Leaders. How was your Tango journey?

[JournalInTime]

Leaders, how long did it take you to stop feeling bored with your own dance? Or, did you even start feeling bored?

I never started to feel bored. This is a personal matter, but for me, what helped was:

• Changing partners. Partner changes are good for avoiding X-follows-Y thinking, where everything is telegraphed and/or anticipated, and nobody is truly leading or following. But honestly and more importantly, they expose you to the concepts of (1) each partner having something different to offer and (2) that "something" being in part a response to their partner, so that with 4 leaders and 4 followers, 16 different expressions of the same dance are possible. It teaches you that the dance isn't about showing off and experiencing what you can do alone, but about experiencing other people and experiencing what you can do together.
  
  
• Changing dynamics. The exact same step gets boring if it's all you do, sure. So, don't do it the exact same way. You can alter size (distance, angle, depth, etc.), speed, timing, direction, accompaniment, collection, and a dozen other things. You can have a step follow any number of other steps and lead into any number of other steps. You must break the habit of thinking, "This has to start here and end here, facing this way, on this many counts." Once you do, you'll find that each dance is different, unrepeatable, and thus interesting. Choreography can be a fun challenge (see the next item), but it's death in social dance.
  
  
• Being challenged. If you stick to what you learned in group class, and dance it with the same handful of people, then you can switch between those people as often as you want, and do the thing as interestingly as you want, and eventually get bored. You have to push your limits. This means eventually working with a private coach who shows tough love and who asks you to break bad habits and attempt things outside your comfort zone. This means inviting strangers, including better dancers than you with whom you are very junior and thus not in control. This means owning your mistakes, and turning them into opportunities.

The followers arent complaining, but they only dance one tanda with me.

If it's "one, ever," then that's a sign that your lead needs more work. Not your vocabulary of steps – you yourself say that a limited leader vocabulary doesn't bug you, and I think most followers would agree! I mean your communications skills (how well you "talk" and "listen" with your body), your embrace (nobody likes being clamped in place, held way off to one side, a noodly arm with no presence, etc.), your posture (particularly head posture . . . it's no fun to have someone's melon in your space, cranking your neck), and especially resisting the temptation to lead with force (stepping brusquely, cranking with the arm, pushing or pulling, etc.) instead of torso orientation and residual momentum.

If it's "one per event," then welcome to tango! Normally, we dance one tanda per event with a partner. There are exceptions, but those are customarily for close friends and lovers. There are even places where because of the previous point, dancing two tandas with the same partner is seen as sus, and dancing three or more is advertising that you want to hook up; I find that old-fashioned, but potential partners might not, depending on where and when they came to tango. Setting that aside, people who dance lots of tandas together without being in a couple in life and love are often seen as monopolizing partners others could be dancing with, which is uncool even among very progressive people. So, if it's just somebody not saying "yes" twice in one day, you shouldn't care . . . that's the polite default.

I know i still lack the precision and speed to express all of what i hear in the music, and that will keep on improving. But will this feeling ever go away?

Yes, the feeling will go away. I've danced at a bare minimum of some combination of three milongas and prácticas per week since 2013 (with forced pauses for the pandemic). I have often danced quite a bit more than that (as frequently as "every day"). I do not tire easily, and can maintain mental focus well, so those events don't represent "a few tandas each," but something closer to "20+ tandas each." And even after I-have-no-idea-how-many tens of thousands of tandas (20,000? 30,000?), I have never felt bored.

All the blah blah I wrote about technique and practice will help. What will help at least as much is to listen to the classic tango, valses, and milongas outside of dancing hours – at home (I do this when cooking and cleaning), on earbuds during your travels during the day, even at work (if you're allowed!). You'll learn the nuances well and, with exactly the same physical skills, you'll be able to express those nuances better due to knowing where they are and thus when to prepare, and also due to knowing exactly how long they last and thus how long a "wave of movement" you should be preparing.

