HOW DARDO AND TANGO HAVE HELPED ME HEAL
If you spend any time here at the studio, you will see Myra steadfastly taking classes and lessons and attending the milongas several days a week. When you learn more about the courage behind her story, you will be inspired to spend as much time as she does, working to reclaim your joy too.
by Myra Schechtman
I have had Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) since I was 3 years old. I don’t remember too much about having it from back then, except that the other girls could wear these cute little Mary Jane shoes to school while I had to wear clunky, lace-up Oxford shoes because they were supportive and good for my feet. Miraculously the RA went into remission around the time I went off to college. I was no longer in pain and I remember dancing from one fraternity house to the next during pledge week when the houses were open and all the music flowed into the streets to lure the pledges in. I forgot pain and suffering for so many delightful years.
I eventually married and had a son. It was with the birth of my son 28 years ago that the RA came back: first in my hands and fingers as I lifted him in and out of the crib, and then in my knees and ankles as I chased after him as a toddler. I remember from this time. Rheumatoid Arthritis is a systemic disease which means it is in one’s whole body. I was never sure which joints would swell and hurt and for how long. I would wake up each morning and mentally a do a body check to find out what hurt on that day. If my knees and ankles didn’t hurt too much, I would try to do whatever I could that required walking on that day. If I was sitting, I would try to do whatever I could from a sitting position; if I was standing, I would do the same so I didn’t have to bend or unbend my knees too often. Elevators were my best friends. I remember the withdrawal into myself as my whole being focused on how to minimize my movements to avoid pain, and how I struggled against this to be a “normal” wife and mother. I also remember how caring my husband was, always pitching in with household chores and offering me seats whenever he saw one available. How I hated him for this as it singled out my infirmity while I so loved him for his tremendous consideration and attentiveness. I became fearful of trying new things; afraid they would cause new pain.
My husband passed away 13 years ago; our son went off to college 4 years later and I began a quest to get my life back. I searched for doctors who would see me as a whole person and not a walking illness; who would not push me into taking heavy-duty arthritis medications (one of which had nearly killed me), but would support me in tapering off my 20 years of prednisone use. I searched for a support person who could help me with my medical issues and assist me in figuring out what I wanted in this new life and how to get it. And I searched for communities where I could find new friends and joyous celebrations. I have been blessed to find an integrative doctor and a life coach who are tremendous assistants in my journey. But it was not until I joined the DGS community and more specifically began private lessons with Dardo that I began to truly heal.
I began at DGS four years ago and I began taking private lessons with Dardo about one year later. So, as Dardo says, I am a tango baby. I started fearful my RA would flare-up, or I’d fall and make a fool of myself, or I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the class. I had already fallen twice and broken an elbow in each fall. I knew I didn’t want to do that again but didn’t know how to prevent it. I had had tons of physical therapy, spent hours with awful, elastic therabands and followed all different sorts of treatments, all to no avail. I had even tried tango for a year at another studio and wound up with pains in my right hip and butt from repetitively walking backward for hours at a time. So it is a tribute to both Dardo Galletto and Karina Romero that after seeing them at the 92nd Street Y, I decided to take another chance at tango with them. I recognized that they were excellent dancers and teachers but most important, they cared about their students (an ingredient missing in the other studio).
I took a variety of classes at “Dardo Galletto Studios” but it was with Dardo’s slower, deliberative technique classes that I felt most comfortable. I felt that the slower I moved, the less likely I was to hurt myself or to have a flare-up. After a year of being in his classes, I knew that I wasn’t going to get hurt but something unexpected happened – I got hooked on Tango. My motivation now was not just that I loved to move and dance and tango movement was gentle on my knees and ankles; I now wanted to be the best tango dancer I could be, given my constraints.
I started taking privates with Dardo. For me this was (and continues to be) a transformative experience. I believe it began with his intense but gentle quietness, calmness, confidence which in turn quiets and calms me. It is only when I am quiet/calm that I can release my muscles to dance. Dardo’s training in ballet and his intelligent study/awareness of his own body has given him an almost uncanny ability to see muscles working (or not) in others. And he will quietly suggest movements that will challenge those muscles. (“more twist, Myra; even more”) His lessons are a combination of dancing and exercise so that even though you might be working the same muscles, they are worked in different ways and they do not feel repetitively stressed. Muscles that I never knew existed or thought had atrophied long ago are being stretched and strengthened. Somehow in the course of these lessons, I lost the pain in my hip and butt – he worked a miracle that no physical therapist or expensive Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy (PRP) treatment ever did! Thank you!
His gentle, reassuring manner has allowed me to feel comfortable with myself in the process of learning. He accepts me where I am with the dance (even if I have not done the homework exercises) and he is supportive of my bad days as well as my good. His experience has given him a wisdom that seems to me more advanced than his years would suggest. He sometimes shares this in class but only when asked in the private lesson. He is very respectful. Once, when I was not feeling well, he told me he would like to push me harder and asked if that was OK with me. At the time my old flare-up fears overcame me and I said “no”. He respected that and didn’t push. By the next lesson I had put those old fears back to sleep and told him “yes” and I have been pushing myself with his encouragement (“more, Myra; more”) ever since. If I do a stretch or a twist a little better than usual while we dance, Dardo smiles – I work for those smiles.
I think Dardo is the perfect Tango instructor for someone with physical challenges. His acceptance, respect, and quiet confidence that if you work at it you will do better, allows one to begin to relax, loosen muscles and actually use them constructively. When I was a child my mother would knuckle me between the shoulder blades telling me to stand up straighter. It took lessons with Dardo for me to realize that good posture came from my core and not from between my shoulder blades! He does not make everything explicit but through the exercises and one’s growing constructive awareness of one’s own body, bit by bit things fall into place.
But I think that what Dardo has helped give me is more profound than better posture, or increased ability to stretch/twist or even dance tango. He has helped me recover the joy, the total pleasure I had always found in movement, and the confidence that I can do it – anything! I no longer feel constrained by limits I thought RA had placed on me. Everyone has constraints of one kind or another. I am aware of mine but I can push those limits and work through them. After my husband died and my son left for school, I spent a year grieving and looking through old pictures of myself as a smiling, happy girl. I wanted to get that girl back. I knew the actual youth was gone; but I wanted that joy, that happiness, that love of life – the possibilities of youth, again.
I have worked hard to bring all of it back into my life, but Dardo has been the person who has most helped me regain that joy and inspire those possibilities. From his imperious command in class to “Explore It!” when we are learning something new; to his intense “more, Myra; more” in my private lessons, he has inspired me to move in ways I haven’t since all those fraternity parties. His occasional philosophizing in class about tango and life has inspired me to think differently about myself and discover new possibilities in myself and my world.
All of this has given me overwhelming joy and profound gratitude to all at DGS who have and will help me on this journey – Dardo, Karina, all my dance partners and friends. I could not do this alone.
I wish you all a deeply heartfelt thank you.