…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?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
My nephew turned one this summer and his parents threw a powerful luau to celebrate. I was entranced by the hula dancers - the mood, the intricacy of their innocence.
Remembering a healing hula danced by Sughanda Ferro Black at the end of a Tango teacher training program on Maui some years ago, I asked her for Hawaiian music suggestions. Among the sweet parcel of songs she recommended was Blaine Kamalani Kia’s gorgeous chant Kamali’i O Ka Po.
Photo by Ahmed Tlamid. Presented at the 10th San Diego Tango Festival on Friday, January 1st, 2016. Video by Scott Haller.
In this chant, a child asks her brother if he remembers how he fits into the bigger picture. “You are holding the fish’s belly - but where is its head? Where is its tail? Where do you come from? Where will you go?”
Those questions spoke to the dark child within me. It is so easy to dissect away that bigger picture, when we find ourselves in a hard or hungry place. With effort we did make it through our darkness: a dark year, and we even struggled through a dark moment right before dancing this hymn. “Where will you go?” No place but here, just deeper.
I share this with the hope that we each might feel joyfully connected to the deep intelligence of the larger, longer cycles of life - that we feel ourselves peacefully at home within the vastest of views.
May we all shine together
May all needs be met
If you've been following this blog you might be aware that our opinion is that we've sucked for many years. In this performance, though, we both agree that we don't suck. :) We felt present with each other and with the music and able to let unexpected things come through. We didn't even know exactly which song we'd dance to - we gave DJ Varo five Pugliese pieces to choose from, and he selected...Emancipacion!
This performance happened because our friend Ilona Glinarsky of Living Tango invited us to perform at a milonga held in honor of the wedding of our friend Naomi Hotta to Sergio Higashiyoshihama. She invited us just a couple days before the event, saying that we represent a beautiful union whose partnership would be in keeping with the spirit of the event. We were so happy to be able to make this gift to the couple.
I am finally wearing the dress created by Rina Gelderman of Atelier Vertex! Thanks Rina! With many thanks also to Robert Le for taking this video.