 

[JournalInTime]

What will help at least as much is to listen to the classic tango, valses, and milongas outside of dancing hours – at home (I do this when cooking and cleaning), on earbuds during your travels during the day, even at work (if you're allowed!). You'll learn the nuances well and, with exactly the same physical skills, you'll be able to express those nuances better due to knowing where they are and thus when to prepare, and also due to knowing exactly how long they last and thus how long a "wave of movement" you should be preparing.

Incidentally, in the specific context of social dance and not demos or performances:

I think of the above as "good choreo": You are learning the music in advance, memorizing when it would be most logical to start or end things, and formulating ideas about what kinds of things those could be. It is a big part of why many dancers prefer the same library of classics from around 70 to 100 years ago.

The contrasting "bad choreo" is memorizing specific things to do at specific points and facing specific stage directions, without regard for your partner (their skill level, range of motion, etc.), other dancers around you, or mistakes.

What I call "bad choreo" is "good choreo" or just "choreo" for demos and performances, of course (though I prefer improvised demos). But the social dancer focuses on learning the music, smoothing their movements, and learning to lead or follow well, whereas the performer focuses on learning and smoothing out specific sequences so that, even if lead or follow were to fail, movements will happen at the right moments, facing the correct directions.

The latter kind of thing won't really improve your social dancing much. Many of the best performers I know (including some who've won prizes for their work) are a hot mess in the ronda. Many of the best social dancers I know have tried choreographies for a decade and never once pulled one off.

 

[Hophop]

I never started to feel bored. This is a personal matter, but for me, what helped was:

• Changing partners. Partner changes are good for avoiding X-follows-Y thinking, where everything is telegraphed and/or anticipated, and nobody is truly leading or following. But honestly and more importantly, they expose you to the concepts of (1) each partner having something different to offer and (2) that "something" being in part a response to their partner, so that with 4 leaders and 4 followers, 16 different expressions of the same dance are possible. It teaches you that the dance isn't about showing off and experiencing what you can do alone, but about experiencing other people and experiencing what you can do together.
  
  
• Changing dynamics. The exact same step gets boring if it's all you do, sure. So, don't do it the exact same way. You can alter size (distance, angle, depth, etc.), speed, timing, direction, accompaniment, collection, and a dozen other things. You can have a step follow any number of other steps and lead into any number of other steps. You must break the habit of thinking, "This has to start here and end here, facing this way, on this many counts." Once you do, you'll find that each dance is different, unrepeatable, and thus interesting. Choreography can be a fun challenge (see the next item), but it's death in social dance.
  
  
• Being challenged. If you stick to what you learned in group class, and dance it with the same handful of people, then you can switch between those people as often as you want, and do the thing as interestingly as you want, and eventually get bored. You have to push your limits. This means eventually working with a private coach who shows tough love and who asks you to break bad habits and attempt things outside your comfort zone. This means inviting strangers, including better dancers than you with whom you are very junior and thus not in control. This means owning your mistakes, and turning them into opportunities.

If it's "one, ever," then that's a sign that your lead needs more work. Not your vocabulary of steps – you yourself say that a limited leader vocabulary doesn't bug you, and I think most followers would agree! I mean your communications skills (how well you "talk" and "listen" with your body), your embrace (nobody likes being clamped in place, held way off to one side, a noodly arm with no presence, etc.), your posture (particularly head posture . . . it's no fun to have someone's melon in your space, cranking your neck), and especially resisting the temptation to lead with force (stepping brusquely, cranking with the arm, pushing or pulling, etc.) instead of torso orientation and residual momentum.

