Page 46 - Headingtonian Magazine 2017

THE HEADINGTONIAN 2017
ALUMNA SPOTLIGHT
TANGO TO THE TOP DR MIRIAM ORCUTT
At the World Tango Championships in Buenos Aires, dancers from around the world are judged in two categories: Tango Stage and Tango Salon. In the first, contestants perform set pieces which they have spent months choreographing and practicing. Tango Salon
is very different. The dancers arrive on the stage as experts in the language of tango, but that’s all. There’s no choreography, and the only preparation they can do is to work on improving their connection, musicality and embrace, but they have no idea of the pieces of music to which they will be performing on the day. On the dance-floor, under the spotlights, awaiting the orchestra’s opening chord, they have to respond immediately and intuitively, totally focused on the moment, expressing their mastery of the dance they love.
Talking to Miriam Orcutt, Headingtonian (2004), a qualified doctor, and now also a professional tango dancer, responding intuitively to events is one of the characteristics that have defined her approach to life.
“My first major switch was away from dance back into academics. I had been at Headington and in the Sixth Form I took up an offer to
be professionally trained in classical ballet
at a school in Germany with an international reputation. This meant leaving school before A-levels. Once I got to the school, I realised that I couldn’t see my future career only as
a ballerina, hard as I had worked towards
that goal. Luckily, I was allowed to return to
(2004)
Headington and got right in to catching up with the first part of A levels. I talked with my family about where I should head in life and I remember my Dad saying – ‘You’re a people person – perhaps you should become a doctor’. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made and that became my goal.
I was offered a place at the School of Medicine at Newcastle University, and during the long vacation at the end of my first year, I had
the opportunity to travel to Bolivia to work with a medical charity in La Paz. While I was there, I saw a poster for a special masterclass in Argentine tango with teachers direct from Argentina. I went along to my first tango class. That’s where I met Dante Culcuy and where, as they say, tango found me.
Dante is a wonderful teacher and dancer and
I fell in love with the freedom and intuitive conversation of tango. I also fell in love
with Dante and he came to live and teach in Newcastle while I finished my clinical training. Before long, I began to teach and perform tango with him. I was fortunate to get a job as a junior doctor in Newcastle and when I wasn’t working, my understanding and love of tango was also deepening. So much so that I arrived at another crossroads in my life: whether to continue in clinical medicine or to divide my time between clinical work and tango.
Tango won out. However, I also continued to work in humanitarian and public health
research and fieldwork, with a focus on refugee health, thereby continuing to put my training to good use.
With its 1890s dockside heritage in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, you’d think Tango would be quite a macho dance. In fact, it’s very much a communication between partners; both the man and the woman need to be equally active and sensitive to the other’s movements, energy and even their breathing. Tango Salon is all about improvising. You are moved by the music and, within the beauty of the embrace, each partner is sensitive to the ideas and suggestions of the other. This creates the form the dance takes. In Spanish, there’s no word for the man as the ‘leader’ and the woman as a ‘follower’ in tango. It’s just not in the dance vocabulary; it is important for both to be equal.
In August 2015, Dante and I felt we were ready to take part in the World Tango Championships in Buenos Aires. This is a huge event and dancers from all over the world gather for 10 days of heats, leading to the final. 8 to 10 couples dance on the stage at one time. The panel of judges, men and women, are themselves distinguished tango dancers. From among hundreds of international contestants, Dante and I graduated to the semis
and then to the final itself. This is held in the Luna Park stadium, which seats over 9,000, it is also broadcast live on TV across South America, and globally.
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