Category: Understanding Tango

Recently, at a tango festival in Saint-Petersburg (Russia), the organiser pushed two women dancing together off the dancefloor in the middle of a song. He insisted that his event honored the “traditions” and did not allow same-sex dance couples. This was not his only attempt to stop women from leading that night. One of them described the incident on Facebook, prompting a broad resonance. Russian tango teacher Viacheslav Ivanov launched a hashtag #tango4all and dancers everywhere showed support by posting pictures of themselves in same-sex or reversed-sex dance couples. (The event in question took place in 2019).

The organising school issued a statement saying that true tango is about men leading and women following and that in their events they will tolerate no exceptions. The timing could not be more ironic. The incident happened on the International Day of Tango, while on the other side of the world, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, motherland of all tango traditions, female leaders were competing in the Tango Championship for Women in Leading Role. So, why do women lead and men follow? And how is this still an issue?

A male leader and a female follower as a basic configuration is common for all couple dances of the Western world. At its source, a couple dance is exactly what it sounds: a dance to find a couple. In the past, patriarchal cultures controlled gender relations by strict societal rules from which couple dances offered a welcome temporary escape. People could court the opposite gender and find a prospective life or love partner through a ritualised social activity. Men being the dominant gender, their role on the dancefloor was to sweep the woman off her feet. Dance etiquette was put in place to contain this dangerously erotic activity. For a long time, roles and genders were fused and role swapping only happened for practice purposes.

As a dance, tango started with a bad reputation, considered obscene and confined to brothels, lower class venues and mafiosi gatherings, where men would buy a token to have a tanda with the girl of their choice. When Parisians heard about it, they thought “oh, a dirty dance, how delightful!” and set in motion a process that would popularise tango across the world. In the subsequent years both tango music and the dance would undergo a rebranding from sleazy to respectable (including rewriting the obscene lyrics). It would keep, though, its flair of provocative sensuality, of two strangers meeting for a tight embrace and possibly something more than an ocho cortado. 

In every couple dance the emphasis, at some point, shifts from “couple” to “dance”. The dance becomes complex enough to be interesting as an art form, as a means of expression rather than dating ground. The roles come somewhat unstuck from gender. This is often the moment when women start outnumbering men. Tango is still both about dance and coupling, but each one of us lives the two components in a very personal way at every particular moment. Many people start tango in hopes of meeting a new love, only to fall in love with a new dance. Also, tango is a tough skill to master and unless you are at least a little bit interested in it as a dance, frankly, there are easier ways to date.

Each role comes with a gendered history. Followers dance on high heels not because they follow, but because women’s party attire traditionally included high heels. Many moves are the way they are because of the initial lack of leg freedom for women in skirts and no such restrictions for men. When around the turn of this century women started wearing pants to milongas, the dance changed too. The wild, loose-legged, fearless nuevo follower was born, with her knockout boleos and whiplike ganchos, moves previously reserved to leaders. The man dumped the suit in favor of baggy pants and a pair of running shoes, and his game became less about seduction and more about freedom, about how far you could stretch the embrace without flying off into outer space. The vocabulary of moves was now almost entirely similar between the two roles. Nuevo, of all styles, was the one to let go of the idea of men necessarily leading and women necessarily following. 

Queer tango was born in the same period, starting in Northern Europe and spreading into Argentina and other countries. This movement was about creating a space for people eager to detach themselves from the dominant heteronormative view of tango. They could get together and dance, however and with whomever, without being banned, ridiculed or stigmatised. Queer tango showed us that this dance held within itself possibilities of connection and expression irrespective of gender and sexual orientation, but also that being gay or lesbian and tango were not mutually exclusive. 

When salon and milonguero became the dominant styles again, we witnessed the return of the tailor-made pants and proper tango shoes for male leaders, and of a tightly hugging slit dress for the female followers. The embrace closed again, making the couple’s connection more about depth and less about amplitude. It was a return to the roots, in every way, but at the same time an integration of the previous phase. By now the follower had firmly assumed her role as an equal partner with sophisticated vocabulary. Clearly gender-defined in their appearance, these styles made role swapping less of an obvious choice, but women wanting to lead and men wanting to follow was already too much of a commonplace to be reversed.

I started to lead within the first two years of my tango life. At that time I was living in The Netherlands, a culture of “live and let live”, so around me I saw men lead women, men lead other men, women lead men and women. Bored as I was to wait for interesting leaders to become available and desperate to move to my favorite music, I figured my follower girlfriends would rather dance with a beginning leader like me than not dance at all. I was right. Once I tried it, I loved how it felt. The creativity, the complexity, the responsibility, the feeling of the other person trusting you, the way you channel your musicality through somebody else’s body. I have been leading regularly ever since. 

My leading skills became an important part of my profession. The fact that I am an experienced leader as well as an expert follower, makes a tremendous difference. I can teach any role to any person. I tell leaders how their lead should feel, make them feel what I mean and also tell them what to do. I lead followers and assess both their individual technique and their following skills from inside the embrace. Most professionals I know have a decent level of expertise in both roles. In general, the higher your competence level, the more you see them exactly for what they are: just roles. 

As a woman who sometimes leads, I have dealt with various reactions. Like that time in Argentina, when a chubby old milonguero with too much champagne in his system tried to insert himself between me and my follower. Men catcalling me and my follower from the tables. That guy who said: “Would you please dance this tanda with me? You already danced with my girlfriend!” A woman flinging herself into my arms and dragging me onto the dancefloor with the words “I heard you led, here, lead me!” Or the time a group of male friends half-jokingly scolded me because I had the audacity to invite a hot visiting follower before they each had a go. 

There are three types of negative reactions dancers get from their environment when they start learning the opposite role. Females are told that “leading too much ruins a good follower”. Males are told “why insist on dancing with other men when so many women are sitting down.” And both at some point confront the statement that “tango is a dance of passion in which a man leads and a woman follows, forever and ever, amen.” 

The first belief says that if a woman learned to lead, she would become bossy and rigid in her following, stop listening to her leader, impose her musical interpretation or simply get confused. Also, she might like it and pose a threat to male leaders if good followers enjoyed dancing with her. What this belief reveals, first, is a very unflattering view of a woman’s ability to learn something new and still keep it together. Also, that leading is thought to be a tougher skill than following, challenging to the point of completely confusing or “converting” a fragile female. And most importantly, it reveals a view on leading itself as authoritarian domination, in which the leader commands and the follower obeys. 

There are several reasons why we tend to think that leading is more difficult. On one hand, our cultural and political landscapes are still largely male-dominated, meaning that everything men do is by default regarded as tougher, more illustrious and less accessible to the other gender. On the other hand, learning how to lead in tango is really difficult for ANY beginner (male or female) in the first two years of study. Following feels easier in those first years, for reasons I described in another article. It becomes really tough once you start focusing on your technique. 

Leading is also more obviously difficult because of navigation, whereas the intricacies of following often hide in little but critical details. Ironically, in many cultures, men are regarded as less gifted for dance except if they are gay, a stigma that can hold a man back from even trying. The male gender is underrepresented in almost any dance class. In tango, the hardships of the first two years scare many men away. When for every advanced male leader we then have several really good female followers, we regard the first one as precious and take the latter for granted. 

There is also the issue of high heels. Any female follower knows that dancing on flat shoes feels nothing like dancing on heels. Not only your sense of balance, the sense of your entire body changes on high heels. When men follow, they very rarely do so on heels, so a male follower might get the impression that following is less difficult than it seems. Especially if he struggles with his role as a leader, following might feel like a relief, a giving away of responsibility, of going nicely with the flow. I know men who are appallingly bad at following, yet believe they’ve mastered it and insist I lead them. For a woman to lead comfortably, she would need to change into flat shoes. So role swapping is something men seem to be able to do just like that, but women need to premeditate. I only lead occasionally, therefore rarely have flat shoes with me. When d’Arienzo calls, I would lead on heels. Trust me, it’s not for the faint of the heart.  

