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Contact us directly at: tangolessons@danceoftheheart.com
What
are our sources for this work?
In
the wake of searing personal crises, I found a spiritual path eight years ago in
“A Course in Miracles.” The focus of this modern-day spiritual classic is on
relationships, uniquely so among major spiritual paths. As my work with the Course helped clarify relationship issues
for me, I found myself drawn to more completely embodying the masculine
principle while also feeling a pull to reconnect with the feminine principle in
a different way. These
complementary desires found physical expression in a fascination with mastering
the Argentine Tango. I was
surprised to discover just how many personal and spiritual challenges would
surface for me in the pursuit of learning a social dance.
I had considered myself a well-educated, reasonably aware and spiritually
alert person – but I felt distinctly unprepared by my cultural background for
the challenges that tango laid at my feet.
In responding to these challenges, I sought and found guidance from my spiritual
path, but also found myself discovering exciting connections with current
intellectual work, contemporary teachers, and world spiritual traditions that
addressed the issues I was experiencing in exploring the world of tango.
In terms of our tango background, Daniel Trenner’s vanguard work in bringing
tango to North Americans was a tremendous initial influence on both of us.
Deb and I started Dance of the Heart in September 1999, in large measure
due to his example with Bridge to the Tango.
As we studied tango, we found ourselves drawn especially to the
pioneering “transcend-and-include” work of Gustavo Naveira, Fabian Salas,
and “Chicho” Frumboli. In their
attempt to preserve the cultural foundations of tango while also seeking a
comprehensive way of studying tango’s possibilities, their work has come to be
known as “Nuevo Tango.” Within
this direction in tango, we have benefited tremendously from Gustavo Naveira’s
personal instruction, as well as interpretations and expansions of his work by
Brigitta Winkler, Luciana Valle and Tomas Howlin.
These tango maestros keep our work grounded in the authentic heritage of
the dance.
As Deb and I began to serve our local tango community in the role of teachers and
organizers, I observed that my own challenges in discovering tango were played
out over and over again in the experience of the students we were introducing
into community. Within the context
of teaching the dance, over the last five years or so we have sought to enrich
our teaching with the lessons we learned from working on our own challenges.
But the internal pressure slowly began to build for me to more formally
present some of the connections I found so exciting between tango and other
contemporary spiritual explorations. This
essay represents my attempt to draw these connections for a diverse audience,
and to lay a foundation for our future work.
It’s important for me to appropriately credit other sources of wisdom that have led to this work. In
addition to the act of divine grace which led me to “A Course in Miracles,”
I gratefully acknowledge the work of Marianne Williamson (“A Return to
Love”), Roger Walsh (“Gifts from a Course in Miracles”, “Essential
Spirituality”) and Jack Groverland of Unity of
Boulder, who became my primary guides toward and through the Course’s lessons. Jack and the Unity family provided two crucial years of
fellowship and transitional support while I explored the Course’s meaning for
me. The other primary sources for this synthesis included:
- The "Consciousness Map" work of Ken
Wilber and the Integral
Institute , which provides the big-picture conceptual glue to tie it all
together, as well as the integral vision that led to the Integral Transformative
Practice approach to tango,
- the energy-anatomy work of Carolyn
Myss, which helps to explain in modern terms the explosive subtle-energy
feelings of heart-opening awakening I experienced during what appears to be
"only a social dance",
- The "Gender Spirituality" work of David
Deida, which shows the way for leaders and followers in the dance to step up
and fully inhabit their role, for the sake of both themselves and their
partners,
- The contemporary Tantra explorations of Charles
& Caroline Muir and Stephanie
Stone, which link our work with those tantrikas from the past who saw this
electrically charged "man-woman stuff" as (simply, delightfully) one
more thing a cultured person would want to understand and practice well.
- my partner Deborah's fourteen years of training in “The
Livingston Practice”, also known as David Livingston's Acting Workshop,
which helps people discern the “real” from the “superficial” in their
interactions with their partners. We’re especially inspired to bring into play
the insights I gained in almost two years of weekly work with Deb in her
Actor’s Workshop. Inspired by the
Livingston Practice, Deb’s class enabled me to bring my authentic emotional
life into expression with a “scene partner” for the sake of theatrical
expression. Tango social dancing
has been described as “a theatrical event where all those present are both on
stage and in the audience.” If I
can break through my habits of social superficiality with a given partner, my
experience shows that the dance experience becomes much deeper. But the ability
to do so consistently requires training. Mastering
the skill of shifting social context from lightweight socializing to deep
intimacy will tend to maximize tango’s transformational
opportunities – especially if one’s partner is not attuned to the
transformational practice one is using.
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