Solo Chica Contest Winner Kelly Macias on her trip to Buenos Aires with my Tango Adventure team, November, 2019
Way back in the pre-pandemic era, I created the brand Solo Chica to encourage women to travel alone.
To launch Solo Chica, we sponsored a contest.
We chose Kelly Macias from Washington, DC as the winner.
Kelly is a writer, storyteller and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant focused on social justice, currently based in Washington, DC. She uses storytelling as a key part of her DEI work to create worlds where everyone gets seen and everyone matters.
Kelly has been in love with tango for years but she was not dancing or studying when we first met. She reached out to me for life coaching, initially with reconnecting to her body and pleasure as the goal with the idea that she might get back into tango too. Through our coaching relationship, she decided to come to Buenos Aires for a Solo Chica Tango Adventure. Kelly came to Buenos Aires just a few months before the pandemia (the pandemic!) sidelined us from the dance floor.
We loved Kelly’s answers. Why should we choose you for the launch contest? “I’ve spent the last few years feeling very disconnected from my sexuality, sensuality and feminine energy, as a whole. I would the opportunity to get support in exploring it.”
What would it mean for you to rediscover the Tango Goddess in you through the photo shoot? “Like many working women in their forties, I’ve been busy focusing on my career for the last several years. The stress of trying to be successful in a hectic society centered around class and patriarchy and white supremacy has taken its toll. I’m no longer as carefree or vulnerable as I used to be.
Add technology and social media to the mix, and it has meant that I spend most of my time in front of a computer screen than tending to my intimate relationships. I want to connect back to my vulnerability and sensuality and joy and think that the Tango Goddess photo shoot is a way to liberate myself from all that has been weighing me down.”
The grand prize: a Free Tango Goddess Photo Shoot with our resident genius photographer Tan Kurttekin, who shoots for Netflix among other clients!
We are super excited to share the results of the photo shoot with you here. Kelly is definitely a TANGO GODDESS! She was already a goddess before she arrived.
In this video that we recorded in Plaza Dorrego, where tango is danced on Sunday nights in San Telmo, Buenos Aires, and the streets are taken over early in the day by pounding drums and a street fair, Kelly talks about what it was like to work with me in a coaching relationship and to combine that work with the trip to Argentina.
Before we started working together, Kelly struggled with her own doubts about whether tango is really a dance for a curvy, Black woman. She hadn’t seen many other women in the US tango scene who looked like her. She worried that to dance tango, one had to have a thin ballet-like body.
I could understand that fear. I used to feel the same way. I thought being a curvy woman would make being a tango dancer impossible. I’m sure many others have felt this way. Far too many women (and some men too) put our desires on hold thinking we need to get to some magical number on the scale, or BMI, before we go out in the world and do the things we want to do.
The most amazing part is how Kelly found me. She googled “curvy woman tango” and found me through an Internet search. I don’t ever remember using those words in a blog post, but I do put my body out there as an example that one doesn’t have to be skinny or flat-chested to be a dancer.
Kelly told us, “I feel much more connected to my body compared to at home, less hip and back pain. Just in general feeling much more alive and embodied and aware of what’s happening in my body. Also the feeling of not being stressed. I can feel space opened up. And the heaviness that I feel normally has been lifted. My muscles are working in ways that they haven’t in years.”
“I learned that the lessons that apply to tango, apply to life. Things about connection and being able to connect with strangers through dance. Dancing with a good dancer sort of feels like falling in love. So there’s been this experience that’s sort of like falling in love. Every time I’m dancing, every time I’m held at a milonga or at a practice, every time I trust someone new it’s just this wonderful sort of high feeling that I haven’t felt in a really long time so this experience it’s been transformative in that way.”
With the wonderful Wanda Abramor, a key teacher in my Tango Your Life/Tango Adventure team
As a poster girl for solo female tango travel to Buenos Aires, Kelly told us she wanted to help us show that tango is for everybody, and every body type, racial/ethnic background, age, and background. We are completely on board for this mission of inclusion!
It’s important to touch on the history of tango here. The African origins of tango in Argentina have often been erased since many Argentines perceive themselves as a white country with European roots. The African influence was present and vital in the roots of tango, and these days more people are talking about that. This recognition of the role of African influence in tango goes in parallel with social change happening in Argentina. It’s common to hear stories from people who realize they had a Black grandmother that nobody talked about. More and more Argentines are identifying themselves as Afro-descendants.
Kelly was the perfect fit for the Solo Chica Program because this project was created to show more women the infinite doors tango can open up beyond the dance itself.