The domination model, paradoxically, stands in complete opposition to how we teach tango in this day and age. Teachers of my generation and younger see the interaction between roles as a collaboration of equal partners, with a set of shared responsibilities such as embrace, music and dynamic, and some specific ones. The domination model is a reflection of an archaic, neither truthful nor intelligent understanding of tango, but one that we still encounter here and there. In the domination model a follower who starts to dance more actively is getting dangerously out of control. In a collaboration model, the more a follower is actively participating, the happier the leader will feel. Being intimately familiar with the opposite role becomes a huge advantage. 

The only way a follower can go “bad” in the collaboration model is if she can’t quickly switch back to the other role. This could also happen to a leader who follows… right? But has anyone ever told a man that his lead will go stale if he follows too much? There is a wide consensus that understanding the follower’s role does amazing things to a man’s leading. Again, this view evokes the idea that leading is more important, more burdened with responsibilities. Also, that a male leader cannot possibly “unlearn” how to lead. Tango history of men practicing with other men before hitting on the girls, plays an important role in this assumption. Therefore, men are not only “allowed”, in public opinion, to practice following, they are encouraged to do so, but only as far as it serves them to know their followers better. In other words, for practice purposes only.

The moment a male leader falls in love with following for the way it feels and starts inviting other men in milongas, public opinion performs a radical flip. The environment insists on reminding him that we only have “a few good men” against all those followers sitting around getting dusty and sour. A heterosexual man who loves dancing with other men, following or leading, has some explaining to do, including to himself. If people can brush off two women dancing together as girls having fun while the good men are taken, two men enjoying a dance together in close embrace can make people uneasy. 

The more homophobia of the surrounding culture imprints itself on a tango community, the less same-sex dancing will be tolerated outside of practice setting. The fact that the incident happened in Russia, comes as no surprise. But even in cultures that pride themselves as open and tolerant, we see female leaders as badass and male followers as cute. We still find “masculinity” to be an upward promotion for a woman but “femininity” degrading for a man. For both genders, we stress that role swapping is either for study or fooling around, suppressing every possibility of a deep, serious human connection or same-sex attraction. 

Yet, you see, that possibility is there, every time. When you dance with another person, leading feels different from following in certain ways, but very similar on another, deeper level. It is about closeness. About protecting and trusting the other. About togetherness in fast movements that feels like flying. Conversations in whisper. Sudden moments of complete silence and the joined intake of breath on the rise of the musical wave. The crossing of boundaries, the vulnerability, the mistakes, the joy, the truth, the here and now.

The question, to me, is not whether role swapping somehow damages or dilutes the essence of tango. Non-conforming role interpretation has been in tango from the start and has only grown in popularity. The real question is what its existence says about tango as a dance. And to me, it says that tango has evolved spectacularly, shedding the erotic attraction as a necessary condition in favor of a more encompassing human connection through music and movement. A connection that can harbor erotic attraction of any kind or none at all, and still be true.

Insisting that role reversal is a “lesser” experience is not traditionalism, it is intolerance to a different way of living tango. When you push same-sex couples off the dancefloor, you are not defending some sacred essence, you are being an ass. When a woman leader impresses you because she is a woman, not because she is a good leader, it’s misogyny. If you constantly ridicule men dancing together, it’s homophobia. It’s not about tango, tango does not need us to defend it. Tango wants our authentic desire to connect to another human being. And to me it means that now and then, during a milonga, I will get up to lead another woman to my favorite d’Arienzo while still wearing my favorite heels.

RUSSIAN, FRENCH

January 3, 2019

As long as I dance, I hear two messages. “Tango is really difficult. It takes ten years just to learn how to walk.” And “Tango is simple! Just embrace your partner and walk in the music.” As far as learning is concerned, the first definitely rings true. Every student told me that tango is hard and my own experience confirms it. If tango were simple, the worldwide tango community would look very different. For one, it would be much bigger. More beginners would stay past their first year (nowadays it’s between ten and twenty percent) and the number of advanced dancers would be higher, with less of a skill gap between various levels and therefore less suffering because such and such doesn’t dance with us. Obviously, this is not the case.

Of course, mastering any dance at a high level is difficult. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be interesting. Developing complex skills, especially learning complex movement patterns, is fantastic for our brain. Dancing, it turns out, lowers the risk of dementia. Imagine what learning a complex dance does to your brain! Tough skills open doors to new amazing experiences and humans, on the overall, like it difficult. But we are also lazy bastards. We want it all and we want it now. 

When people come to tango from dances like salsa, swing or forro, they tell me that tango is to those dances what chess is to a party board game. It represents an entirely different level of complexity. It is a dance you cannot just “step into”. As a beginner your first milonga probably scared you. It takes between three months and one year before you can go out and actually be of any use to anybody on the dancefloor. With other beginners you feel hopelessly lost and experienced dancers don’t dance with you. If you are a young woman, certain male dancers would gladly entertain you, even insist on teaching you a few steps, but not necessarily because you are a promising dancer. You can shorten this initial period if you have prior dance experience or invest a lot of effort. But no matter how hard you try, learning tango takes a really long time for a dance that is supposed to be, you know, leisure. And the more you progress, the more you realise how much there is still to learn. 

So what makes tango so difficult? 

Without pretending to be exhaustive, I will highlight several factors. The first might not be the one to immediately cross your mind yet it is essential and sets tango apart from many other dances. It’s NAVIGATION. In tango you have to actively move around the room all the time. Couples do not each have their own static “bubble”. It’s more like a highway. I have always believed, from my experience with solo dances, that we underestimate just how hard it is for humans to actively move around a large space while dancing complex movement patterns. And here we have to do it together with another person! The walk is the pillar element because it allows the couple to move around the dancefloor quickly. Yet, despite everyone proclaiming that “tango is all about the walk”, you will hardly see any couple really walk in a milonga. Why is that? Several reasons. First, because of congestion: if one couple does not move, the couples behind it can’t move either or start to overtake, whipping the dancefloor into a mess. Second, in tango we have many complicated figures and when we dance complicated stuff, we tend to remain in one spot. Nowadays tango seems to be much more about turning than walking. And last but not least, walking comfortably in close embrace is surprisingly difficult. Therefore, once on the dancefloor, leaders prefer to dance all kinds of other moves, making bumpy traffic problem number one of every crowded event. 

The second essential complication in tango is the EMBRACE. It is one thing to lead or follow another person while loosely holding one or both hands and a totally different matter to dance in close embrace, chest, hands and head touching, arms enveloping the other person. In some moves your feet, thighs and ankles will touch as well. Close embrace is the main reason why learning to walk smoothly together is so hard. As a leader you have to advance with another person literally stuck to your chest, blocking your way, moving backwards blindly, while you try not to step on her (or his) toes. As a follower you have a person walking through you, taking you somewhere you cannot see, while you try to move away in time not to get knocked over backwards or stepped upon. In normal life the one who follows is behind the one who leads, right? Not in tango. I always enjoy the look on the leaders’ faces when I tell them in tango they are the real followers.

