Yes, you read the title correctly, mice and tango—it’s what fate threw at me today. It’s a valid question to ask how these two things could possibly relate. Luckily, you just need to scroll down a bit, and the mystery will be revealed. 🙂
So, here’s how it went: I was struggling all day, or rather for days, with writing a new blog post. I had topics, plenty of them, but somehow the muse refused to strike. And what does a simple mortal do in such a situation? What else? They start scrolling through Facebook, because obviously, that’s going to write the post… Right?!
Well, in this case, it actually worked out because suddenly, a picture popped up—a post shared by Juan Martin Carrara. He’s a pretty cool Argentine tango dancer who taught in Hungary twice last year, and everyone loved him. The article was about the winner of the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, organized annually by the London Natural History Museum. The winning photo features mice dancing tango! Okay, not really, but it sure looks like it… Just take a look:
“Station Squabble” © Sam Rowley
The picture is titled “Station Squabble,” and it captures a fight over a crumb. If this picture didn’t strike a chord with you, I apologize—this post falls more into the “fun and quirky” category than the “useful and practical advice” one, but don’t worry, there will be more of those 😉 Although I had a good laugh at the photo, I realized that it wasn’t enough for a full post. So, I thought, if I’m going to be playful, I might as well do it right and see what else I could find on the topic of mice and tango.
Mice, Cats, and Tita Merello
Source: Mice Notes
I’m guessing by now you realize this won’t be a long post… but I did find something cute that I’d like to share: the adventures of Tita, the tango mouse, told in sketches. You can watch them HERE, but I’ll include one here so we can meditate on it a bit, because it carries a lot of truth:
As you can see, I can’t fully step out of my tango teacher role, and I managed to sneak a piece of advice into today’s article. We say this often, but let it be etched in digital stone here: Leaders, don’t steer and push your followers around!
Although our little mouse friend doesn’t mention it, I’ll add: Followers, we also bear some responsibility here—connect, so the leader doesn’t feel the need to do this.
And most importantly: dance with each other!
I hoped to find some mouse-themed tango music as a closing, but YouTube wasn’t my friend. If anyone knows of such a track, please send it my way! However, there is a tango song about a cat, “Gato,” recorded by Edgardo Donato. Read the text and explanation under the clip, it’s very interesting—and of course, you’ll find out that the cat isn’t really a cat!
Interestingly, it seems like the universe wanted this post to be written because do you know the name of the singer who originally sang this song in the 1937 film Así Es El Tango? Tita Merello 🙂 Next week’s post won’t be as lighthearted, I promise!
