Tango is awesome

Went to Lafayette last night with Martin for class and milonga. It was an incredible night for me. I feel like I reached a new level with my dancing... the next big plateau. Wished I'd grabbed some footage. I dance very differently at a milonga than say at privates, class, or practica, and it's my dancing at a milonga that I'd like to see footage of but have none. Last night the music seemed to just take me and I was doing lots of embellishments, even some I'd never done before, but just got caught up in the music and the present moment and did whatever my feet felt like doing (it did help that the music was awesome... r&m always do an awesome job with that)! I'm actually quite surprised at this. I consider embellishments similar to musical improv, and I have never been good at musical improvisation (perhaps I should give it another shot now). With music, it was always, give me some music to read off of and I'll play the notes on the page and sight-read it quite well, but ask me to embellish and add to the music and sorry, I'm not that kind of person; find someone else. So this is quite liberating for me in many ways. I suppose now I should really hunker down and start listening to tango music to familiarize myself with the songs so I can make the most out the songs while I'm dancing. And then I find myself thinking of tango steps throughout the day and thinking, what kind of embellishment might I be able to come up with to do there? It's quite fun and exciting... and different/new. I think I do have self-confidence issues which I also need to work though with my dancing. I've now been dancing tango for 11 months and while I think I have come very far in those 11 months I can't help but to still feel like a newbie beginner... a very small fish in this very big world of tango. I think having a second consistent tango partner will help with that. For my short tango life, I've only had Martin, while during his longer tango life he's had quite a number of tango partners. I did go ahead and ask one person and while he can't offer a consistent weekly slot until perhaps next year, he did offer some time so I will take him up on that offer :) As long as we are all moving forward with the dancing, life is good :)