Hamilton's Tango: Creative Duos are the Real Genius
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photo by glenn campbell photography
Geniuses, lower your voices. Because you are part of a myth that is about to be exploded. The fact is that you're a fiction.
Yes, that's right, you don't exist. And Joshua Wolf Shenk will prove it to you if you read his epic book, "Powers of Two," wherein he calmly, methodically, poetically decimates the “the myth of the lone genius" and replaces it with the world of the duet. “The pair is the primary creative unit,” he says, and goes on to give a million beautiful and scary examples of how creativity is a game that flows between two minds and never just one. Even if we thought it was just one. It was actually two.
Genius is a dance: Hamilton and Washington, Miranda and Kail
You've heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda, perhaps? See, he's a certified genius, as I’ve told plenty of people quite emphatically. (“He’s a...a...a... genius” I told my sister. “Mitra, are you blushing?” she asked.)
But see, you can tell he's already so onto the revolution. If you open the internet and watch an interview, peek around Twitter or poke around the Hamiltome, you can't miss that actually the genius is, at least in part, Lin-And-Tommy -- Tommy Kail, his longtime creative partner, who directed Hamilton and In The Heights. As Lin's Tony Award acceptance poem points out: "This envelope says Lin, but it's not entirely Lin's / Cause when you work with Tommy Kail, the best idea wins..."
And as I was pondering this, and reading Ron Chernow's epic Hamilton biography, and seeing the big golden star Hamilton logo everywhere I looked when I opened my laptop (a fan will just never be #satisfied) I started to also realize that, for all his genius, the A-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R wasn't the genius either. It was, in a big way, Alexander-And-Washington. And a lot of the awesomesauce that happened circa 1776 came out of how the personality of their partnership pulled the best of each of them into its genius.
See, people like Alexander, like Lin, are maybe extraordinarily creative not because they are geniuses but because they are willing to dive in and tango with another person, many different kinds of other people and let something emerge.
For sure, stumbling into a genius-grade partnership is probably way more likely when you're a person who's just always, relentlessly, omnidirectionally, lovingly, loyally, pairing up to create. That's how you earn those hyphens -- by finding them, making them, everywhere. Alexander-And-Laurens. Alexander-And-Madison -- for awhile. Alexander-And-Angelica. Alexander-And-Eliza. Lin-And-Vanessa. Lin-And-Alex. Lin-And-Andy. Lin-And-Chris. Today, Lin-And-JLo.
And maybe we could all tap our genius potential by stopping trying to be geniuses all by ourselves and actually daring to duet, to dance a tango or two.
Daring to dance a Tango...for real?
Tango? Huh? Yes. Literally. To dance a tango. Since starting a tango school (well, I didn't really start it, it was Mitra-And-Stefan), I have definitely noticed that people who are up for dancing social, improvised Argentine tango are really opening up to the powers of two:
They are willing to dare to be partners. This takes such guts, whether it's with a friend or a spouse or a stranger.
They are willing to stay calm and persist through the long and awkward stages of risking and failing to connect...
And most importantly they are willing to keep on practicing and improving their skills to become better and better at partnering.
In school, most of us never learn even the basics of connecting and creating with a partner. I definitely didn't, and I got what some might consider one of the best educations that could be bought here on planet Earth! With the exception of occasional moments doing extracurricular theater, my creativity mostly was stuck inside of my journal, which was a very stultifying place for it to be.
Enter tango, which suddenly involved me in a whole mess of beautiful pairings that have blossomed in all kinds of creations - dance-creations, yes, but also events of all kinds, inventions, games, all kinds of writing, courses I offer, even a business that supports me! And the skills of improvised partnering I have learned and continue learning from tango have infused how I interact with every single person in my life, even my relationships within my family. Like, right now my mom and I are working on a children's book together.
I've seen tango unlock people's creativity completely, and the whole community benefits. But underlying all the new performances, events, businesses, career-changes, and, yes, babies that spring up in the creative wake of tango pairings, is the gradual acquisition of a deep set of partnering skills that allows more creativity to flow everywhere - at home, at work, all the time.
The Hamiltango Genius Award
How about Tony awards for creative duos? MacArthur Genius grants to pairs? TED, how about creative pairs of people speaking together, how about that red bubble carpet being a double-bubble? True, creative pairs usually have one front man - maybe the non-front man could still be up there, just in the non-front.
Improvising with a partner can definitely be hard, irritating, confusing. Is it worth it? No doubt. Absolutely none. I bet that if you want to be more creative or more of a genius, to revolutionize government or Broadway or even your own life, learning how to improvise with a vast huge range of partners would help.
Maybe YOU (AND your partner) will be the one receiving the first MacArthur Genius-Duo Award. And you could dance a tango to celebrate.
P.S. Just for Hamilton Fans: Ten tango things you need to know...
Where do you learn to tango? The answer is: in a million partners' arms. But you can't just wait for it. You have to write your own deliverance. Here are a few things that you might want to know as you get started...
- A Tango lasts 2 minutes, maybe three minutes - three minutes in total agreement
- It’s improvised, a very vivid sort of freestyle love supreme
- It's like comma flirting but even cooler. It’s cool to never know if they actually got it or not. But it’s even cooler to dance it all out in a really good tango.
- The music, it’s inexplicable, soul-tattering, a freight train of love, made at a time when the world was mostly manufacturing hate. In the heights of the tradition there's a tango called "Carnaval De Mi Barrio," recorded by Orquesta Típica Edgardo Donato in 1939
- Tango definitely resists being captured in the fullness of its glory, its story on a stage, but I can think of someone who might could do it
- There is a lot of it going on, nonstop, all the time right there in the greatest city in the world (and all the other ones too)
- Tomorrow there'll be more of us...
Tomorrow is for the story of tango. The story of how you, Lin, and all the others showed me who I needed to embrace for the next stanza of my shot. How my shot was really your shot too. It's the story of, say, tweeting to someone for the first time -- pardon me, sir -- how strange it felt but also how right, how good it was to get used to that, to learn how such little words can move much big hearts. We went with the strangeness and realized it was beautiful. We improvised. That's the core of all this, the story of our times.
In the meantime, tonight, how many hyphens can we earn, and what is in store for our audiences, our countries, yea, the multiverse itself if every single human here becomes happily hyphenated? Raise a glass - may every orphan immigrant, every alone person find the thing we all only need: Love.
