How dancing the tango helped cope with trauma... Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ, listen to The Longest Embrace by Antonia Gunko Karelina above.
After a year's break, I finally went a tango night. I haven’t tangoed since the invasion, finding it difficult to allow myself to feel alive, when every day brings death and suffering to my homeland.
The tango night was a birthday party, held in Waterford, for the oldest tango dancer in Ireland. Jim McManus had turned 103, the same age as Ireland’s independence. Prior to coming to Waterford, I had read a couple of articles about him and found out he was a WWII veteran.
I gave Jim a Ukrainian flag as a birthday gift. He genuinely thanked me saying that he’d display the flag in his window. And he made everyone laugh with his birthday speech in which he said, "Tango is very important. It’s the most important thing in the world..."
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