The technical difficulty of dancing in an embrace is to be calm in the upper body but dynamic in the legs. This combination of a relaxed, toned upper body and active strong legs requires a degree of control from your nervous system that takes a long time to develop. This is true for any dance, by the way. At first you will be either tense all over or way too relaxed, and in both states your body will be reluctant to move. Next to close we also have an open embrace, allowing us to dance larger movements. Each type of embrace comes with its own set of possibilities, but also with its own set of difficulties. Some things are harder to do in close embrace, such as simply walking in line. Other things are more difficult to communicate in open embrace, because you have no upper body contact and feel less stable, especially the follower.

Close embrace not only brings with it a lot of technical challenges, it is complicated in terms of human factor. Apart from being often highly uncomfortable, close embrace can be overwhelmingly intimate. In Western cultures we rarely hug strangers for a prolonged period of time. We even rarely hug people we know well, for that matter. For people who come into tango with a history of physical or sexual abuse, close embrace can trigger debilitating anxiety. Yet, close embrace is why we adore tango. It is what gives us our most intense experiences. The reason we tend to be selective about with whom we dance is largely due to the subtleties and the intensity of close embrace. 

By themselves, navigation and embrace wouldn’t be so challenging if tango did not have a remarkably vast VOCABULARY of steps. Back in the old days, when it didn’t, people could say “tango is all about the walk!” and not fool themselves. Nowadays, when studying or practicing you will notice – and be amazed by – just how endless the possibilities are. Not only do we have a vast vocabulary, we are supposed to IMPROVISE with it in the moment. Not surprisingly, in a milonga we end up repeating the same figures over and over again because in order to use this vast vocabulary real-time you have to practice it thoroughly first. And did I mention we were lazy bastards? 

Next, you have the difficulties of each role in the CONNECTION. Because of the enveloping embrace, partners must communicate by subtle messages. Subtle communication takes a long time to finetune, especially if you want to be able to communicate with a large variety of partners. A good lead is invisible and good following is instantaneous, hesitation-free, like inspiration. The better the lead, the more dancing feels as if the movements were generated directly inside the follower’s body. Good following feels like reading the leader’s mind. At a high level partners become so trained to react to the tiniest of intentions that the communication seems to happen telepathically. Show that level of connection to beginners and they will think it’s magic. And frankly, it is. 

Technically, each role has its specific challenges. By “TECHNIQUE” I mean each partner’s own dancing (posture, balance, pivoting, aesthetics). While the leader’s main challenges are leading and navigating, nowadays the follower’s role tends to be more difficult technically. It was not always the case, but in the last decade the follower’s vocabulary evolved dramatically. Follower’s technique is about a very active use of the free leg and lots of pivoting at all times, all of this on high heels. Also, the follower’s movement has to look aesthetical at any moment, which is a huge technical challenge. Following well and dancing beautifully are two distinct skills. An additional complication is that the follower does not choose the vocabulary. Leaders can decide to lead difficult stuff or not, to dance difficult stuff themselves or not, to care about aesthetics or just concentrate on the “driving”. As a follower, you take what you get and you make the best of it. This is why more followers than leaders take technique classes and if you think it’s just to polish their adornos, you obviously never tried to dance back ochos on high heels without a partner or a wall. 

To complicate things further we have GENRES: tango, milonga and waltz. Each comes with its own history, rhythmical patterns and specific vocabulary. Next, we have STYLES: salon, milonguero, nuevo and somewhat separately tango escenario, or stage tango. The latter gets more attention nowadays and inevitably starts to influence the way professionals perform in tango events, adding spectacular vocabulary into the fabric of social improvisation. Taken apart, each style can be seen as an array of preferred figures and specific technical and aesthetic parameters. Sometimes what is “not done” in one style serves as a basic principle in another. At the same time styles are not strictly defined, because, like tango, they have evolved organically. Most people dance what I call “fusion”, mixing steps and elements from various sources. Stylistic variations add enormous depth to tango, but make it harder to grasp, especially when you are a beginner. If on top of that certain teachers proclaim that their style is the only true tango, it all becomes terribly confusing. 

If the above wasn’t enough trouble, we have the MUSIC. Despite its simple rhythmic structure, tango is rich in texture and built as a narrative, a story composed of phrases, with an introduction, some rising tension, a climax and a conclusion. Tango music captures your attention in a powerful way, richly syncopated, lavishly adorned with accents, incredibly versatile, presenting the full emotional range from tragedy to happiness, each orquestra adding its own distinct sound and colouring. You are not supposed to dance a dramatic Pugliese the same way you would a light, sunny Fresedo. Like vocabulary, musical interpretation begins with very basic concepts like stepping on the beat and moves up to complex things such as interpreting the narrative line or expressing the energetic quality of the moment: tender vs strong, light vs heavy, flowing vs bouncy. This means that in tango you have to develop your musical hearing and interpretational skills as a dancer. Did I mention tango is fantastic for your brain?

As you see, our attention in dance runs along four channels: music, our own movement, communication with our partner and navigation in space. And on all those four channels things get REALLY COMPLICATED. Focusing on all of them simultaneously is a huge cognitive task. The way our brain functions makes it so that humans can hold only a very limited amount of elements in their working memory at the same time (also called “short term memory”). The more something is new, the more cognitive resources it will require. The whole purpose of practicing is to lower the cognitive load when dancing. Once a movement is familiar, it no longer uses so much of the working memory and the focus can expand to include something else. 

Communication is the primary channel, for if this does not work, everything else is of little use. With beginners we therefore try to establish a basis for partner communication first, in other words, that which makes tango tango. We insist that leaders concentrate on making steps and taking decisions, or else nothing happens, and that followers concentrate on listening and following exactly what is being led, so leaders can have direct feedback of their actions. If we stress followers with too many technical details in an early stage, they would not be able to concentrate on following. The same way we cannot demand that beginning leaders pay close attention to music, if that stops them from communicating with the partner. 

When some basic vocabulary is in place and the connection in the couple is working, we can enlarge our students’ focus to include technique: balance, posture, aesthetics. Eventually we bring their attention to the music and cultivate a sense of flow on the dancefloor. For beginners with prior dance experience it is easier to include music and their own movement already at an early stage because they come with a developed body awareness and are able to follow the rhythm. Beginners with experience in contact improvisation, couple dances or martial arts usually have an easier time with communication. Everybody will run into problems with navigation, though, simply because the other channels take up so much of our attention. 

As teachers we keep oscillating between the four channels, directing our students’ attention to one or two things at a time. If the cognitive load is too high, the students will get overwhelmed and give up. Therefore we have to slice the material in layers and to take people through stages progressively. The more difficult a dance is, the more stages there will be and the longer it will take. Often, in order to pass through a stage successfully, teachers have to pretend the next stage doesn’t exist. For example, we insist that beginners learn to step in three clear directions: front, back and side. Every time they make a diagonal or a curved step, we tell them they cannot do that. Once the students are capable of making clear lines with these three directions, we say: now you also have diagonal and curved steps. In another example we tell leaders at first to never lead with their arms. Once they have an understanding of the embrace as a frame and a space, their arms well connected to the upper body, we show them which movements they can and have to, actually, lead with their arms.

This phenomenon produces frequent moments of astonishment “And I thought I knew everything!” and is related to how humans develop control of their motor functions. If we let students walk in every possible direction from the beginning, they will be zigzagging all over the place like a drunk crowd on a night out. They first have to learn the basics of a precise, clean walk. To deviate gracefully you have to control the primary directions. To disconnect something effectively, you must have everything connected first. In that sense tango is full of paradoxes because literally everything is possible. One teacher may tell you things in exact opposition to what another teacher told you. Many people stop studying after a couple of years because they simply cannot handle this reality. So, if right now you feel like you have to learn everything all over again, don’t despair. Have a glass of champagne: you just got to the next stage. 

