TRANSCRIPT ~ EPISODE 27

Episode 27: Somatic tango wisdom for everyday life, with Simona Ciampi

Producer/Host: Liz Sabatiuk | Music: "El Carillon de la Merced" by Enrique S. Discepolo, performed by Carlos Molina y Su Orquesta | Image Credit: Alejandra Rúa Álvarez

[MUSIC]

LIZ ID INTRO:
I'm Liz Sabatiuk and this is Humans of Tango, where we explore what tango has to teach through the experiences of those who dance it.

LIZ SCRIPT:
Simona Ciampi is one of the first tango humans I ever interviewed for this podcast. That interview resulted in the episode "Why We Should All Be Dancing Tango," an episode that's still incredibly close to my heart and that you can find linked in the show notes.

Simona has experienced some big changes since then, and a few months ago I asked her to tell me about those changes via Zoom with the intention of updating her original episode. Yet while there are certainly threads that carry through from then to now, it was clear to me after we spoke that the shifts in Simona's life and perspective deserve their own episode.

SIMONA:
LIZ: Why don't you start by catching us up on what's happened in your life since we last spoke?

SIMONA: Yeah, so myself and the father of my daughter, we broke up. We are still in good contact, of course - we are both the parents of a wonderful human being.

I remember what I said in the episode, and I was very convinced of what I said, and I still stand by it. I think that if you are in a monogamous relationship, dancing tango provides all those outlets for play and mystery and, uh, flirt that in a normal life would bring you to something that we call betrayal or cheating. So I already explained what that means, but I have encountered over the years- like three years ago was the episode and-

[LIZ ASIDE] Actually, almost four years.

SIMONA: -I see people in their daily life getting completely overwhelmed by just meeting a guy or a woman. And for us tango dancers, we have a lot of opportunity to expose ourselves to all that romance in this protected, safe space that is staged, which is a milonga, where we can actually act and perform and live dramatically what would be in a romance. And sometimes it's even more fulfilling than a romance itself that can last, like, one month, while in tango we have it for life. So I stand by that. And I think my relationship lasted longer because we had tango. Then we missed a lot of other things, obviously, and that's why the relationship ended. But yeah, I still stand by all of that.

I remember I went to this Baltimore event and we were sleeping in the same hotel that we were dancing. Vittoria was there, my daughter. So one would sleep with the baby and then go downstairs and dance and have all the other things and then go back and your partner would be there. And I felt like, oh my God, I have everything. I have love, I have a relationship. And I also have all the thrill of the tango. And I was looking, kind of... not judging, but with compassion to all these ladies who actually did not have all that, but only had tango. And now I became one of them. [BOTH LAUGHING] Like, now my way to feel wanted, desired, pretty, graceful, successful, if you wan- if you will, is in tango. And it's very hard to replicate these feelings, this somatic fulfillment in other part of life. But if we are able to channel all the things that physically, somatically we do in tango in our real life, then we got it.

LIZ: So is this your new challenge, like bringing all of that, that, um, presence to everything in your life?

SIMONA: Yes, yes, exactly. Like, I have a bunch of clothes that I only pull out when I go to tango. And since I don't have much tango here in Puglia, these clothes are dusty! And I'm like, no way, these flowers and flattering skirts and decorative earrings, let's pull them out.

And I discovered that because I am on a somatic healing journey with a coach named Chen Lizra. And she's a dancer. And she went to Cuba to study dance, but also came upon the fact that in Cuba, people are not so distracted by their mind, by TV, by industrial culture. And so they are more into their body. And so she studied Cuban culture and discovered that there are five somatic elements that, if cultivated and brought into our body, can make us more embodied and actually help us have more fulfilling life and connect to our femininity or masculinity.

And so when she was teaching those things, I was like, oh my God, this is a tango lesson. Like, she was teaching elegance, for example, the way you hold your body with confidence, or intention, how you actually have meaning in your movement. I mean, we use the word "intention" in tango all the time. And there is also tempo, which is the ability to enjoy the moment. And we always say, like, you have to be present. You have to be actually into what you're doing when you dance. And there is also mystery, that kind of playfulness. And I really see that into the way women leaders and followers interact even to get to a dance. And sabrosura, which is actually the love that we can feel and we can give.

So when I approach the dance, I know that I can approach it also with a certain intention. So what is my intention when I go to dance? I'm not just there to be with, with myself, first of all. I'm there to encounter someone else. And my intention can change, but I think it really makes a difference if you enter a dance with an intention. What is my intention? Is to get the dance of my life, to give the dance of my life, is to cheer up this person because this person is sad, is to embrace this good-looking man like he's the only man on earth, is to go in there with the eyes of my heart open, to embrace another human being. And if you do all that, I'm sure it's gonna be much more enjoyable than we're just not present in what we do.

It's like, you know, like you can have sex and move your body and just aim to the final goal, the climax. Or you can have an embodied experience where it doesn't matter where you go, but you enjoy all the process. And in this case, you enjoy all the music, you enjoy the embrace, you are more present in your body, and you feel all the sensation that this beautiful dance is giving you, in the way you touch the other person, in the way you receive the other person, in the way you give yourself.

