If 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.
Read MoreWhen I interviewed Pablo Veron at an event Emily Ortiz-Gorcie and I produced at Oxygen in 2010 he acknowledged that milongas have a certain "density and complexity;" that Tango as an art form has "a certain irrationality" and yet that with perseverance and a commitment to originality, anybody of any background can become great dancer. "Tango isn't somewhere out there - Tango is the dancers who dance it."
I was reminded of the empowering words of hip hop artist Mos Def in his powerful song Fear Not of Man:
People are asking me all the time, 'Mos, where do you think hip-hop is going?' People talk about hip-hop like it's some giant living in the hillside, coming down to visit the townspeople.
We ARE hip-hop. Hip-hop is going where we are going. So the next time you ask yourself where hip-hop is going, ask yourself 'Where am I going? How am I doing?' Then you get a clear idea.
Similarly, our own way of engaging with Tango is a window on Tango's future.
There is this yucky, icky feeling that starts to pervade things when a person thinks that someone else is in charge. What creeps in is halfheartedness - a sort of sad, weary, fatigued mood of judgement and irritability.
No “one” else is in charge. But sometimes our speech and actions suggest that someone is. When we ask these sad, irritable questions that suggest a weird fringe of passivity. “Why can't I get a dance around here?" “Why is Tango so sexist?” “Why is there so much prejudice against Tango teachers who aren't from Argentina?”
Those strange and hard questions - although they that can distract us with frustration and fury - are so incredibly valuable: they are pointers to our unmet needs, they are guides to inspire us to change our world until our needs can be met.
We are each in our own ways making the tender switch away from being outraged or saddened cogs in a factory wheel - into being the hip and focused awesomesauce programmer of our own lives. We were stuck medieval fiefdoms, assembly lines and later corporations for hundreds of years. We are starting to realize that we were the ones who were making those factory wheels, we can make something different.
When we let go of our fury that things are not they way we want them, we decide we want change and we start working for it, we start to discover that everything is hooked to everything else. We rediscover interdependence.
And interdependence is so deep. It is so deep that it dips into love for all - a daily internal and external way of taking ownership, truly believing in possibility, acting on this belief, and thus expressing love for your whole practice community.
PHOTO BY GLENN CAMBPELL PHOTOGRAPHY
For this to work we can't just work solo, we need to “consciously participate in the creation and evolution of holistic systems that foster general well-being.” I find value in this rubric by the NVC Academy outlining four progressive levels of interdependent being:
We all affect each other and as we know from Tango following only works when the follower has power and initiative, flow and delight, trust and joy. What structures are you following? What systems are you a member of? To what extent do you see yourself as a victim of your government, school, company or organization...vs. a creator, a contributor? Are you afraid of putting more in? Are you trying to calculate whether you’ll get enough out of it to make it worth the time you’re willing to put in? What are you saving up for? There’s no places else to go and we’re all in this together here on Spaceship Earth. And every day and every moment works to the extent that we are wholehearted.
When was the last time you experienced deep human connection?
How much was it worth to you?
Our soul resists that question because it knows that love - the love between friends and partners, the love found within a community - is so natural, is our birthright, and should be freely accessible as the air we breathe.
You can't buy a tanda - or a partner - or a friend. All you can do is cultivate a life-circumstance - an intent, an attitude, an energy, a set of habits - that makes it easier for these experiences to be in your life.
A community is a life-form that resists traditional business categorization and business practice. In "normal" businesses, it's easy to define exactly what is being offered, and for people to agree on what it's worth in a concrete measurement like money.
But your experience of community last night was probably totally different from the person who walked in right after you. And different from what it was a month ago, and what it will be next year.
The value for you may come from the challenges you experience as much as from the moments of ease and effortlessness. From the moments of delight as from the opportunities to forgive. Or maybe from having, for the first time, a chance to serve, to be helpful, to further something you find beautiful. Your treasure may be the friends you meet who become part of your life even as you both move away from Tango or deeper into it or to another city. Or maybe it was just overhearing a conversation about a book that you go out and buy that changes your life. Or maybe you never find anything of value to you - that can happen too.
How much are those things worth? The question doesn't make sense. It's not the right question.
The question is, do you want it to continue? Do you want it to grow?
If you do want it to grow, then, what kind of energy do you choose to put into it? Financial energy, emotional energy, intellectual energy, musical energy, delicious snack energy, artistic photographic energy, code monkey energy, teaching energy - what is your choice, your contribution - your gift, your donation? What do you need to receive for that contribution to be sustainable for you?
These are some of the reasons why Oxygen Tango has become a donation-based Tango community. We hope you will support our schedule of group classes and practicas that provide more than 50 hours per month when people can gather to explore the possibilities of connection.
