"To learn something, you must first of all love it."
-Wolfgang von Goethe
I was just a 19-year-old new university student. I was accepted to Istanbul Technical University, Department of Marine Mechanical Engineering. In my first year at university, I wanted to spend time socializing, and I applied to many other student clubs such as cinema, music, and chess, as well as signing up for the dance club. I wanted to learn tango. Who knew that this simple decision I made would be one of the biggest turning points in my life. That's not the real story, though.
I loved tango from the first lesson. My tango lessons at the dance club were once a week, but when I wanted to spare more time, the teacher invited me to other dance lessons. So I could take tango lessons 3 times a week. After continuing at this pace for the first 3 months, we completed the first courtship period. At the end of the semester, we made a plan with our club friends and decided to gather together and go to a milonga. One of us suggested the 'Milongahane' milonga in Beşiktaş for Friday evening, and since the location of the milonga was close to our campus, we decided to go to this milonga. It was December. I had never danced outside a club before this milonga, so I was pretty excited. I didn't know how to dress for milongas, so I wore a black shirt and black trousers underneath. At that time, I didn't have a tango shoe yet, I put on my most stylish shoe and we set out early together as a large group of friends.
When I arrived at the milonga, I saw that the people's dance was different from ours and I couldn't believe my eyes. Our instructor was not actually an original tango instructor and was teaching us mostly choreographic tango figures. This method was far from the impromptu social dance experience of tango, and we had never learned the energy system of leader/follower roles in the lessons. So, on the one hand, I was dancing with my friends from the club with the figures I had memorized, and on the other hand, I was watching other adult dancers dancing these different dances. I had a friend named Hakan and we encouraged each other to dance with foreign women we didn't know. We made promises to each other like "You dance with the woman over there, I will dance with the woman sitting over there." After we got up and sat down to dance, we would summarize how we felt to each other. We were both failing because women didn't understand our energies. We had short tandas that were both a little shy and exciting.
Towards the end of the night, we decided to ask one after another to dance with the woman sitting in the corner, who was middle-aged, well-dressed and, in our opinion, the best woman dancing there that night. It was an idea that seemed crazy on paper because the woman was both very stylish and a good dancer, and the likelihood of her dancing with us was low. I was the first to dare and went to the woman and asked "Can we dance?" I asked a question. The woman smiled, took my outstretched hand and said "of course." We went to the dance floor and started dancing. What I remember was that I was afraid of making mistakes while dancing with her. Fortunately, since she was not the first foreign woman I danced with that night, I tried not to give the wrong vibes, at least with the experience I gained in a short time. She smiled at every move I made and enjoyed dancing with me with a motherly approach. After our dance was over, she noticed that I was young and asked a few questions. Meanwhile, she gave me her name: Kıvılcım.
After we finished dancing with Ms. Kıvılcım, my friend Hakan also danced with her as we agreed. Hakan went through similar processes with me and tried to dance without making mistakes. When the dance was over, Ms. Kıvılcım chatted with him, just like she did with me. After she went to the corner and sat down, she called me and Hakan to her and began to explain tango to us in a very affectionate and extremely polite manner.
The problem is: we didn't actually learn the 'real tango' at the dance club. She said that tango is not a dance based on rote, it has roles consisting of a leader and a follower, and that it is a dance improvised in harmony with the music. She told us that crazy figures were perhaps the least important thing in dance, and that it took at least 2-3 years to learn some of the difficult movements we tried to do while dancing with her. She kindly explained to us that under normal circumstances, the first 6 months of training in tango are spent only walking, and that the most important thing when dancing is hugging, comfort and harmony. As Ms. Kıvılcım talked, Hakan and I looked at each other and began to understand how long and difficult tango was. This conversation continued until the end of the milonga. Ms. Kıvılcım spent most of her time explaining tango to us - two young university students - and we listened to her with astonished faces.
After this long conversation, we had to make a decision. Because the dance we were currently doing could not be called tango. After that night, Hakan got upset with tango and stopped dancing. After that conversation, I decided to become a tango dancer. The next day, I found a tango school first thing, and soon I left my training at the dance club and started receiving proper tango training from a real tango instructor.
When I look back, I think that the first turning point in my life was going to that milonga that night and dancing with Ms. Kıvılcım. What an extraordinary person Ms. Kıvılcım was; Even though we were very young and our dance level was extremely bad, she was able to spare hours of time for me and my friend that night. How many people could do something like this? I cannot say how lucky I feel about this.
After that cold Friday night in December 2016, we met with Ms. Kıvılcım Kalaba many times over the years, and later danced many times. Every time we met with her, I thanked her for that night at the Milongahane. She always appreciated me for my development in tango and always supported me in my tango career. I am grateful to her.
I hope the flame of my tango adventure, which started with a spark (meaning of Kıvılcım in Turkish), never goes out.
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