Now, of course, this opens the floor for disappointment, because you may enter with all this nice intention and the other person can hug you like this aseptic kind of embrace. But then it's you choosing to continue, to finish the tanda, to not repeat the tanda with the same person, or to change things in the making, which is what I do.

[MUSIC]

LIZ SCRIPT:
Quick note on terminology. You're about to hear Simona refer to "shamanic power." The concept of shamanism has a complex history that goes well beyond the scope of this podcast, and typically has to do with tribal or indigenous spiritual traditions.
As I interpret Simona's use of this terminology, shamanic refers not to a particular spiritual tradition, but rather to a sort of intuitive capacity some dancers might develop to bring about healing or positive change through their connection with a tango partner.

SIMONA:
I was in Montreal, and I started dancing with a guy. It was a práctica. So at that time, I was using my shamanic power only in prácticas, because it's the situation where you feel like you can talk and give feedback, while in a milonga it's harder. Although now I'm upgraded, so I do it all the time. The guy danced and it was aseptic. I felt nothing, like no emotions. So after the first song, I said, "Why do you dance?" like kind of provocative, almost, like, challenging question. So you can have two reactions. You can have the reaction where the person says, "Hey, this is too much of a deep topic to talk about in this situation," and boom, you know who you are dealing with. Or the other kind of reaction, where the man said, "Oh, I guess because, you know, when I was adolescent, I felt I was really ugly, and I was in love with this girl, and she liked to dance. So I started learning to kind of make an impression..." And he started telling me this story, and it was so moving. [LAUGHING] At the end of the story, we hugged, we cried, we started dancing, and it was amazing. Amazing. And I met him in the evening milonga and we didn't dance. And then he mentioned in a message that I kind of saved his life and thanked me. After that, I had so many other people reaching out to me after a dance, telling me, you know, that I danced with my heart and they could feel it.

Another guy who - this happened in Argentina - we danced. And normally, he's very cheerful and smiley, and that night, he couldn't smile as normally. I didn't know his personal story, and I kind of said, "What's up?" "Well, nothing, da-da-da." I didn't really talk that night, but I hugged him like, hey, whatever it is, I'm gonna share it with you. And I was moved to tears during that dance also. The guy did not say anything to me, but talked to a common friend. And this common friend said, "Hey, he told me you saved him that night."

So you, you don't know where people come from and what they have going on in their life, but if there is one way you can reach these people that is not therapy or food, the other way is hug them with all your might because that can save them. And it happened to me. I know I can do that. One person at a time, I can save someone - at least for another week. [BOTH LAUGHING]

And I also recently had someone who saved me. And this person, he told me the same words I use. He said, "I always enter the dance floor thinking that I'm dancing with the love of my life. But until tonight, I had never felt that someone was doing the same to me." That dance saved me, transformed me, brought clarity on things that were going on in my life. And after it...

LIZ: Just the feeling of mutuality?

SIMONA: Yes, the mutuality, and also the fact that I continued dancing with the person, like, the day after, and it wasn't pleasure. This is what I want to also stress. I felt pain, a huge pain going through me, and I couldn't explain why a situation that is supposed to be pleasurable was bringing me so much pain. And he danced with me until that became pleasure. And I think that was therapeutic. We have trauma and pain that is stuck in our body. If we do not release it with our body, it's gonna stay there. So I think at the moment I danced with this person, I had a toxic situation I was dealing with. I couldn't break free from it. And he kind of- he did the shamanic thing to me. And after that, I was clearly seeing what I needed to do. And I've done it. And now I am free from that situation. And I'm very grateful to this person for opening that part of my body that needed to be freed up. I mean, this all sounds like esoteric, wishy-washy crap.

LIZ: It's amazing.

[MUSIC]

LIZ SCRIPT:
As a dancer, a painter, and a human, Simona has been on a quest to heal from painful dynamics in her own relationships with men and in the history of her family. Cultivating her own ideal of femininity has been an important part of this process.

SIMONA:
I think we need to dare to be ourselves. That's the only way we can actually make the magic happen and connect deep with another human being through tango. And that's a body experience. What I mean is that we don't have to be in our mind. If something is happening and I start feeling sensation and I push them away because it's a woman and not a man or because he's not someone I would pick as a sexual partner, then I'm missing everything. 'Cause I'm connecting with the soul of the person, with the heart of the person. It doesn't mean that I would go to bed with the person, but I really want to connect with the soul of the other human being.

But I'll tell you, when I told you my experience, when someone shamaned me, my own trauma and released my pain, well, that was a man. And he was tall and well-built and he had this safe, secure embrace and also a very elegant and intentional way to hold a woman. Myself, I needed someone who was, like, an example of sane masculinity to be able to receive it instead of giving it. 'Cause I always give it. But for me to ask for it and to feel safe and protected, either I need someone who has done a lot of work with their own, you know, secure attachment or the - mmm, how can I say - the prototype of the man, you know, taller than me and bigger than me. So most of the time I feel bigger than a guy. Like if the guy is skinny... Or a woman, I cannot feel protected if she's as tall as me. So it's also a body experience to feel protected. If I have someone who feels like he's a tree or, you know, he feels, like, well-built-

LIZ: Do you think that that actually kind of harks back to, like, the parent-child relationship?

