Leading and Leadership: A pop-up conversation with Mila Vigdorova

It's become incredibly common - dare I say normalized- to see women leaders among international and local events. And this ripple effect of liberating tango roles from gender roles tracks our evolving ideas around why we dance, our own shifting norms in identity, and solving some challenges of balancing classes, festivals and milongas. (Shout out to queer tango that has been deconstructing these ideas for a long time now, we are indebted to your forward thinking and equitable approach.) For women, leading can bring a lot of empowerment around claiming their dance in a bigger way. It's often coupled with expanding ideas of who we are, what we want, and what we desire when we can really choose outside of a default setting. Join Mila and I for a personal conversation around why we lead, the maturation of how we view dance and roles, and the new place women have as leaders in tango, leaders in their communities, and our burgeoning somatic approach to how we can claim so much of ourselves through the felt senses of the body. Giving ourselves permission to try on "identities" allows the full spectrum version of ourselves. We will also explore some of the challenges: as with any evolution, we get newer problems to solve- how to solve for "gender balanced" events, the struggle to get male leaders to stay engaged, and the increasing responsibility for women to really claim their leading at a high level- becoming responsible on the dance floor in terms of navigation, floor craft, and consent.