Kelly said so many good things in our interview that we wanted to share more clips with you to share her story so you can see those in the Instagram clips below:
“Less Politics, More Tango”
“Mistakes as Part of the Dance,”
“The African Roots of Tango in Buenos Aires.”
Have you ever dreamed of getting away from everyone you know and going on an adventure where you get to try on new sides of yourself and learn something new? The magic happens outside of the comfort zone. First you may need some support to step out of your comfort zone.
Solo Chica is designed to help you do just that–get on a plane, go somewhere new, and learn something new in a safe, contained way because you have our curated Itinerary and supportive program to guide you. You won’t be figuring this all out on your own.
We are super excited to officially launching the Solo Chica Tango Adventure in Buenos Aires with the stories of three women (American and British) who are soon to embark on an international growth adventure with our team.
We chose Kelly as our Grand Prize winner because she wants to help us show that tango can be for every body type, and racial/ethnic background. We think that message is so important.
We chose Cathy because she told us she wants to reimagine womanhood with a partner or not, and to heal regrets about not being a mother. And she is a priest! We needed to have her on board.
We chose Justyn because she is a two-time cancer survivor who uses all her life experiences and learnings to inspire others to use their own powers to heal themselves through the Brave Souls Project.
Two are total beginners. One is an advanced beginner. All three women are taking a leap outside their comfort zones to learn a dance in a city where they know no one–until now. Here are some of the people they are about to meet.
So who are these brave Solo Chicas?
Here are their stories.
Kelly Macias, Washington, DC, Grand Prize Winner of a coaching session with Sasha and a Tango Goddess Photo Shoot (value $500)
In Kelly’s words: “I’m a writer and a consultant and my consulting practice is focused on supporting organizations to increase their racial and gender equity so that they can do social justice work in the world. I would describe myself as a dreamer—I’m much more interested in possibilities, creating and building new things and developing what could be than by feeling limited by what actually is.”
Kelly’s Tango: “I would say that I’m an advanced beginner. I’ve been having a love affair with tango since 2004 but it is currently an unrequited love because I’ve been inconsistent. I’ve taken group lessons, privates, workshops over the last 15 years but sporadically. I enjoy salsa, bachata, merengue and hip hop. If money were not an issue, I’d have given up my work long ago and moved to Buenos Aires to pursue my dream of being a tango star!”
Why should we choose you for the launch contest to receive this extra free coaching support? “I’ve spent the last few years feeling very disconnected from my sexuality, sensuality and feminine energy, as a whole. I would the opportunity to get support in exploring it.
I would be an enthusiastic ambassador for the program and could imagine partnering with Sola Chica in some way to promote diversity (racial/ethnic, body type, career, etc). within the program. I’m already sold on what a great and transformative experience this could be and I’d want to spread the word so that folks know that tango really is for everybody and every body type!“
What would it mean for you to rediscover the Tango Goddess in you through the photo shoot? “Like many working women in their forties, I’ve been busy focusing on my career for the last several years. The stress of trying to be successful in a hectic society centered around class and patriarchy and white supremacy has taken its toll. I’m no longer as carefree or vulnerable as I used to be.
Add technology and social media to the mix, and it has meant that I spend most of my time in front of a computer screen than tending to my intimate relationships. I want to connect back to my vulnerability and sensuality and joy and think that the Tango Goddess photo shoot is a way to liberate myself from all that has been weighing me down.”
What else would you like to discover through this experience? “I want to have multiple tangasms and discover pleasure, intimacy, and connection through my lived experiences!”
Cathy Mark, London UK, winner of a coaching session with Sasha
Tell us more about you; “I am a menopausal priest on a journey of healing and rediscovery as I work towards accepting that I may never find ‘the one’ to settle down with and I will now never have biological children of my own. I want to rediscover love, light and laughter in a self-affirming way.”
Describe your tango experience: “Total beginner.”
What else would you like to discover through this experience: “Learn to love myself again. Learn to forgive myself. Learn to laugh again.”
Cathy will be coming from the UK. She loves traveling and her favorite destination to date is Sri Lanka. She also recently visited Finland and Morocco.
Cathy is coming in 2020. As we develop the Solo Chica program, we may develop an email list that lets people connect with other Solo Chicas who want to adventure together. We are excited to welcome Cathy and see how her adventure unfolds!
