both are valid excuses in some extreme cases but for the most part seems they also lack the skill to adjust.
Leaders. How was your Tango journey?
- Thread starter Pharaoh
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it’s semi a life lesson in interacting with women (if you haven’t learned in via actual dating in real life), but on the flip side there’s a lot of awful/creepy interactions women have to deal with from their pov.
But the takeaway i’ve learned is that there’s exceptions to every rule/requirement that women (or people in general) preach and you can be the exception as long as youre self aware enough to know what you’re doing.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
I agree completely. Tango takes two and is danced in a crowd. It isn't about just what the leader wants, just what the follower wants, or even just what one couple wants. The core skill of tango is somatically adapting the music to a partner and to the ronda. If one wants to do individual interpretive dance to tango music without other humans messing it up, there are studios for rent.
Yet when I go out, I see loads of leaders trying to force their interpretation onto a follower, slightly fewer followers trying to force their interpretation onto a leader, and many couples dancing in a little bubble with no awareness of others. None of that looks remotely like tango to me. It looks like the dance equivalent of little dictatorial nations having power struggles and ignoring the world outside their borders.
opendoor
Forum Master
This also happens with experienced followers, that I have to say: don't press against my arm, please don't press on my shoulder, please dance on your own axis. Most of them apologize immediately and stop bad habits. Of course there are also some who say, oh sorry, most leaders expect it.
Which goes back to the original point of not teaching on the pista. So these followers have been told something by the leaders that is incorrect. And now you are at the suffering end.
Asking someone not to do something because it is hurting, is very different from trying to leadsplain and teach someone while social dancing.
pianistamediano
Forum Master
That's all very true; one resigns themselves to the reality of the situation, though I'm not very enthusiastic about putting too much time and effort into becoming the exception when I could indulge in my own varied interests and pursuits.
What I'm vaguely irked by is the hypocrisy, and lack of understanding of what I like to call the true Golden rule — Do unto others what others would do unto you, by taking into account their tastes as you desire that they should take yours into account.
Then again, I really should make my peace with and accept the fact that people generally don't have strong principles and values, and don't try to live a life without compromising them just because it's convenient.
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Without attraction, social interactions and other non-dance factors, I don't think the scene would function at all.
Be Present
Well-Known Member
I have a shoulder issue and I can’t tolerate leaders pressing pushing on my open arm. With leaders I am friends with I will sometimes drop the open arm to give it a little rest. Once it is irritated any amount of pressure hurts. I really don’t like saying anything, but I have to. Or sometimes just a visual cue like moving my shoulder around is enough for them to light up the open arm. But this is not teaching on the pista.
I mentioned previously that, for me, how suggestions are received depends on who is saying it and how. There are times when I don’t know a lead and I will ask the leader what he was leading so that I can familiarize myself with a particular leader.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
YES! Exactly.
We all have the right to say, "That hurts. Please don't do it." That is at best an extremely indirect comment on technique, and not remotely what I meant by people teaching technique on the dancefloor! It's a comment on balance, posture, and body awareness. While those things certainly underlie technique – exactly as flexibility, speed, strength, etc. do – they are not tango technique qua tango technique, but general athletic attributes. You go to a gym, or a Pilates coach, or yoga to fix stuff like that.
When I wrote what I wrote, I was thinking about comments such as, "That isn't proper gancho technique. It works like this," or, "Why do you step that way in a turn and not this other way? Here, let me demonstrate." Nobody but a teacher in a class or a practice partner at a práctica has the right to talk like that – least of all a leader who has little to no training in follower technique, to a follower, or a follower who has little to no training in leader technique, to a leader. This is bona fide dance technique, and specifically tango technique: the specifics of how a particular movement "should" be done. You go to a tango teacher for stuff like that.
Most tango teachers correct both – and that's fine! However, while every human who touches another has the right to say, "Please don't use your posture, strength, weight, etc. to hurt me," only a tango teacher has the right to say, "Here's how you execute this specific element of tango vocabulary." The two aren't close to being the same thing, and confusing them is a common issue among non-teachers.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Oh, yes – solicited feedback is completely different from the unsolicited kind!
Do I teach unbidden on the dancefloor? Never! If my partner's technique is different from what I expect or like, or weird, or just plain bad, I note it mentally – for the future – but I say nothing in the moment. Indeed, I'm naturally stoic and don't even speak up if someone is pressing on me or squishing me . . . but that's on me.
Do I respond to questions on the dancefloor when a new-to-me partner isn't sure what just happened but is fascinated by it and wants to know more, or when someone I know to be less experienced than me asks me for honest feedback? Of course! "Going verbal" when the somatic channel doesn't suffice is interpersonal communication, and part of partner dance. Still, I try to keep my voice down and my response terse, because talking on the dancefloor distracts others.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
This seems to be a gray area where athletic and technical traits might be difficult to tell apart.
I share weight for real – I don't just affect the illusion of doing so. My usual dance posture has my partner and me on one shared axis, close up top and apart down below. The majority of my lead passes through my torso, and functions because the torso and both arms move as a single piece or frame. I do not give arm impulses separate from torso movement, and "volcada" is less a specific movement than the default state for all movements.
To dance like that, I need my partner to share an axis with me and have a frame like mine. This means they must direct the force of their weight horizontally toward me, and have tonus and presence in their arm on the open side. If we both do this, we have what in the world of aircraft is called "controlled instability": We teeter on the edge of falling (volcada) at all times, and the slightest inflection (lead) creates results almost instantly, which can be very fast and very large if desired.
Lots of tangueras trained in the same broad style as me by the same gang of teachers as mine who had the same group of masters dance this way. I'd say it's "usual" among tangueras in my age group in my city. I don't have to ask for it or "teach" it, because it's a baseline approach . . . I'd only have to speak up if I didn't want it.
However, there are also tangueras who have poor athletic qualities – bad balance, limited flexibility (especially at the upper body-lower body hinge), weak abdominal muscles, excessive or inadequate control over muscles in their arms and back, etc. – who collapse against me, or direct their weight vertically (downward) onto me, or actively push with the arm on the open side. That's uncomfortable, even for me.
I can immediately tell the difference between these things because one is how I like to dance while the other is not. But if you prefer not to share weight, and to dance on separate axes, then I can totally see how either could be disagreeable to you! Someone dancing my way vs. someone with poor athleticism are still completely different things physically, but would possibly feel the same way to you.
I guess the solution would be to watch people in a new place to determine what the standard style is there, and to pick the ones who dance like you do. As someone who just about never travels to dance, I'm fortunate in being able to invite most people I've seen around for about as long as I've been dancing, who number in the dozens and possibly the hundreds here.
opendoor
Forum Master
I think that closer observation beforehand is not a solution, because many good and advanced followers still like to adapt. Therefore, you don't see their built-in preference. I wrote already about my solution: I signal how I want to dance by extending my left or my right arm for the embrace. Many advanced followers understand the gesture, but not all of them.
I don’t think I read that. What signal are you sending through how and which arm you extend?
JournalInTime
Forum Master
I think there was a sort of meme (in the original, not Internet, sense) going around that the hand signaled a style . . . but it was hardly universal, and in fact I've met people who swore that the supposed signal was the opposite of what other people claimed it was.
No idea what it would mean, I offer both arms at the same time and the response is almost always close embrace, but this might just be a body language thing.