Connections/The Embrace

My name is Jennifer Meagher, and I'm a researcher in the Department of European Paintings. I'm talking about "The Embrace."

Seven years ago, I started learning a style of Argentine tango called "close embrace," in which the ribcages of both partners are pressed together

and the lead is communicated through the resistance created by the two bodies. I had no idea what I was walking into, but, within an hour of my life as a dance student,

found myself in this intimate embrace with a room full of strangers. The movement is driven by physical closeness, but the

music is so often about loss and loneliness. To me, the tango embrace is expressing a longing to connect.

Even though the embrace is something that's very familiar, we have levels of closeness.

Some people may find it incredibly awkward.

Embracing in dance allows us to break down some of the taboos we have about physical closeness. This illustrates a woman in a moment of animalistic abandon, in which it's okay.

I find myself looking for the story and the emotions that are living inside the embrace.

The predella panel of Paradise. A group of people have suffered an incredible ordeal: they've died and endured the last judgment and they've made it to paradise and are

being reunited with their friends and loved ones and

are embracing joyfully. It expresses the relief and the

joy that you feel when you have been redeemed,

when you are whole again.

I wanted to see if this embrace is very affectionate. But it occurred to me that this is a power couple.

And it got me thinking about self-conscious depictions of us embracing. We have ourselves

photographed with our arms around our family, our lovers, our partners. And it's a way of saying, "We're together; this person is mine."

An embrace can be violent, antagonistic, aggressive.

The relationship in the tango dance is of an aggressor and passive follower. The leader is

constantly moving into the follower's space, and the follower's job is to resist a little bit, but ultimately to yield.

An embrace can be rapturous, overtly sexual,

an expression of maternal, familial affection.

It's a moment of physical bliss, but also

where the human and spiritual connect. It can be absolutely

sorrowful, terrifying. The Madonna is clinging to her dead son and his

lifeless arm sort of returns the embrace.

The embrace can express a desire to hang onto something that

we have lost or are in danger of losing.

It's a gesture that is so potent. For me, above all,

it expresses a longing to hold something, to be fulfilled, to connect on a

very deep and intimate level.