Justyn Livingston, Bend, Oregon, Winner of a coaching session with Sasha
Tell us about you: “I am an artist, painter, former professional ice-skater, and meditation teacher/coach. I am thriving after two cancer diagnoses, and have been doing deep inner work with Dr Joe Dispenza. It is time for me to ‘take it off the mat’ and live it. Tango in Paradise and Solo Chica seem like a great place to start. ;-)”
If you are chosen as a winner in the Launch Contest and you receive a free 1-hour coaching session with Sasha, what would you like to focus on? “Furthering my ‘feminine mojo’ (we need a new word! verve?). I have been single for a long time, and would like to shift my energy and draw a fitting partner in dance and in life. I want to integrate what many beautiful European women have and exude, which is a confident sensuality and style in all ages.”
“Our culture considers women my age to be invisible. It’s time to change that. Surgeries and cancer treatments have been difficult gifts and I intend to live beyond those perceived limitations.”
Why tango?: “I spent a few years in Eugene and Corvallis dancing Cuban Salsa with a little bit of DanzSon, and loved it. In my earlier years I studied ballet, flamenco, modern dance and jazz. I’ve taken one tango workshop and found it compelling on many levels. Specifically, the energetic lead that occurs when two people are tuned in to each other and in the present moment.”
Helping others: Justyn’s experiences on cancer’s healing path led her to create The Brave Souls Project, where she supports others on their healing journeys. BSP helps people transform their health by rewiring their responses to thoughts and emotions from fear and anxiety into healing and opportunity. She helps others in group and one-on-one sessions, using the power of guided meditation, epigenetics and neuroscience to help people shift their outlook.
Through her experience in Solo Chica, Justyn wants to “inspire other women to claim their lives, whole-heartedly. If not now, then when?”
PS Everyone who comes on a Solo Chica Tango Adventure gets a Tango Fairygodmother or father to accompany them in the milongas to dance, meet people, and discover the three transformational elements in the Solo Chica Tango program: the look, the embrace, and the walk. Justyn is so excited about meeting her Tango Fairygodfather Kevin she shouted it out on Instagram.
Here’s a video where you can see the Solo Chica Adventure that awaits these three ladies–and possibly you …
Are you a Solo Chica?
It doesn’t matter if you are single or married. Solo Chica doesn’t depend on your relationship status. Being a Solo Chica means you want to travel alone in style.
The Solo Chica Tango Adventure is accessible and easy to do. All adventures start with one step.
Enter your email below. We will send you more information in a beautiful PDF showing you the adventure that awaits you in Buenos Aires.
Wanna go on a Solo Chica Adventure?
You won't be solo long. Enter your email for details + next steps.
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Check your e-mail to confirm your subscription.
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Have you thought about traveling alone for your next vacation, but you are afraid that solo travel could be a bit lonely? Not with Solo Chica! Today I am excited to announce our exciting new thing–designed to make it easy for you to get on a plane for an adventure on your own. Easy. Done. Itinerary in hand.
Solo Chica is all about helping women 35+ travel alone with carefully curated Itineraries for transformative learning experiences. With Solo Chica, you can travel to off-the-beaten-path worlds in a local culture without having to figure this all out alone. You’ll be immediately connected with local people when you land who will guide you on a course of personal transformation–through a dance, a photo shoot, or who knows what…Solo Chica-style!
Women who are under 35 can be Solo Chicas too–so can men! We designed Solo Chica for 35+ solo travelers in mind because we want to support women to travel alone. Younger women and men have more built-in support for traveling alone through hostels.
Doesn’t it seem more “normal” for younger people to travel solo? After a certain age, the message gets drummed into us that we are support to travel with a partner, family, or friends. At Solo Chica, we support you to travel solo or with whoever you want. There is something sublime about solo travel. Solo travel stretches you, showing you new parts of yourself as you meet more people and take risks in a place where no one knows you.
Give us your week of vacation. Solo Chica will turn your trip into a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
What’s a Solo Chica™ Adventure?
Solo Chica is a new kind of solo travel adventure designed by Quirkyalone author and life coach Sasha Cagen (moi!) to make it easy for you to get on the plane for a curated 7-day transformative vacation. Easy. Done. Itinerary in hand.
Solo Chica is designed for busy women who want adventure. With every Solo Chica Adventure, you get an Itinerary that has been created by local insiders to give you a travel experience that’s fulfilling, easy, authentic, and safe.
Every Solo Chica Itinerary includes contacts for the people to guide you on a transformative experience.
Because Solo Chica not a group tour, you will have the freedom to come when you want and to move according to your own choices and desires. You’ll be open for serendipity when you travel while also having structure and support. (Goodbye annoying prepackaged tours that schedule every moment tiring you out.)
The future is Solo Chica
Interest in female solo travel is skyrocketing. Not only aremore people single today than ever more married and partnered women want to go on soul-fulfilling trips on their own. My coaching clients want to talk about how to travel solo without feeling lonely. I’ve also heard from married women, I want to go on a Solo Chica Adventure! You can!