Accepting that tango is difficult in general means that, if it is difficult for you in particular, you are perfectly NORMAL. It is difficult for all of us. We can safely say that tango is not for everybody and not be condescending. It also explains why so few people make it into their second year, why truly advanced dancers are a small minority and why in every community there will always be some kind of hierarchy based on how people dance, despite our efforts to be sociable. So, when someone declines to dance with you because of a large skill gap, remember this person has a point. You have the right to decline a dance for that reason, too. 

We can deny tango its complexity, nostalgic of the days bygone, but who are we kidding? Every art form, tango included, always moves towards a higher complexity, because in art stagnation means disappearance. Yet, paradoxically, the statement “tango is simple, just embrace your partner and walk to the music” is also still true. Only it’s not about the learning, it’s about the dancing. Just because tango is complex, your dance doesn’t have to be. Tango is a language and like a language, it can yield both poetry and small talk, silly jokes and deep thoughts. Here you might expect some encouraging statement from my part, something about taking the challenge and persevering in your efforts, but in truth, it is all up to you. I will say just this: tango growing more and more complicated means that this dance is still vibrantly, passionately, gloriously alive.

POLISH, RUSSIAN

October 18, 2018

Did you ever ask yourself how it is possible for two people to coordinate their movements to tango music so precisely as to practically become one constantly shape-shifting entity? Have you ever watched a particularly skillful tango performance and been amazed at how flawless the human connection can become in an experienced couple, despite the speed, the risks involved, the stress, the improvisation, the difficult dance moves? Did you ever wonder about its magic? After many years in tango, this connection phenomenon still blows my mind. And yet every day I teach people to do just that: to connect to another being, to lead or follow, to become one with the music, to coordinate one’s body movements to the movements of another person and to improvise together. 

We all know it is not an easy thing to learn. Some of us know it is a damn hard thing to teach. Yet, not only is it possible, it happens everywhere. Tango is magic and all of us are its magicians. We rarely give it a second thought. We rarely stop to wonder just how this magic happens.

Tango is about leading and following another person, but why does it work? Scientific research partially answers this question by demonstrating that “coordinating physical actions with other humans can lead us to integrate their bodies into our own body schema in much the same way that interacting with objects extends our perception of our physical boundaries.” In other words, practicing tango allows our brain to attune our perception to our partner’s body movements. The underlying mechanism appears to be the same as for an experienced violinist who feels the violin become part of his or her body, or for an experienced horse rider feeling “fused” with the horse. 

This makes perfect sense. However, I would like to add a different, somewhat more trivial explanation. From my own experience as dancer and teacher I have the impression that leading and following in tango works well for the simple reason that all of us lead and follow other people in our everyday life ALL THE TIME.

First, we need to define what leading and following means. I am talking here about bodily interaction through movement. Following means taking a physical clue from another person and responding to it in a way suggested by this physical clue. Following is a deliberate (but not necessarily conscious) decision to move accordingly to the clue and one’s own will, within given possibilities. In other words, it is not about being manipulated or forced. Leading, therefore, means giving those physical clues, making clear how you would like the follower to move. Leading also has nothing to do with force or manipulation and does not necessarily involve physical contact. 

If you observe yourself and other people interacting in your everyday life, you will soon see plenty of examples of physical leading and following. Opening and holding the door for somebody involves leading on your part and following by the other person. When playing with a small child you often lead and the child follows, but also sometimes you follow the child. Any team sport involves a constantly changing interplay of leading and following. The orchestra director leads, the musicians follow, but the singer or the soloist can lead, too, and the accompanying musician follows. When you point at a beautiful sight, your friends automatically look in that direction (we do that a lot in Paris).

Most of the time we do not perceive these interactions as leading and following because they are deeply ingrained in our everyday dynamics. So deeply, they have become reflexes. When waiting in a queue you move as soon as the queue leads you to move; when someone gestures to an empty chair in a metro you sit down; when a child throws a ball at you, you catch. And just as you play the “follower”, you “lead”, too: throwing back the ball, offering an empty seat, moving as the head of a waiting line. 

Of course, in our daily life leading and following are far from being as precise as in two experienced tango dancers improvising. The split-second precision in a tango couple is the result of years of practicing and tuning the dancers’ reflexes to specific dance movements. Yet, at its basis, we can identify generic body mechanisms that we all master in the course of our lives. And not only that: our nervous system is programmed to lead and follow each other by movement. We do it from our first days as babies because it is inherent to our functioning as social animals. When I realised that, I asked myself: could I, as a teacher, become more aware of these human reflexes to make tango easier to learn and more intuitive for my students? 

The reason this question occupied my mind had to do with a specific problem. There exists a widely observed phenomenon in tango, namely, that the first one to two years of learning tango seem to be harder for leaders than they are for followers. Not always, but often. In most cases we are talking here about men leading and women following, and gender certainly does play a part in it, but the difficulty has more to do with the role itself. For the followers the learning becomes more challenging once the woman gets to work on some serious technique, after the first two years, trying to improve her balance and aesthetics. It is a common understanding that until then following is somehow easier to learn than leading. For a long time I have been observing this phenomenon and asking myself what makes leading more difficult to master in the beginning. Now I believe that this comes (among other things) from the simple fact that in our everyday life we follow others more than we lead, especially if living in a densely populated environment. 

This is a bold claim to make without any empirical evidence, but by simply analysing my own life in a big city I come to the conclusion that my movements are more often determined by the reflex to follow. Taking up the available space, moving around in crowds, using public transportation, going into shops, waiting in lines, walking around with a friend: I find myself following more often than leading. I do not think this has much to do with my gender or my tango role. It might have something to do with my quiet temperament and that in some situations I would choose to follow rather than to lead, while a different person would choose differently. Yet I believe that the mere fact of living in communities, surrounded by people, sustaining social ties on a daily basis makes us all follow more often than lead.

What do we tell beginning followers? To stop thinking. “Stop thinking” does not mean we want them to become brainless zombies. What we want is for them to trust their reflexes MORE than their analytical assessment of the situation. We ask them to rely on fast, intuitive thinking rather than on slow, rational one. A lot of leaders tell me that, when trying to follow, their dance seems to flow more, their body relaxes once they have “let go”. That internal switch from “doing” to “flowing” makes us perceive following as more natural and spontaneous, and therefore “easier” . Here it is important to understand that “following” and “dancing well” are not one and the same thing. After dancing as a follower for many years I can tell you that the follower’s role is not inherently easier than the leader’s role (I actually believe it is more difficult, but this is a topic for a different article).

If we want to make leading easier to learn, we should look for examples of the “lead reflex” in our daily life and start developing the leading skill from there. Just like any other movement in tango, leading has its origins in some trivial, everyday movement any of us can do. When teaching how to lead I tend to use several analogies. One is playing with a child or a dog, making them follow you through space, coming towards you or away from you, all the time accompanying them with your own movement. Another quite successful analogy is that of moving furniture: not because of the furniture, but because to move something heavy you have to coordinate your movements with another person, while taking care of some object or space between partners (the inner space of the couple). When moving heavy furniture, say, taking a piano down some stairs, one person needs to lead the way through the staircase and another one needs to follow, carefully, step by step. Shopping together is another excellent example of leading and following. When walking through a shopping street one person would unconsciously take the lead, stopping at some shops, walking in, inviting the other to follow. Shopping with another person never feels the same as shopping alone, even if you each go your separate ways inside a shop. There is still a keen physical awareness of another body somewhere in your vicinity, connected to your own movements. This connection is very useful to explore for tango purposes, taking it to a higher level of sophistication and precision.

