit of Passionate Embrace, I will endeavour to fully embrace the risk of failing to meet my perfectionist goals. I will get up from the comfortable chair on the sidelines, and I will dance in the full knowledge that toes will get stepped on and it won’t always be pretty. I will do this because I know that with passion and patience and risk, wonderful things are possible.

Originally posted on www.passionateembrace.ca, February 2013.

2013-02-01 2 comments