Dancing in Your Own shoes: the true currency of tango Connection

Hello everyone, welcome to the 77th episode of the Tango Banter. I'm Yelizaveta. Today we are continuing our banter from last week, where I posed a question at the end of the episode. The question was, what is it that we bring to the dance floor as dancers in terms of our value?

What value do we have that we then choose to exchange with other dancers? What do we consider valuable in ourselves and in others? And this line of questioning really came from my conversation with Oliver Kalker a few weeks ago, some of you may have already checked out that episode and if you haven't, I recommend you do because it was a really nice thought provoking conversation.

And at one point he describes Tango as being very capitalist. Tango does not work as a socialist structure because Tango depends on the free exchange of value on the dance floor. That's how it works, according to Oliver Kalker. And after giving it some thought, I agree.

As tango dancers, we really don't like to be told what to do. And even though we collectively understand that it is important to be generous and friendly and to help newcomers to feel welcome in the tango space and to give our attention to people who need it because we want the community to thrive and we want to help each other out.

However, in practice, it's very obvious that most of us, at least the majority of the time, remain pretty selfish. And the way we choose who to dance with, how we pursue what we want on the dance floor, how we value ourselves in relation to other people, all of that is very much based on this idea of being desirable to others and to fulfill the desires that we have. And perhaps we might agree to a few tanda's where we don't necessarily get what we desire. And that's fine.

But if we remain in that space for too long tango becomes someone boring and very undesirable. So it seems that it's inevitable that at some point we have to acknowledge that it is very much the case that as dancers, we are going to be very selfish. We're going to go after what we want. We're going to focus on it. And if we don't get it, we're going to be upset about not getting it. So those things are kind of a given.

So that's what led me to start asking that question. And to me, the question of value and desirability are very connected. Because when we're thinking about value and what we consider it's of course things that we have desire for. So when we experience desire for something, that something is valuable to us. So an example would be that in terms of dancing tango as a follower, I place a lot of value on dancing with people who have a lot of skill in their embrace. And there's particular kinds of embrace that I like, particular types of technique that really please me.

And so the dancers that have the qualities that I feel are very pleasurable to me and that I desire, those are the qualities I'm going to be looking for. And when I see it, it's valuable to me, and I'm going to pursue that. And then I think that seems to be pretty easy to follow along with that metaphor, I would say. But I think the conversation changes a little bit if we turn the mirror onto ourselves and say, okay, if I want to get what I want, I need to be able to trade.

And since tango is a free exchange, free trade of value, and I know what it is that I want, I can somewhat define what I'm looking for. What is it that I'm going to give in return? What do I trade with the other person?

So the simple way to ask this question is to put it like one of the listeners who sent me a message and said that she asked her husband and some of her friends, would you want to dance with yourself? Why or why not? And I think that's a great question to think about. And it might reveal perhaps the lack of appreciation we have for ourselves as dancers. Or it might also reveal how scared we are that we don't actually have anything to offer. So let's talk about what is it that we can trade on the dance floor? What is it that everybody's looking for? How do we develop it in ourselves?

Where do we find it? I think to me, this was a huge mystery for a long time. And it was both a mystery in the world of tango as well as for myself as an artist, as a yoga practitioner. I had this burning desire to understand what it meant to really be a good artist or to be a good yoga practitioner. And I tend to have a personality that if something piques my interest, I immediately dive in all the way, and then I spend a decade studying it. And I have this drive to understand it, to unlock it, to figure it out.

So for many years, this was the attitude I had about tango. I wanted to figure it out. I wanted to put some sort of a frame around it, to categorize it, to be able to say for sure that I knew what it meant to dance tango.

And the more I pursued that, the harder I tried, the more I studied, the more I took on the work of a scholar or a serious investigator, I really wanted to understand it. But the more I went in that direction, the more frustrated I became, the less I was getting out of tango the less satisfaction I was feeling until I did have a pretty severe breakdown and ended up almost leaving.