This is why, ultimately, comparing a follower to a car is futile. Yes, there is something like an action and a response involved in driving a vehicle but at the same time we are talking about an inanimate object programmed to react in a predictable way, mechanically, to input. A car does not follow: it executes a command. Following is a deliberate action, determined much more by the follower, her or his capacities and desires than by what is actually being led. 

Eventually, if you analyse any human activity involving more than one person, you would clearly identify leading and following movement patterns. Every time you tell tango students that tango is something very special and has no parallels in his or her everyday movements, you make their learning process more difficult. Tango is a dance meant to be danced by anyone, at any age and with any body type, and the more we explain its movements through their origins in our everyday reflexes, the faster people will learn to dance in a spontaneously natural way. It does, of course, demystify tango a great deal, but in my opinion teachers only need mystique when they are unable to explain something in a comprehensible way. Tango may seem a bit less magical in our eyes, considering all of the above, yet, when a true connection is there, every single time, it still feels magical in our bodies.

RUSSIAN, ROMANIAN, POLISH, GERMAN

July 23, 2016

Sometimes a student would tell me during a class: “You know, a dancer I danced with recently told me…” and then follows some kind of feedback, criticism or advice. For followers some recurring examples are: “You are too heavy, be lighter”, “You are not in balance, put down your heel”, “Give more resistance in the embrace”. For leaders it can be “You are not leading with the music”, “You should lead more with your center”, “Be more of a macho” and so on. My students get confused with such statements and ask me what they should do. I hear these things mostly from women, because I have more women students but also because women ponder such remarks a lot more, letting the criticism affect their self-judgement, and are more willing to talk about it with a teacher. Leaders prefer not to talk about being criticized by their partners unless the problem is urgent.

Tango is a couple dance and it is important to be aware of how your dance feels to your partners as well as how their dance feels to you. Since the beginning of tango there exists a belief that your dance partners are the best authority when it comes to judging your dance. It is largely true, especially when it comes to the “human factor”. Yet, and this might come as a surprise, when another dancer gives you advice he or she is often wrong.

There are three angles from which you can analyse a movement: the way it feels, the way it looks and the way it is performed in terms of actions. When something between you and your partner is not working, it first becomes clear to you because you FEEL it. You can only qualify that feeling as “wrong” if you have already experienced something that felt better or if your “common body sense” tells you that there is too much discomfort (tension, force, imbalance, lack of musicality and so on). It works the same way with your own movement. Once you become aware that something feels or looks “wrong”, you try to create a sensation or a visual shape that you experience as “right”. When your partner tells you that a certain movement is uncomfortable you do not yet perceive that movement as “wrong” and therefore lack the idea of how it should feel. In this case you need information from your partner, from your own senses and eventually from an expert.

When practicing, you constantly go through this cyclic process of understanding how external actions translate into internal sensations and how to modify the action in order to create a different sensation. Assessing and describing our internal sensations is something most of us do quite well, as dancing develops our sensitivity to movement and focuses our attention. However, to tell how something should ideally feel or look, as well as which external action leads to which sensation, you need more than just feeling. You need knowledge of movement biomechanics for tango.

Imagine that a restaurant chef cooks you a meal and asks you what you think about it. You could say things such as “I find it lacks flavour”. If the chef then asks you “Tell me how I can improve it” and you have no experience with cooking, you would either say “Hey, you are the chef here” or start speculating. In dance you also find these two aspects: the SKILL of doing something and the EFFECT it creates. Having eaten in a lot of good restaurants can eventually make you a restaurant critic, but not an expert in cooking. In the same way, having danced with a lot of different partners does not make you an expert in tango technique and even less in the skill of the opposite role. Unfortunate, but true.

It is therefore essential to understand the difference between FEEDBACK and ADVICE. Feedback describes your internal sensations, the effect of your partner’s dance on you. An advice tells your partner what to do. You have to realise that you always dance with someone of the opposite role and therefore quite a different skill. Your feedback can be very accurate but unless you are an expert in tango and in your partner’s role, your advice will probably be off track.

A competent teacher has sufficient knowledge of both roles, although more specialised in one of them. When you take a class with a teacher of the opposite role the emphasis is often on how it should feel. When you take a class with the teacher of your own role it is more often on what to do. Both ways of learning are very useful. However, it is always easier to follow an advice on what to do than to understand how to move in a way that creates a certain feeling in another person. This is also why sometimes taking classes with the teacher of the opposite role can become very confusing unless the teacher helps you with the “doing” part.

There are four levels on which you can talk about issues in dance with your partner. The first and basic one is that of the PROBLEM: the internal sensation that makes you feel uncomfortable. To identify a problem it is usually enough to listen carefully to your sensations and verbalize them using sentences starting with “I feel”. However, if you remain too general, making statements such as I quoted in the beginning, you will sooner hurt your partner’s feelings or create a profound confusion. If you want your feedback to be understood, accepted and acted upon, be PRECISE. Tell your partner exactly when, where and how you feel the sensation that you find problematic.

Secondly, there is the level of the CAUSE: what the partner is doing that leads to the problem. When the follower feels unbalanced to the leader the cause can be anything from her posture to her level of stress. It can also be him unconsciously pushing her off balance. Often a problem in one partner is the result of a problem in the other. Before taking up an issue with your partner be prepared to unravel a whole bunch of issues in yourself.

Third, there is the level of the SOLUTION, or what the partner should do. The solution usually follows from the cause. As sometimes the problem comes from another issue somewhere else, the solution will be found elsewhere as well. Our movement is a complex process in which many factors play a role, all parts affecting the whole. Integrating a solution into your movement always takes time.

And finally there is the level of the desired EFFECT, or the internal sensation created by the improved movement. If you are aware of a problem, you might already have a vague idea of the desired effect. Of the four levels – problem, cause, solution and effect – the first and the last one are identified in terms of sensations. You can talk about them without having extensive knowledge of technique, just from your experience in dance. However, to identify causes and offer solutions a thorough knowledge of technique is essential. If you are not an expert and you want to improve your dance by practicing with a partner, try to talk to each other as much as possible on the levels of the problem and the desired effect. Do not be tempted to rush to conclusions and offer advice. Rather experiment a lot together. This way you will keep more doors open to finding solutions in the process. Also, get an expert opinion.

What to do when other dancers comment on your dance? Do not immediately try to do what they suggest. First ask yourself: am I getting feedback or advice? If it is feedback, try to get precise information about the problem. In case nothing more precise is coming, say thank you and move on. If you are getting an advice, ask yourself: does this person have sufficient knowledge of my role and general tango technique to give me a correct advice? If the answer is no, ask this person to give feedback instead, to describe how it feels without jumping to conclusions. If you blindly follow a wrong advice, you might end up with a wrong movement habit that will be difficult to correct later. Developing new movement habits is like rewiring electricity in your house, it brings modifications to your nervous system. Do not do it without careful consideration.

FRENCH, RUSSIAN, CHINESE, CZECH, ROMANIAN, POLISH

November 7, 2014

No two embraces are alike, as no two dancers are alike. We study steps, obsess over technicalities, practice feet positions and balance, yet I believe that what draws us to tango are the embraces. After a tanda we rarely recall the steps we danced, but we always quite exactly remember how a certain dancer felt in the embrace. Often this is why we seek that same dancer again and again. This is true for both men and women, although to give priority to the embrace over technical skill is more common for women.

What is an embrace? It is neither a position nor a shape, it is a SPACE. A space in which we connect to each other to create the dance, a space of intense and very private communication. In this space we can find profound fusion with the other person and sometimes profound loneliness. There is no such thing as a “correct embrace”, yet there are embraces that optimally fit a certain style, a certain dynamic, a certain body, certain visual aesthetics, attitudes and temperaments. Despite the variety I can distinguish three important factors that together constitute a good embrace, no matter the style.

