…being unsure whether asking this person to stop would result in retaliation or not--and expending the mental resources to weigh those probabilities--is taxing on the system, on top of juggling all the other social involvement of navigating a tango space. How many people adopt survival/coping patterns of avoiding or simply enduring these ambiguous possibilities of threat in the first place?
Read MoreIf there’s a disconnect so profound in your own body that you can diminish the overwhelming evidence of harm and oppression enacted on others’ bodies, how could you ever be connected enough to your own body to facilitate reciprocal enjoyment in a dance?
Read More…just like you can’t dance tango without certain, specific timbres of tension at different times, neither can you truly practice anti-racism without purposefully leaning into the tension you experience when looking at the ways your actions (or inaction) uphold white supremacy.
Read MoreIt's not possible to rid yourself of implicit biases. But it is possible to bring them to your conscious attention and be honest about how they have affected your functioning and ideology as a tango dancer. This is how we can begin to short-circuit the unconscious wiring. We can consider honestly our choices of dance partners and social connections and get curious about the reasoning and feelings behind those choices. We can examine the images that come to mind when we think of the word "tanguera" and be intentional about widening our definition of who fits this description.
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PHOTO BY GLENN CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHY
I see some of us spiritually-oriented people trying to express spirit in our work - but not always consistently daring to believe, risk, and trust in the messy world that the spirit truly guides.
Are we trying to express our work of deep connection from a foundation built on smallness, fear, selfness? When we're struggling it's easy to get focused on ourselves. Which can make it more difficult to emerge out of the struggle!
What if, when we're stuck, we choose to direct our focus outward instead and open up? I think the old system, the 'every-man-for-himself' road doesn't work anymore. Tit for tat, time for money - it's over. We have to strongly, fiercely imagine a completely new way.
"You can rest assured that if you devote your time and attention to the highest advantage of others, the Universe will support you, always and only in the nick of time." - R. Buckminster Fuller