Hostelworld, an online hostel-booking platform released a 2018 study showing that bookings by solo female travelers increased by 45 percent from 2015 to 2017, compared with a 40 percent increase for men.
However, there are still a lot of questions and frustrations for older solo female travelers:
Where to stay if you want to meet people but don’t want to stay at a twentysomething party hostel?
How do you handle going out alone at night?
Where to go so you are not surrounded by couples and families, talking to no one, and feeling terribly lonely? (Been there, done that!)
What to do if you are concerned about safety or loneliness but you are not a group tour person?
Solo Chica was created as one answer to these questions.
You want to get off the tourist bus and deep into the culture wherever you go.
You like to travel with purpose and meet new people.
You want to get back in your body and reconnect with the parts of you that are fun, sensual and exude joie de vivre.
But you work a lot … You don’t have time to plan.
We have something for you!
Why are we focused on the chicas?
We call it Solo Chica because our focus is empowering women to travel alone for transformative learning experiences.
We are open to the cool, self-aware men too!
Solo Chica fits in with the overall mission here at sashacagen.com. Much of my work with Quirkyalone, my life coaching work, and online courses have been about helping you to reduce your fear being single so that you can hold out for the kind of relationship you really want. When you aren’t afraid of being alone, you won’t settle.
Traveling alone is part of this equation. You want to feel free to live your dreams whether you are single or in partnership.
If not now, when?
Don’ t waste your life hiding in comfort zones. Come on a Solo Chica Adventure!
Our First Solo Chica Itinerary is the Tango Adventure in Buenos Aires. Watch this video to see the Adventure that awaits Solo Chicas in Buenos Aires…
Every Solo Chica Itinerary will get you out of your head and back into your body.
Why the body focus? Because the tech industry got us good. We are all hopelessly addicted to our screens and thinking way too much! We need to reconnect with our flesh.
In the social media era, tango is the perfect first Solo Chica Adventure. Tango allows us to be in the present moment with another person we can see, touch, feel, and enjoy connecting with. Tango also helps us to reconnect with our masculinity, femininity, sensuality and confidence.
In the Solo Chica Tango Adventure Itinerary, we give you 7 days of carefully curated tango bliss from morning to night in Buenos Aires, where tango was born.
Solo Chica is not only a vacation. It’s a personal growth adventure designed to help you:
Reconnect to your sensuality.Rediscover parts of you that you that have been lost or suppressed when you reconnect your sensual self through tango.
Become more physically confident in ways you can draw on for dating, flirting, and work/leadership whether you are a woman or a man. For women, hello pussywalking!
Discover what tango has to teach you about yourself, life, and relationships…with a high probability of tangasms! Every person on our carefully curated Solo Chica Buenos Aires team was chosen for their warmth, excellence, and their ability to show you the tangasmic path of tango.
As we were developing Solo Chica, we ran a contest earlier this year asking the women and men who told us they wanted to come on a Tango Adventure why we should give them extra support in a free coaching session and with a free Tango Goddess Photo Shoot (one of the amazing things you can do as part of your Solo Chica Adventure as insider pricing.)
Later this week we will announce the winners of the Solo Chica Launch Contest. They are all brave, inspiring women who will soon arrive in Buenos Aires for their curated Solo Chica Adventures.
Here are some of the amazing people waiting for you in Buenos Aires!
We are waiting for you!
Are you a Solo Chica?
It doesn’t matter if you are single or married. Solo Chica doesn’t depend on your relationship status. Being a Solo Chica means you want to travel alone in style.
The Solo Chica Tango Adventure is accessible and easy to do. All adventures start with one step.
Enter your email below. We will send you more information in a beautiful PDF showing you the adventure that awaits you in Buenos Aires.
Wanna go on a Solo Chica Adventure?
You won't be solo long. Enter your email for details + next steps.
You're almost there!
Check your e-mail to confirm your subscription.
(If you're a Gmail user, this e-mail may land in your "Promotions" tab)
Hi! I’m Sasha
Executive and Life Coach on a mission to help women connect with their bodies to live their best lives + do their best work. Author: of Quirkyalone + To-Do List. Forthcoming: WET.
The best way to stay in touch is to sign up for my newsletter. See you in your inbox!
Executive and Life Coach on a mission to help women connect with their bodies to live their best lives + do their best work. Author: of Quirkyalone + To-Do List. Forthcoming: WET.
The best way to stay in touch is to sign up for my newsletter. See you in your inbox!