The first is comfort. A comfortable embrace means that it respects your own anatomy, allowing you to maintain an active, yet natural posture, free of tension and unnecessary effort. It also means that your embrace respects the anatomy of your partner. For leaders this means providing sufficient movement freedom to the follower and avoiding any restrictive modifications on the follower’s posture. A comfortable embrace is not a grip, it is not rigid, it is rather like a living creature: it needs to breathe. For a follower creating a comfortable embrace means not discharging her weight on the leader, not using him for support in the pivots and not clinging to him in trouble. In a comfortable embrace both partners stand on their own legs, and even in an inclined milonguero position they are still responsible for their own balance and weight transfer. Discomfort in the embrace is, I believe, reason number one to refuse a dancer or not to invite a dancer again.

The second factor is efficiency. An efficient embrace is one that serves its primary purpose: to transmit and receive the impulse. What exactly is efficiency depends on how you want to dance, your style, vocabulary and the intensity of the dynamics that you want to create. This is why embraces in tango escenario are much more firm and rigid than in social tango, for example: they facilitate lifts, jumps and very quick movements. The embrace in tango should not be confused with the connection: we create the connection by our whole being, embrace included. A tango couple can be connected to each other even without touching, the embrace simply adding a “physical channel” to the connection.

Learning to create an efficient embrace is a difficult matter, both for men and women. Its difficulty lies in its subtlety, for to make an embrace truly efficient is has to be first fully connected to the rest of your body, to how you ground yourself and to how you transfer weight, and then it also has to be connected to the body of your partner. In an efficient embrace one has to operate with tiny movements and subtle sensations. You can see it as trying to move water inside a glass: if you move a lot you will spill the water, but if you move a little and at the right moment, you can create a lot of movement in the water itself. One also has to operate on the level of images, intentions and directions rather than mechanical manipulation. Most dancers, even many advanced ones, still conceptualize the embrace as “a torso with two arms to hold on to the other person” rather than something that goes beyond anatomical parts. Therefore in most dancers the embrace is more or less functional, but not efficient.

It is in the embrace that you will notice the “basic principle” of a dancer and the most common is “the man takes the woman and makes her move”. This is a highly inefficient principle, for it gives at once too much responsibility to the leader and takes away the responsibility of the follower. To understand the efficiency of the embrace it is important to realise that it depends EQUALLY on both partners. The inner workings of the embrace are also not to be confused with its shape. Copying your idol’s embrace will not make you dance the same way.

The third factor is the human factor and this is what makes every embrace unique. You can imitate another dancer in everything, but inside the embrace you will always feel like yourself. Your embrace is affected by your unique personality, your experience and the way you relate to yourself and the world around you. Your embrace will also reflect everything about the way you feel about yourself and others at that particular moment, including all your worries, insecurities, ambitions and intentions. And because the joint embrace is such a highly sensitive place, your partner will feel everything, too, even if s/he is not completely aware of it. If a leader is stressed about the difficult traffic, this will be felt in the embrace by the follower. If a follower is anxious about her ability to follow, she will become tense and feel absent to the leader.

Your human factor is furthermore influenced by your background, which can mean practically anything. I have been identified several times as Russian by the way I embrace. You often hear that Russian (or Slavic) women are supposed to have very deep embraces and Argentinean men very intense ones. There are stories about “powerful” embraces of Argentinean women and “sweeping-off-the-feet” embraces of Turkish men. I am always careful with stereotypes, for we humans are far too complex to be explained by simple categories of nationality and culture. Sometimes the stereotypes are true, sometimes they aren’t. If you come from a culture in which you are encouraged to make yourself physically attractive, to actively pursue and seduce the opposite sex and you feel at ease being this way, then this will give a certain seductive charm to your embrace. If you come from a culture in which it is not appropriate to display emotions but you are an emotionally expressive person, then your embrace will still reflect your personality rather than your background. I also believe that the “intensity” of a man’s embrace is often dictated by the need to hold on strongly to the woman to prevent her from losing her balance and falling backwards in the walk. When a woman gets used to being helped that way, she would naturally want to go back into this kind of an embrace.

Human factor can compensate for a lack of comfort and efficiency or on the contrary, totally ruin it for you. If your embrace is clumsy and inefficient, but you feel like a warm-hearted, open and passionate person, it will still be a nice experience for your partner. If you have a perfectly comfortable and efficient embrace but a cold and distant attitude, your partner will feel miserable despite your virtuoso performance. The embrace is also where your partner will become aware of your emotions and how you experience the music. If a songs sets you on fire, it will be immediately felt in your embrace.

There is another aspect sometimes present in tango embrace: seduction. It is sometimes confused with the human factor, yet it is only a part of it. Seduction does not make the embrace more comfortable or more functional, just more “electrically charged”. If you like the person you are dancing with and you accept his or her erotic attention, then it can add a distinct flavour to your experience. However, if the erotic charge is very strong, the dance itself will become secondary. The EXPERIENCE of the dance can be profoundly blissful, for the couple is not so much dancing together as using the dance to be together. Yet you have to be cautious when charging your embrace with erotic attention, because your partner might enjoy it or, on the contrary, start feeling very uncomfortable or simply bored. The embrace, especially close embrace, is a delicate, intimate environment that can very easily become suffocating and unpleasant.

Ultimately, it is the intention you put in your embrace that will make your partner feel welcome or lonely, judged or accepted. There is one basic intention that will always help establish a good flow of communication, no matter how unskilled you are. It is a “message” that the partners can transmit to each other when creating the embrace and during the dance. From the leader to the follower this message reads: “Trust me” and from the follower to the leader it reads: “I trust you.”

Why is trust so important? It has everything to do with the essence of the two roles.

The leader is responsible for the couple’s movement and the reason teachers tell leaders to “put their attention in the follower” is that it allows them to feel as if they were the whole couple, to think of it as a moving unity. The follower expresses herself in her own movement, for which the design is proposed by the leader, and so her movement is a manifestation of the leader’s intent. This does not mean that the follower is more important and the leader only plays a supporting role, because he still guides her every move. It does not mean that the follower is merely an instrument, either, because she will still move the way she wants and is able to. They are both equally important and would simply not exist without each other.

If the leader’s attention goes too much into the steps and his own movement, the follower will inevitably feel that she is being used as a tool. It will also become important that the steps “work” and when they don’t, both partners will feel like they make “mistakes”. When instead the leader’s attention goes fully into the follower’s movement as IT IS HAPPENING, then it is no longer relevant if the steps work and “mistakes” stop feeling like mistakes, they become part of improvising together. If the follower’s attention goes too much into what she is “reading” from the leader, into consciously understanding the “design”, she will forget her main task: namely, to instantly react to any suggestion from the leader, with complete confidence, and to MOVE. The leader therefore should make the follower feel that he knows what he is doing, that they are going to have fun and that he will protect her in unexpected circumstances. And the follower, in her turn, has to consciously abandon herself to the play that the leader is proposing and be fully herself, while at the same time allowing the leader to express his intent. To dance, a follower needs to be fearless and to help her in this the leader needs to be trustworthy. If the follower does not dance, the leader cannot dance, either.

One of the best feelings a follower can give to a leader is that of COMPLETE FREEDOM of expression. Complete freedom does not mean freedom from the follower, paradoxically it means complete “togetherness” with the follower while still being two distinct individuals. This sense of freedom comes from the feeling of every suggestion being completely understood by the follower, and not only understood, but amplified and further developed. Tango is a conversation, and for it to be a fulfilling conversation one person needs to start and the other needs to understand the idea and to carry it on.