SIMONA: Probably. Probably. Because the only time I feel, I felt probably as safe was in the arms of my dad. So we look for that and we have to be conscious that, of course, a partner or a tango partner is not gonna do the job of a dad. We have to be sane and heal the relationship with our parents.

I don't know if I said to you, but another thing I said regarding tango, I got into dancing tango because I was not hugged enough when I was a child. I was left in the, how do you say, the cradle for very long. They tell me, you know, they told me, like- and I got into sucking my thumb so hard that I would scrape the skin, get to the bone of it.

LIZ: Were your parents, like, were they busy? Like they didn't have time to pick you up?

SIMONA: Okay, let's say officially they were busy because my sister was 12 months older than me, or 11 months older than me. But I know them. They didn't know better. They were brought up as workforce from their own parents. They were working since they were children in the fields. And, you know, there was no emotional connection.

But I mean, they also have lots of good qualities and my dad loves dancing. And I think when he sees me dancing, I see him moved. And before getting into tango, I was dancing folkloric dances of my own home region, which is Campania, where they dance tarantella and, um, tamurriata. And I learned those through going to town outdoor parties that are very common in Italy during a saint.

[LIZ ASIDE] During saint's days.

SIMONA: And then I learned also a dance from here, from Puglia. It's called Pizzica, um, where the woman wears a long skirt and dances on her own to a very strong beat, killing supposedly a spider who bit her and made her crazy. And through the dance, she heals. And, you know, every time there is this annual party for Santa'Antonio, for San Antony in my home village, my dad is like, "Simona, please, are you going to dance?" Oh, and then when the Pizzica finally comes and I'm doing something else, maybe I'm having coffee somewhere in another house, they come and pick me up. [BOTH LAUGHING] "Simona, there is a Pizzica, you need to come dance." And I dance and there is always, like, some sort of little applause at the end and people thank me. I think that's kind of a hidden dream of my dad to connect with that part of him, and I did it.

I'm really, really working hard on cleaning my ancestral weight, and my last painting-

[LIZ ASIDE] Check the show notes for a link to a photo of the painting.

SIMONA: -is about that. It's about, you know, processing whatever is into the female line with gesture, with body, with color in my case, and transform it in something beautiful that I don't want my daughter to carry for me.

In, in all my family, women are submissed to their abusive husbands. And this represents my aunt who was forced or asked or ordered to bring food to her family when she was very little and she had to walk miles and miles carrying a heavy basket on her head. And my dad remembers her all completely covered in tomato sauce when she arrived. And she was also carrying her sister under her arms at the same time. So a lot of balancing and, of course, breaking of what the child is supposed to be. So when I started painting, I wanted to talk about that. And my first boceto-

[LIZ ASIDE] Boceto means sketch in Italian.

-in the background, it was like mud, people working in the field. And then I imagined this painting and I said, "oh my God, this is so ugly. I don't want to hang this in my house." So how can I bring whatever I'm working on, just femininity, beauty, softness, into this work, so it actually represents more what I believe in? So I got inspired by a couple of artists that both have this very lush vegetation. So I started putting all these flowers, and that is me, right? You see the way I dress, I love color.

It took me so long to finish this painting because it's a lot of very, very small work and choosing which flowers you're going to put. And that was my healing process. The more I worked, the more I felt like, okay, this is what I need to do to not be one of these submissive women, to free myself from the chain of being in abusive or toxic relationships. So I want to be able to show my daughter what a woman can do for herself to be independent, strong, but also feminine. And so the painting is finished now and it's my rescue, my redemption, and my homage to the women of my female line.

And the femininity that is left into my life is very much related to tango. And so all these somatic elements - elegance, intention, tempo, sabrosura, and mystery - that my coach teaches, since I already knew how to channel them into tango, my challenge now is to bring them into my daily life. So to pull out my tango clothes, pull out my tango earrings, do my makeup, also during today, go to grocery shopping and see what happens. It works, Liz. Like, I have- head turning. Maybe it's just my impression, but boy, it feels good. I don't care if I'm just imagining it, but I feel like I walk in the street- if you walk with intention, like you are on the dance floor, I swear to God, people are going to look at you. And we all need to be witnessed sometimes, and I want to be witnessed into my light, not into my darkness. And I want my daughter to see me do that.

[MUSIC]

LIZ SCRIPT:
Here's to living with intention and healing ourselves and each other whenever we have the chance. Thank you, Simona. And thanks to the Internet Archive, where I found the song featured in both this episode and Simona's original episode, "El Carillon de la Merced," written by Enrique Discépolo and performed by Carlos Molina y su orquesta.