The gentle, excellent, chivalrous, skillful, sexy men who Tango

Photo by Glenn Cambpell http://www.glenncampbellphoto.com/

I’m Mitra Martin and I love to dance with men. I love to dance with women too, but this is about men.

This is about men who have taken the time to go through the humbling and scary challenge of learning to dance Tango. And whose Tango gives me huge inspiration and a feeling of oneness that lasts for days.

(Some men confuse me. I am not sure if they are confusing me as a “strategy” or if they are just confused themselves. Probably both. The confusing men, I’ve decided it’s probably not worth it to think about them or dance with them too much.)

For a guy to learn to dance, I don’t know if you realize what a thing this is. I do, because I run a dance school and have seen lots of guys struggle with the process and fail and succeed and everything in between.

What it takes for a guy to learn to dance

• For a guy to learn to dance, they need to choose to persist in doing something that feels uncomfortable for a long time. They need to set aside anything in them that tells them that they need to already be impressive. They need to be cheerful with sucking.
   
• They need to be really curious about people, the people they dance with. Really attentive. Abnormally attentive and protective and caring. Absorbedly interested in their bodies, their moods, their patterns, their quirks.
   
• Some might need to expand themselves and their view of men, women, and life. They become deeply gentle, brave, chivalrous beings through feeling how great brave men and women create a dance. So they extend their comfort zone to dance with and learn from people in new ways, taking on the play of roles and allowing for new kinds of relationship to have space.
   
• They need to learn how to hold space for sexiness while staying focused on the needs of the moment. They need to sidestep being distracted or indulging in patterned sex thinking. I heard that can be hard for some men to do when they are holding a woman close to them.

I am so grateful and thankful for the men who have gone through this thousands hours effort to find what I feel as a truly unearthly surety and gentleness as they Tango.

I see them manifesting this loving kindness in their lives as well. Open to elaborate a sincere friendship with a woman, that also holds space for the deep mystery of Tango’s connection.

In this world I think it is a highly unlikely miracle that these men exist at all. I think and hope it will be less unlikely in the future. Women, maybe we can make it far less unlikelier now by saying out loud what such men bring to us.

To the great men of Tango:

You have helped me accept myself, my movement, my dancing. Your communicative friendship has helped me understand more about how men are and feel safer being myself around them. Your nonjudgmentalness has given me a chance to accept my errors and believe in my ability to grow. Your example of setting clear boundaries has helped me get better at knowing what I need and want at any given time. Your kindness and good manners helped me have fun at events, instead of leaving me in a confused limbo. Your seriousness about the substance of Tango - its music, its material - has inspired me to focus on that substance, too, instead of petty political dynamics and social domination. Your example inspires me to share your good works with my male students as they step into the world of social Tango with all its temptations. It may feel like a complex and confusing world, but I want them to know they have the power to make it a world of love, kindness, mutual consideration, creativity and friendship among equals.

PHOTO COURTESY OF OSCAR CHANG http://www.oscarchang.com/

A Year Is Too Short: How A Long Term View Supports Tango

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." -John Cage

Practica slideshow featuring Tango community members, curated by Shane Crosby

In Tango-time, things grow slowly.

Sure, there’s the occasional surprise tanda of delight with a total stranger. But mostly, things grow very very slowly in Tango time.

Friendships - they grow slowly.

Partnerships - they grow slowly.

My own skill - it grows slowly.

Community - grows slowly.

You keep committing, sincerely, to your practice. To becoming a dancer who can seed joy. Nothing changes, forever. Then finally, you are suddenly somewhere new.

Watch for Your Tourist Tendencies

In a fast-high-achieving-hyperworld, it can be very weird and frustrating to be in a place where things grow slowly.

Especially when you can see - or you think you can see - where you wanna get to. You figure there’s got to be a quicker way. Maybe if you go someplace else, do something else, move to Buenos Aires or somewhere.

I don’t think there is. See, in Tango-time, things grow slowly. No matter where you are or who you are with.