If it's "one per event," then welcome to tango! Normally, we dance one tanda per event with a partner. There are exceptions, but those are customarily for close friends and lovers. There are even places where because of the previous point, dancing two tandas with the same partner is seen as sus, and dancing three or more is advertising that you want to hook up; I find that old-fashioned, but potential partners might not, depending on where and when they came to tango. Setting that aside, people who dance lots of tandas together without being in a couple in life and love are often seen as monopolizing partners others could be dancing with, which is uncool even among very progressive people. So, if it's just somebody not saying "yes" twice in one day, you shouldn't care . . . that's the polite default.

Yes, the feeling will go away. I've danced at a bare minimum of some combination of three milongas and prácticas per week since 2013 (with forced pauses for the pandemic). I have often danced quite a bit more than that (as frequently as "every day"). I do not tire easily, and can maintain mental focus well, so those events don't represent "a few tandas each," but something closer to "20+ tandas each." And even after I-have-no-idea-how-many tens of thousands of tandas (20,000? 30,000?), I have never felt bored.

All the blah blah I wrote about technique and practice will help. What will help at least as much is to listen to the classic tango, valses, and milongas outside of dancing hours – at home (I do this when cooking and cleaning), on earbuds during your travels during the day, even at work (if you're allowed!). You'll learn the nuances well and, with exactly the same physical skills, you'll be able to express those nuances better due to knowing where they are and thus when to prepare, and also due to knowing exactly how long they last and thus how long a "wave of movement" you should be preparing.

Haha no i would run out of dance partners fast if they only danced one tanda with me, ever. I mean in the context of a milonga i dance one tanda with every follower so they dont get the chance to become bored with my way of leading. They move on to the next leader with a slightly different moveset and style and have a different experience every tanda. And for me, for now, i feel that leading offers less variety than following. Even with trying to adjust to the follower and orchestra and with giving the followers space to do their own thing and thus change the dance, the leading experience feels more uniform and repetitive than following.

 

[JournalInTime]

Haha no i would run out of dance partners fast if they only danced one tanda with me, ever. I mean in the context of a milonga i dance one tanda with every follower so they dont get the chance to become bored with my way of leading. They move on to the next leader with a slightly different moveset and style and have a different experience every tanda.

Okay, so that's fairly standard.

And for me, for now, i feel that leading offers less variety than following. Even with trying to adjust to the follower and orchestra and with giving the followers space to do their own thing and thus change the dance, the leading experience feels more uniform and repetitive than following.

Consider what makes changing leaders enticing to followers: Mostly, it's differences in what different leaders propose and how they propose it. Sure, there are countless other factors that make followers want to dance with specific leaders, but the motivation behind changing leaders is variety.

Now look in the mirror: As a leader, you can "listen" (and listening is hard, a skill that can take years to hone) for what followers propose and how they propose it, and then go along with that instead of overriding it. This sort of proposal-counterproposal dance is not what traditionalists like – they're about "Me man. Me in charge. You woman. You dance my dance." However, it brings to leaders who change followers the same sense of novelty that followers feel when they change leaders.

There's also personality and chemistry. Even when I lead followers who don't propose much and mostly just wait for my lead, I am still "listening," and I get a lot out of their emotion, their playfulness, their signals, and how they connect to me interpersonally – not physically. This interpersonal experience of leading is more important to me than the technical experience of leading, and I'd like to imagine that those I lead find the interpersonal more important than the technical, too. Not everyone seeks or wants that; it's valid to value performance over feeling. However, that preference definitely makes leading feel same-y.

 

[opendoor]

..My biggest problem was and always is musicality. Since a lot of my brainspace is taken up by ensuring my steps are right...

Hi kay, welcome to DF!
Reverse your priorities. You can dance incredibly musically with elementary stuff (side steps, forward step, pausing). Your followers will love you for it. Even raising and lowering your ribcage on the spot is dancing.

..Can somebody please tell me how a leader 'decides' on which move to do?

Free yourself from trying to incorporate learned vocabulary into your dancing. Simply stepping forward in the embrace is the anthem of tango. Other figuras are only needed for navigating on the dance floor; they basically are side steps, cunita (rebotes).