And since then I've looked back on that attitude in myself and I was realizing, or I am realizing in hindsight now that I was really coming at it from a place of lack. And that's understandable. When we first start, we come from a place of lack, we come from a place of not knowing. And so we feel like there's this trajectory that we have to go on where we have to go from a place of not knowing what we're doing, to the place where we do know what we're doing. And that's the mindset I had been dancing with for a decade. And it seemed like I could never actually get to the place where I felt that I knew what I was doing. A place where if you had asked me, what do you have to offer as a dancer? Would you dance with yourself? I would probably say maybe.

Sometimes it depends. I have my good days and bad days.

I don't actually know what I would say because at the time that I'm thinking of, I felt so bad about my dancing. I felt so lacking. So to get to that place of being able to answer that question, I had to kind of go through this breakdown and this is what I'm realizing now.

Looking back on how my journey in Tango unfolded, I kind of got to this place where I was tired of trying to become more than I was or different than I was because that desire to perfect and to become better, it seemed like it was just creating more and more things for me to fix. And my focus seemed to continuously be drawn to another little thing I need to fix, another little thing I need to work on.

And it seemed like no matter how much work I was putting in, if you were to show me a video of myself, I would have hated it. I would have hated it. And I know that feeling from any other dancers when I suggest that. I suggest if you want to figure out how you feel about yourself as a dancer, watch yourself on video.

It's such an amazing tool to find out a lot about yourself.

It was after that I finally started to make peace with who I am as a dancer. And it took years. It's still sort of happening on certain levels, but this process of just kind of turning the mirror on myself and saying, this is who I am. I'm not some seven foot tall woman with legs up to her ears. I'm not a ballerina. I'm not a supermodel. I'm not Corina Herrera. I'm not Ariadna Naveda. Like at some point I had to acknowledge that no, I'm never gonna be like those people. I am myself.

And then the next fear was like, Oh, but that's so boring. Oh, that's, that's so anticlimactic. I'm just myself. Like that's it. I have nothing interesting to offer. That's the fear, you know, but that was the first step for me to actually learn what is it that I have to offer.

What is the value that I have to offer on the dance floor? And it was a beautiful journey for me to learn that because when I went in fully to this place of non-attachment and kind of letting go of any ambition of myself being of a certain kind of dancer or being valuable in a certain way, once I just allowed myself to be the imperfect self that I am, there was so much more acceptance that I experienced on the dance floor and so many more people connected with me.

And I'm still finding out the truth of this paradox that somehow the more that I am myself, unapologetically, authentically, sometimes rudely myself, the more people like that, the more people respond to that.

So the way I learned this is by observing something really interesting on the dance floor. And that was that a lot of the dancers who seemed to be the most popular, most appreciated, got the most dances, seemed to be the happiest, were also dancers that were very unique and didn't fall very easily into a particular category.

And I still observe this to be the case that a lot of times certain dancers get preferential treatment, let's just say, and you watch their dance and you might appreciate that they have their own style, but you might not even sense of like you might not understand why. Why is it that they're getting all this attention?

So, as I reflected on it, I realized that the thing that unified all of these dancers and the common denominator between them is the fact that they were just so different. They were so themselves. They radiated something very peculiar, something different, something that... I couldn't really see in anyone else.

And this reminds me of Oliver's comment on the experience of seeing Carlos Gavito dance for the first time at a milonga. And he said that the way he danced, he smelled of tango. There was something so specific about him, so unique that he saw the essence of tango represented in this man's dance in a very particular way.

What I realized is that when I get to dance with one of these dancers that's very much themselves, it stands out in my mind. It's kind of memorable, it's unforgettable, it's different. And I think a lot about...

So coming back to this idea of value and what is it that makes us valuable as dancers, I think my conclusion is that when we are most ourselves, when we show up in a very honest way, when we allow ourselves to be authentic and vulnerable. And we assert our own expression, our own taste. All of those little things that make us uniquely ourselves. Those are the things that end up being the most valuable. And maybe I'm simplifying it and maybe you might be rolling your eyes at this idea of like, oh, and she's just saying, just be yourself, man, and everything's gonna be okay.

I don't mean to say that this is that simple, because ultimately the question is, like we have to look at ourselves and say, what makes us valuable? What value do I bring to the table? What can I offer to another person?