When people don’t understand how Tango really works, they usually look at it through the question: “What can I get out of this? How can I get more?”

This focus distorts the energy around you, and makes you weird at events, slightly restless, careless, demanding, flitty. (And I’ve been here - a lot! Still struggle with it.)

Being a community-tourist, skipping around from one knot of humans to another to get as much as you can without committing anything, is something we all have to deal with. But is it a high quality model to build our lives on? At some point, it loses its charm. At best. At worst, it can become a bit toxic.

The Bravery of Commitment

It can feel so good to finally not rush. To just realize that the quality of the relationships you are building is way more important than getting what you think you want right now. How do you build a friendship? Can you do it in less than a year?

Familiarity unlocks trust, and friendship, and creativity. Those things unlock great dancing. That’s how it goes.

There is something so incredibly powerful about choosing a long term view of community, in a world where we are used to everything being disposable and temporary, including our connections with others.

I am thrilled to be part of a committed community. Among practitioners who are brave and willing to say: YES, I will be part of this thing for at least one summer, one fall, one winter, and one spring. I’ll be here through more hard times and the times when I doubt myself and the people around me too. Beyond simply consuming Tango, I’ll take responsibility for creating and expanding Tango’s joy. I invite you to be part of this.  

CHALLENGE

You are thinking of giving up on a certain person, place, event, activity. Is there a difficult conversation you think you will avoid by withdrawing? What if you decided to have that conversation, instead?

P.S., For those of you who like the idea of a slow, steady, deliberate, persistent, no-drama approach to learning in Tango, at Oxygen we offer a unique, flexible, long-term-oriented course, which is up one full year of dedicated coaching along with rich resources, opportunities, and room for your ideas.

New Skills for Conscious Community: How Non-Violent Communication Can Help

BOOK REVIEW BY MITRA MARTIN

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph. D. 

If you have ever found yourself saying, even just inside yourself, let’s say, while scrolling through the Facebook, “These people are SO annoying.” “I can’t stand her.” or just sighing, "Man." Or if you ever find yourself plotting microrevenge, “I won’t invite them again” or whatever...you need this book.

Here are some situations - on and off the dance floor - where what I learned from reading this book helps me find more peace: 

• When I am sad or scared - learning how to give myself empathy

• When I am with someone who is upset - learning how to give empathy in a constructive way

• When I am stressed out and working with someone who is stressed out - learning new patterns to replace reactive or resisting ones

• When I am feeling happy about something - learning how to appreciate without being manipulative

Those things happen almost every day, especially when we are living and working as part of an active, dynamic, growing, changing community! So I find plenty of times to practice and plenty of times to be grateful for what I'm learning here. 

Reading this book helped me realized how tricky language is, and how easy it is to unwittingly commit microviolences that make life more of a bummer than it needs to be. It doesn’t have to. All we need to do is to learn.

The book's incredibly user-friendly, too. It has excellent summaries and pithy callouts, it has useful reference lists and even very challenging self-quizzes! The writing is clear and humble and enriched by Rosenberg’s personal experiences generously shared. There are transcripts of actual conversation between people, with commentary, that are revelatory and really easy to relate to.

I am so grateful for the tremendous introspective work of Marshall Rosenberg, expressed in this book; for his calm and lucid writings and the recordings of his workshops and lectures; for the gentle force of his vision now expressed in organizations founded through and through on the pillars of peace and freedom, on the basic idea finding ways to get everyone’s needs met. He died last month. I think humanity has no idea yet how much he contributed to its possibility for success. 

NVC is not just about words. It’s about kindling the underlying feeling, the mood of peace, stillness, and a true devotion to finding creative ways to serve everyone. And that’s actually more important than whatever words you say. Sometimes, it’s about learning that voicing your inner experiences of others is more functional than keeping it all inside. 

Fundamentally, I believe it is about enlarging your heart - a truly deep project - so that you can function creatively even when you’re really stressed on the inside. I hope this book will inspire you. Love, Mitra