..imagine a veteran dance has many many sequences in mind, but how one comes to mind as the most suitable remains a bit of a mystery.

I've been dancing tango for 27 years and have probably forgotten 100 figures and sequences. I'm perfectly comfortable with forward and side steps on the dance floor. Besides that, I have two signature moves: the forward and backward volcada. I use these two when there's a ritardando or a clear syncopation in the music.

..could somebody tell me what the numbers are like.. I had always thought there would be more followers than leaders..

That's true, but they are hiding. To track them down is part of the training. And remember, learning to dance is primarily social learning: network and fill your contact list.

..For now, I have only attended one school.. Should I attend these other schools.. I was a bit afraid ...of insulting my own teacher..

Teachers always make drama; you just have to put up with it. But never switch schools completely. Always stay loyal to your first school; you need it as your social base. Other teachers, schools, or styles will only serve your further development.

..For now, I have only attended ..group lessons, no privates. Should I attend these..

Absolutely, it will be a huge leap in quality for you. But choose your teacher carefully: privates primarily focus on movement quality, posture, and bodywork. A teacher must be able to analyze and provide feedback, unfortunately, only a few can really do that.

 

[enrosskay]

Hi kay, welcome to DF!
Reverse your priorities. You can dance incredibly musically with elementary stuff (side steps, forward step, pausing). Your followers will love you for it. Even raising and lowering your ribcage on the spot is dancing.

Free yourself from trying to incorporate learned vocabulary into your dancing. Simply stepping forward in the embrace is the anthem of tango. Other figuras are only needed for navigating on the dance floor; they basically are side steps, cunita (rebotes).

I've been dancing tango for 27 years and have probably forgotten 100 figures and sequences. I'm perfectly comfortable with forward and side steps on the dance floor. Besides that, I have two signature moves: the forward and backward volcada. I use these two when there's a ritardando or a clear syncopation in the music.

That's true, but they are hiding. To track them down is part of the training. And remember, learning to dance is primarily social learning: network and fill your contact list.

Teachers always make drama; you just have to put up with it. But never switch schools completely. Always stay loyal to your first school; you need it as your social base. Other teachers, schools, or styles will only serve your further development.

Absolutely, it will be a huge leap in quality for you. But choose your teacher carefully: privates primarily focus on movement quality, posture, and bodywork. A teacher must be able to analyze and provide feedback, unfortunately, only a few can really do that.

Thank you for the detailed reply. I'm quite amazed by the thought and detail of the responses on this forum, haven't really seen it anywhere else on the modern internet.

I love your point about even lowering and raising the ribcage, we do a drill like this in the warmup.

Speaking of volcada, I just learned it recently, the side volcada – it led to a nice spin move for the follower.

When you say network and fill your contact list, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean make friends with women/followers and suggest that they join the tango school and start dancing? Or find established dancers who are followers and invite them?

I see what you mean about the drama. There's no hiding from it either as all the schools here tend to put their videos on insta, so everyone can see who is dancing where. I think you are 100% right about sticking with the main school as the base - in any case I chose it as the main school as I think it's the best, but on other days I can and will attend other classes, now that I'm beyond the basics.

 

[enrosskay]

I also have a question about dancing at 'other' milongas. I have only started going to milongas with my school and am somewhat comfortable dancing with them, because we have the advantage of knowing each other a bit, and we all have the same teacher and style. At what stage does one know that , as a leader, one is 'ready' to dance with total strangers? what are some clues to suggest this?

 

[opendoor]

..When you say network and fill your contact list, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean make friends with women/followers and suggest that they join the tango school and start dancing? Or find established dancers who are followers and invite them?

All of this together. If you have a WhatsApp group that initially includes people at a similar level to you, then you're not anonymous. You can arrange to meet men and women for milongas, to see tango films at the cinema, or simply for coffee before class. And of course, you can ask who wants to book the next class with you, attend a workshop, or share an apartment with you at a festival.