And then whatever comes up as the answer to that, our job is to accept that as being good enough. And I think that's where we trip up a lot of times because like many people say, we have so much to work on. We're always on this journey of progress, of making ourselves better.

So the trick is to not only take an honest look at who you are as a dancer, but then the next step is to accept that who you are at this moment in your dance is exactly what you're supposed to be, that you're not lacking, that you're not lacking in any sort of quality, that you're not unfinished, imperfect, although you are all of those things, perpetually, but you accept yourself in this state of imperfection without seeking to be different.

And if this is the state that you bring, if this is the kind of presence you bring to your dance.

I think other dancers resonate with that and they can feel that. I know I can. I feel very strongly when I'm dancing with somebody who is really at ease with who they are and at ease with their body, at ease with who they are as a dancer. They're not attempting to impress me. They're not trying to do anything extraordinary. They're just being present.

So to wrap up some of these ideas of this banter about value and what is it the what is the value that we're exchanging on the dance floor to me it's it comes down to presence in the deepest sense of the word of that we are physically present, we are emotionally present to the other person, we are present to ourselves and who we are in this moment, we accept all of our imperfections and our fears and our shortcomings as being perfectly normal and desirable even, accepting them as things that make us unique and different.

We bring the appreciation of who we are artistically, which is this whole other level. I think that a lot of people don't realize that everything about your dance is a kind of an opportunity to define yourself as an artist, your taste in music, who is your favorite orchestra, how you like to move, what you like to wear.

All of those things are part of you as an artist in this dance and you get to choose how you do that. The care and the choices that you pay towards that show up in your dance and they show up for the other person.

The other thing though that we bring that is very valuable, and I would say perhaps this might trump others, other valuables, other things of value, but it's this place of non-judgment of the other person, a full acceptance of the other person, a full acceptance of their shortcomings and their faults and imperfections. And of course... it's very difficult to accept the other person when you don't accept yourself. So one mirrors the other and it's very easy to, in this way, figure out whether you're coming from a place of acceptance and generosity or judgment and criticism because every time I dance with somebody and I detect a voice of criticism in my mind about the other person, I immediately know that there's something going on that I'm not accepting about myself.

Ultimately, people come to Tango for different reasons, but I think it all boils down to, we really want to feel seen and embraced. We want to feel safe and accepted, and we want to feel that we can express ourselves without fear of judgment.

I think this question of value has really changed for me since COVID happened. I definitely learned a very valuable lesson during that time that we weren't allowed to be around other people, this thing that we exchanged on the dance floor became that much more valuable. And it's something that we take for granted when we have a lot of, but then when it's scarce, we really feel its absence.

So I'm curious what it's like for you when you consider the question of what is it that you bring to the dance floor? What is the value that you offer to other dancers? Would you want to dance with yourself? Why and why not?

For my part, I'll say this. The best compliment that I've recently received that I realized could also be an insult in some ways was I danced with a woman and she said that she was talking to someone about me. And this person said, oh yeah, Yelizaveta, she dances to the beat of her own drum.

And I heard that and I thought, you know, that's true. And there was a part of me that got a little scared. And I was like, is that bad? Does that mean that people are not gonna like me because I danced to the beat of my own drum? But then this other part of me came into focus and I was like, hell yeah, this is what.

This is what it's been all about. This is what I've been focusing on when I decided to strike out on a path less traveled. I said to myself, I'm not going to play by the rules. I'm not going to do the thing that's expected. I'm gonna find my own way. And that's what I've been doing. And it is true that I danced to the beat of my own drum.

And some people don't like it, but other people really do. And that is exactly what I have to offer. For some people, it's not something they're interested in, but for those that are, for those that resonate with who I am and my values, our connection becomes that much more powerful.

Now, I want to leave you with a question to ponder and that is, what do you think is the common denominator between ballet, tango, and surfing? If you're curious to learn about what connects those three, join me for next week's banter, my long-term, long, my long-awaited interview with my friend and tango dancer Stephen Aldaco. I hope you join me next week. Until then, ciao.