It has been a while since I have known that I want to share my art, my knowledge and my experiences with the world. I have been a dance teacher for almost 20 years. I really loved the whole experience of teaching. When I was in eighth grade, I was already the Math assistant teacher in Uni. I, naturally, became a Preparador. I like the sound of that preparator, a more advanced student who helps other students. I think it was then that I found the paradoxical reality of teaching and sharing knowledge for me. I not only wanted to share, I also wanted attention, but only good attention. I don’t need all of those mean people that come to criticise me. I think I did everything I could to stay away, hide and avoid them as much as I could. I became a very stubborn ‘know it all’ type of person. I built my businesses with that attitude and that gave me a great couple of years but always with a wall that a ‘know it all’ guy couldn’t pass. Yes, I was always learning, but I thought I should know more than everyone else who received my knowledge. Right now I am very excited because I can perceive how learning to take criticism and allowing it to destroy me is one of the things that is allowing me to grow as I share a lot more than I ever did through my podcast, blog and my social media accounts.
My first dance school is called Soul and Dance. It was founded, I believe, 15 years ago… What? 2007, 17 years ago. Sorry this is a beautiful surprise, it was a great experience for me. It allowed me to leave lecturing and become a Dance Studio owner that does it all. The school undoubtedly gave me a lot of the tools I use today at Cortés Dance. We had a great community, all working together to express ourselves through dancing. Until that point, I just wanted to be the best. I went to the best university and I graduated without major delays except for political strikes. I wanted to translate being the best in everything I did. I worked so hard to keep that up, but doing it all meant that I knew a lot about dancing but not a lot about a lot of things. I kept this attitude for a few years and I found myself in situations where I wanted to give up, but it was working. The school became one of the biggest in the state and the biggest in the city quite quickly. Exciting time, all my knowledge in optimization was being used incredibly. Yet, first, the reality of the political situation was making hobbies an impossible thing to have for the majority of people, who in their spare time needed to look for other ways to produce money or to buy toilet paper.
Around 2012 the school went from more than 200 students to 30. Unsustainable of course and I pivoted to Fitness, that still was the one thing that kept a lot of people sane. With that, I applied the same attitude. In 2 years I had great success. However, I felt like I had a wall in front of me. I did not know everything, I lost a few friends that I basically ignored because they did not support me. I wanted the world to say amen to my ideas and opinions. That worked because I was always a bit ahead, I was always creating new ideas, Ideas that I copied from America or somewhere on the internet. I needed to always stay ahead, but at every stage, competitors started to appear and I could not compete with them because I did not listen to anyone, because they didn’t know what I knew. In both Soul and Dance and PA Fitness, I found the same wall of complex operations and because I insisted on running it all by myself, I struggled to keep them going, which is very different from my approach today with Cortes Dance. That wall I told you about always had a door that I now use constantly, especially because behind every wall there is another one.
Since the beginning of 2024 in Cortés Dance, we have been doing our best to create a team of people who are consistently helping with great intentions to create a better place and a better community. I finally let go of a lot of the systems that I held that were not my best suit. Don’t get me wrong, I am super proud of Cortés Dance, the school that helped me to obtain a PR, connected me to some of my favourite people in the world and helped me to better understand what SEO is and how I can ask my web designer to optimise it. I am proud that I have amazing people who have a lot more knowledge in different areas. I am working really hard on how to listen and learn from them as well as dodging everything that is not helpful. I had to work really hard at respecting my opinion and my value without letting my emotions drive my decisions or my mood, and while doing that I found a lot of beautiful lessons that only want to insist on making me better at what I do. Sometimes this can be really hard, because of fanaticism or pride for being part of a culture. Everyone who creates and puts themselves out there, especially on social media, gets a lot of resistance or opinions about a lot of things. Of course, the majority of the messages are full of love and support. But sometimes you try to share something that someone holds very close to their heart like the punta talon step for Colombians and guaguanco for Cubans.
As a Venezuelan, I understand that unconditional love for what your country produces, those emotional tears while eating a cachapa con queso (Cachapa with cheese), listening to gaitas (the Christmas Venezuelan music genres ) or tambores de San Millan. If there were a Japanese band playing gaitas I could love them or I could hate them. I would love and respect their intention and acknowledgment of my art, but I know that there will be a few not-so-pleasant comments directed to offend those musicians. But within those comments, there will be wisdom like keeping your knees together while doing punta talon. I honestly try to be too careful to the point that I sometimes stop sharing. Yes, I have the opportunity to learn as I create and open the space to have some great conversations. Emotions and ego will tell me not to listen, but how can I not listen when they love Punta y Talon the way I love una fiesta con tequeño? Approaching with empathy has created some emotional synchronicity that kept me away from learning from them. I hope to create more content and I hope to learn with my audience. Thank you for opening your heart to communicating with me. Before feeling defensive I will do my best to listen or read what you are trying to say. Well, if you are rude, I will probably just ignore you and I won’t give you a heart.
Gracias for reading!
Pedro