2014: 7.July-28.August
Meeting your Dream
I was in Europe as a tango tourist. After the first three weeks, I had concluded that tango was dead, certainly for me. I met no one with whom I needed to dance again.
On 1.August, Armin introduced me to Roberto, and we danced for the first time.
I left Berlin for a contract in Zurich. When I returned we had just one week to get to know each other, to decide, with the help of translators, that we wanted to work together.
There was no middle-ground halfway between our lives in Sydney and Berlin
There was no time to hesitate. We both knew how hard it was to develop without a partner. And we had a taste of what our connection could be.
I had to leap across an ocean.
I did not know how to do that.
How to Leap across unknown chasms for Love and/or Art
People tend to believe that I am fearless, bankrolled, or utterly self-confident. None of these are true.
Here’s the recipe:
- Focus on the desire.
- Make a plan.
- Every day, take the next step.
Not only the move to Roberto and Berlin, but every gesture and pixel of TangoForge you see today came from daring to focus on my desire, analyzing what needed to be done, and the practice of self-discipline.
Self-discipline is shoving the doubts just far enough out of the way so that I have the space and energy to do the task that will get me to the next step.
Since people persist in seeing me as some sort of force of nature, when in fact I am just a person wounded and lost in the usual ways, I wrote a book about how I get to it. It’s called Syntax of Power.
Because your dreams are different and your oceans are different, and because people helped us to get here, we share with you not only our knowledge but the crucible of our daring. See our Anniversary Gift.
Nothing is as satisfying as your own creativity
In the 5 years of our journey, we have done so many things that were beyond my imagination at the moment we met. From complex productions to significant pedagogical innovations, to the beautiful students and collaborators we are honored to work with.
Of course, it has not been easy for me to live in Germany, and of course like every partnership, we have had very hard times.
We are fed by the art.
Art is ephemeral and fleeting. It is irrational and often unremunerated. It is difficult to control, predict, produce. It is mysterious, unreliable, and unmanageable.
And when it shows up, everything makes sense. The complexities of relationship make sense. Every risk makes sense. We are catapulted to our higher selves in service of something bigger than our knowing. We burn the fuel of everything that we are to leap as far as we can into the unknown.
One of the things that happens is that we experience trust.
Another is that we discover that we are much bigger than we imagined.