One of the best feelings a leader can give to a follower is that of having his COMPLETE ATTENTION. I often hear women say: “I wish they did not try all those fancy steps, but simply be with me”, which does not mean that women do not enjoy steps in tango, it simply means that they don’t like being used as a tool. But isn’t there a contradiction, you might ask? How can a leader have all of his attention in a follower if all he wants is complete freedom of expression? Yet this is exactly the point. The follower’s movement IS the leader’s expression. If the leader understands this, it all starts making perfect sense. This also explains why some leaders claim that they can make the follower dance the way SHE wants to dance, for they have tuned their attention so well to the follower’s movement that they feel her “inner logic”, the way she interprets the music and plays with her energy, and are able to feel in advance how she would want to express herself.

In theory the three factors (comfort, efficiency and human factor) sound like separable criteria, yet in practice they are not. They influence each other and also compensate for each other. A comfortable embrace is not necessarily efficient yet an efficient embrace is usually quite comfortable. Human qualities such as attention and sensitivity will help you create a much more efficient embrace simply because you are more aware of your partner’s movement. And a comfortable embrace usually has a nice human quality to it just because it respects your partner’s posture. The embrace in tango is a complex and challenging matter to teach and to learn, but a fascinating one. More and more dancers everywhere realise that our playground may be in the steps, but our home is in the embrace and this is where we want to go back to every time.

RUSSIAN, ITALIAN, VIETNAMESE, BULGARIAN, GERMAN, CHINESE, CZECH, ROMANIAN, POLISH, HUNGARIAN, FRENCH

March 14, 2014

In one of my articles I wrote that the most difficult thing for a tango teacher is not teaching the correct movement, it is getting people to dance. So what is it that we teachers (and dancers) find so difficult? Common dictionaries define dance as “moving rhythmically to music, typically following a set sequence of steps”. On the surface this definition is correct and according to it every single person on the dancefloor is dancing. But soldiers marching to a military song are also moving rhythmically to music. Intuitively you always recognise people who are dancing and who are just “moving rhythmically” when you are in a milonga. You will always prefer to watch those who dance.

So what is it you like watching?  What is dance? Let’s first see what it is not.

Dance is not technique. You don’t need the perfect technique to dance, it is actually the other way around. You need to dance to build a skill. Dance does not come from the understanding of shapes, balance and dynamics, nor from the physical ability to create those shapes, balance and dynamics. You need the technique to make your dance effortless and expressive, but even a small child can already dance. In great artists you admire the technique, but it is the dance that touches you emotionally.

Dance is not physical movement. Or, to be precise, it is not ONLY physical movement. A purely physical exercise is common in sports, for sports are about getting a result. Dance does not strive for a result, it strives for expression. Like pushing piano keys is not necessarily music, so moving in space is not necessarily dance. Dance is not effort, either, it is effortlessness, which simply means effort that is adequate to the task.

Dance is not the embrace, the embrace is where dance is created. Tango is known as “the dance of passion” and historically shows a sensual play between a man and a woman. Sensual or sexual tension is not necessarily present between the dancers, it is merely expressed. A common confusion in tango is that this sensual connection, or in simpler terms a flirty attitude is the source of the dance. However, embracing a man or a woman sensually will not create a dance. The connection in tango goes much deeper than a sexual connection between a man and a woman, it is a profoundly human connection. Sensuality can enrich the dance, but not replace it. This is why tango is possible between two men or two women or between a female leader and a male follower.

Dance is not your connection to the music, either, although your musicality is an important factor in creating a dance. Whether you are able to translate the way you hear the music into movement depends on many things, but like the embrace, music is only one of the ingredients for the creation of a dance.

Dance is about your energy using your body to express feelings and ideas that originate in how you hear the music, associated with a specific movement vocabulary and in connection to your partner’s movement. Every creative act, from cooking to telling a story, needs ideas, energy and ways of expression. In dance the way of expression is your body. Therefore dance is not something you DO, it is something you must BECOME.

So, why is there often so little dance in people dancing tango?

The specifics of tango is that it has two equally important components: the need to move yourself and the need to communicate with your partner (impulse exchange, or leading/following). You can work on your own movement, but for tango this is only half of the story. You need to spend almost as much time learning to communicate with your partner by very subtle, practically invisible movements and intentions. You dance embracing each other and even the slightest movement of your body is felt clearly by your partner. The embrace in tango is an extremely sensitive environment and can be a source of huge discomfort or profound joy.

Tango is a conversation and in order to have a conversation you need silence. To communicate by impulses with another person you need to create a quiet space so that the tiniest of intentions is transmitted. This is what makes tango such an introvert and a fulfilling dance emotionally, for we do not remember the steps, we remember the quality of the connection. We remember sensations.

People who start learning tango are confronted with the fact that they cannot “just dance to the music”. If they do, they disconnect from the partner. Tango classes are built on two levels, teaching people to communicate by subtle movements and to move expressively themselves, so that they can match the energy of the music. This is what you see in highly skilled dancers: they look calm, natural, often unmoving in the upper bodies, locked in the embrace, yet as a whole they can create most extreme dynamics and become infused with the music. The teachers have the complex task of showing both the dynamic side and the stillness of tango.

What does a beginner imitate? That which is most visible to the eye. When the teachers show very dynamic dancing, the students naturally copy the big movements, to the detriment of the connection in the couple. When the teachers do the “small stuff” the students copy that, with the effect that they stifle their desire to move in order to be “quiet”. They cannot yet move freely AND lead/follow subtly at the same time. By stifling the desire to move they block their energy from flowing, with tension as a result. The embrace becomes a rigidly fixed shape. Add to this the necessity to navigate a space full of other stressed-out couples and the picture is complete.

All over the dancefloors we see people stifling their natural desire to move, trying to remain “fixed” in this extremely sensitive environment of their jointed embrace. The desire to move is often also blocked by personal difficulties. Shyness, fear of exposure, fear of failure, fear of contact, inability to connect to the music and therefore to get the ideas and feelings to express. We also see the opposite: people letting their energy run free, moving a lot inside the embrace, which does create a sort of a dance, but the communication between partners amounts to two people shouting at each other while standing only a foot apart.

In order to learn tango you have to do it wrong before you can do it right, which means allowing your energy to move no matter what. It does not necessarily mean move A LOT, but sometimes this is what will inevitably happen. When children or puppies learn a new skill they start moving with a simple goal in mind and do it again and again, moving too much or too little, falling over and getting up, trying this way and that, until they get the right reflexes activated and the movement is stripped of everything it does not need to be effective. But to become like a child or a puppy is a very hard thing for adults. It is challenging for people to find themselves novices at something, especially when watched and judged by other people around them. Children do not mind doing it wrong, but adults want to do it right from the start. The quickest learners in tango are those who are not afraid to move, not afraid to loose themselves in movement and music, not afraid to look ridiculous. 

Besides, most of us come to tango after having had a largely intellectual education. We live in our heads and our computers, not our bodies. We try to process intellectually what is happening to us. This is not effective when learning movement. Your body works in ways you cannot fully fathom, let alone fully control by your mind. Do you control your digestion? Do you activate your heartbeat? Do you consciously push the blood through your veins? In your brain there are more neural connections than there are stars in our galaxy, and this is a fact, not a figure of speech. Are you controlling them? Or are they controlling you? Stiffness in a dancer is often the result of his or her conscious mind trying to understand and control every movement BEFORE it happens, which is simply not possible. Your mind is not running the show, it only helps you to understand the intention and the mechanics of the movement. This is why leaders implore their followers: “Please stop thinking!”

To be able to “become dance” you have to allow your whole being to abandon itself to the energy that you are generating yet stay fully present and aware of what is happening. Mere abandonment will lead to automatic movement. Aware abandonment will create true dance and true bliss we are all looking for in tango. Dance is that special state of being called “flow”. It sounds difficult, but actually it is not. To flow is the most natural thing for a human being to do. It is what you do when you are not trying to control what happens, when you are not “efforting”. You need to become a dancer before you can become an advanced dancer, and to dance means to embody each movement fully. This way, no matter your skill, you can dance from your first tango day to the last. Isn’t it good news?

RUSSIAN, CHINESE, CZECH, GERMAN, POLISH

January 10, 2014

In my years as a dancer and teacher I heard a lot of critique on the English terms “lead” and “follow” and their derivatives in other languages. The dictionary defines “ to lead” as “to guide on a way especially by going in advance”, “to direct on a course or in a direction” and “to serve as a channel for something”. The verb “to follow” is defined as “to go or come after or behind (someone or something)”. As you can see, in their general sense those words describe quite precisely the roles in tango and are devoid of any emotional connotation. Yet, many people dislike them.

Social tango is a dance of IMPROVISING TOGETHER, is it, in a sense, a conversation between two people. As in any conversation, someone has to start and the other to join in. In other languages the word “leading” is sometimes replaced by “guiding” or “marking”. All terminology points, however, to the basic concept of “proposing a direction” for the leaders and “going in the proposed direction” for the followers.

Throughout the human history the words “leader” and “follower” have been used to denote concepts that have very little to do with the word’s’ original sense. The “lead and follow” model has been often confused with the “order and obey” model. In the “order and obey” model the dominant party forces the other one into compliance by threatening its survival, either literally or within a certain social context. These historical connotations are sometimes very strong. Those few times that I had to teach a class in German, I could never bring myself to pronounce the term “Führer”. In truth, the “order and obey” model has nothing to do with leading and following. If you want to have an interesting conversation or a genuinely connected dance, the “order and obey” model will never work.

Put simply, the leader in tango is responsible for the couple’s movement in space. He proposes a pattern, a certain “design”, and gives enough information to the other person to be able to follow. Leading is about DIRECTION. The follower’s role in tango is to feel the proposed direction and to go there actively, without hesitation. Following is about TRUST. This is why many teachers, sick of the lead-and-follow confusion, use the words “proposing” and “responding”. However, to me the words “lead” and “follow” are more apt to express the roles. A good leader is not solely proposing something, he is responsible for the couple as a whole, he will decide where and how to go depending on the circumstances and, not unimportantly, on the follower’s abilities and characteristics. Following is not merely responding to a suggestion, it is about carrying out the movement, fully expressing yourself, your own musicality, your own energy within a given pattern. In the interplay between the two roles there is also a paradox: once the follower has understood the direction and speed, she “leads” the couple by the simple act of moving, while the leader “follows” her in order to keep the connection.

When a woman comes to tango, very often all this is not clear to her. The word “follow” in its “obey” connotation is revolting to any modern, independent, let alone feminist woman. When the teacher tells her to “stop thinking and start following”, the confusion is complete. The real message is to let go of rational interpretation and to trust the invitation to move. The woman understands, however: “I have to become a passive non-thinking object that the leader will move around” and therefore has two options. Either she becomes an object or she revolts, which is equal to saying “I can only have a conversation with you if I am the one talking”.

When a woman chooses the “obey” model, what happens is that she starts waiting for the leader to indicate the way from the beginning to the end of her movement. This makes her slow, so the only choice the leader has is to either stop dancing or to use force to move her around. This establishes a vicious circle: the less the woman moves, the more the man pushes, and the more he pushes, the less she is compelled to move. This way of following is like going on a walk with a friend, but expecting your friend to tell you where to put your foot at every step. When a woman chooses to become a passive object, she condemns her leader to a life of moving furniture. When a leader mistakes his follower for a piece of furniture, he condemns himself to being refused by the majority of available dancers.

In truth, following has nothing to do with passivity, just as leading has nothing to do with force. Following is a very active role, ever-ready, ever-flowing where there is available space, ever-listening and ever-reacting, always open to impulse and suggestion. It is like being a river: as long as there is space to flow the river will flow, it does not need anyone to push it. To follow means to suspend judgement, to trust where the other person is taking you and to GO THERE with your whole being, in your own way, expressing yourself in the movement. Following is a choice, it is about collaboration. If I choose not to follow, to move me a man would need to knock me over.

My favorite trick to play on a beginner student is to lead him to walk while touching only slightly or not at all. His utter amazement at me (tiny woman!) leading him (a big and clumsy man!) to move in the direction I want points to the “magic” of tango. Leading is not only about showing the way, it is also about using the other person’s willingness to move for your creative purposes. Many teachers like to compare leading to driving a car, and if I got money every time I was called a Ferrari, I could probably afford one by now. I often say that leading is like playing with a child. A child has his or her own energy, will and ideas on what s/he wants to do. The trick is to lead THIS child into playing WITH YOU.

 Another reason why we often confuse “lead and follow” with “order and obey” is because both are expressions of the same energies, which, for the sake of simplicity, I will call “masculine” and “feminine”.

 (This point and the following paragraph have raised quite some discussion and it was pointed out, and rightly so, that calling these energies “masculine” and “feminine” relates them too much to biological sexes or gender. This is not my intention, as I see these energies as separate from biology. It is also true, however, that it is too simplistic to explain things with just two main energies, and that we as humans are more complex. I agree. The following paragraph is what I myself have been thinking so far about the two roles in tango and the two energies, or qualities. I am aware that I might be completely wrong here.)

Masculine energy is the energy of DOING. It is about acting, going, exploring, creating, destroying. Leading is a healthy expression of this energy, it is about having goals, steering, channeling, responsibility and navigation. Feminine energy is the energy of BEING. It is about flowing where there is available space, filling it out, settling into it, it is about intuition, feeling, trust, giving birth to new things and transformation. One of the most beautiful aspects of tango is that it allows these two energies to express themselves while playing with each other. Yet, as a true leader, you will need of “drop” of feminine energy in you and as a true follower you will need a “drop” of masculine energy. Why is that so? Because, when taken into extremes, these two energies become about “order and obey”. Masculine energy at its extreme results in violence and feminine energy in total passivity. The first creates a macho and the second creates a princess. In dance it means that a man squeezes a woman in his arms and drags her around the dancefloor, while she pedals quickly with her feet to avoid being run over. It is how tango was often danced when I started learning it. In those days the popular saying was “every mistake is the leader’s fault”, which I found a curious statement, for if it were true, I thought, then the leaders would be happy to dance with just anybody. Yet it was obvious that the leaders preferred to invite followers who danced well. You will, alas, still see the “macho/princess” way of dancing in many places you go to, but it is important to understand that the problem is not in the words but in how people interpret them. The words are quite perfect. 

Each of us has both energies, masculine and feminine, and their balance is not only different in every being, but in every situation. When I lead, I express more of my “masculine” energy; when I follow, more of the “feminine”. A woman who likes to lead is not necessarily a militant feminist, she just likes leading. A man who likes to follow is not necessarily submissive or a homosexual, he just likes that particular state of being that following induces. If you prefer different words, then choose the ones you find more fitting. In the end it is about how you apply them in your dance that matters.

RUSSIAN, FRENCH, TURKISH, GERMAN, CHINESE, MACEDONIAN, POLISH

November 18, 2013