 

[opendoor]

..At what stage does one know that , as a leader, one is 'ready' to dance with total strangers? what are some clues to suggest this?

There's no rule. But you don't have to be a good dancer to ask unknown dancers to dance. You pay with your good looks, your perfume, and the small talk. Every experienced dancer knows that at some point you have to throw yourself into the fray. And many experienced dancers already will dance with you right now. I always said, "But I'm still a beginner!" Eventually, someone will tell you to just drop that line. At that moment, you'll know that you've arrived.

 

[enrosskay]

I'm asking as a leader but it applies to followers too, so interested in follower opinions also.

When did you learn close embrace? Is there an accepted idea that open embrace should be learned first, and then close embrace? If so, when is somebody "ready" for close embrace?

 

[TTanguero]

When did you learn close embrace?

Almost from the start, but then I started with privates before group lessons.

 

[opendoor]

..When did you learn close embrace?

Excuse me for expanding a little bit!

If I had to teach tango tomorrow, I would introduce all aspects—floorcraft, posture, bodymechanics, hold, musicality, and vocabulary—simultaneously, albeit at a basic level. However, that is not how it is usually done today.

I personally danced tango at milongas before I started taking my first regular tango lessons. The reason I finally decided to take lessons was specifically to learn the close hold. Up until that point, I had been dancing in kinde of a "practice hold" (with my hand on the follower's left shoulder blade). After about two months of attending milongas, an experienced follower said to me, "Andreas, I’ve been seeing you at milongas for a while now; you really need to start dancing in close embrace". The thing was, she was a large, strong woman. She grabbed me and pulled me tightly against her. It felt as though my feet were dangling in mid-air. My nose was wedged into her décolletage. Everything felt uncontrollable. That’s when I decided I needed to learn the close embrace in the milonguero style. I booked a group class but was disappointed, as the dancing again was done exclusively in the practice hold. Since I was by then already a respected figure in my city's tango scene, I began arranging to meet up with followers in a rented space so I could figure out with their help how to dance in close embrace on my own.

In a nutshell: you need feedback and correction, as well as stable core muscles and muscle chains, and you should ideally have already learned how to project. If those conditions are met, there is no reason not to start dancing close embrace right away.

That is the theory, but in reality, the matter is more complex. It is not enough to focus solely on the powerhouse, the spine, and the neck; otherwise, you are overlooking a crucial factor. My posture—and thus my embrace—only took a qualitative leap forward once I started paying attention to my feet. My first private instructor realized immediately that I had to learn how to walk. And honestly, walking involves 14 other muscles, and there are significant phases during the leg swing that must be mastered. I walked side-by-side with her for what felt like hundreds of miles to learn the correct sequence and rhythm of walking on the dance floor. Once I could walk, I was able to really dance in close embrace.

In conclusion, tango is a spiral curriculum: the beginner must improve on all fronts simultaneously. And so it will remain for several years, consistently at a somewhat higher level.

 

[Hophop]

I always said, "But I'm still a beginner!" Eventually, someone will tell you to just drop that line. At that moment, you'll know that you've arrived.

I would argue that this warning is never necessary. Non beginners figured it out by all the other signs, if they accepted the invitation they already weighted the pros and cons. Beginners will notice you are on the same level during the tanda. I dont know anyone who would cancell the invitation after the other person warns them of their level.

 

[Hophop]

I also have a question about dancing at 'other' milongas. I have only started going to milongas with my school and am somewhat comfortable dancing with them, because we have the advantage of knowing each other a bit, and we all have the same teacher and style. At what stage does one know that , as a leader, one is 'ready' to dance with total strangers? what are some clues to suggest this?

When i was beginning, i was worried and curious if the tango i learned would work on another milonga or in a different country. I went to a milonga abroad as soon as i was able, just to make sure. It worked, no problem. In general, i never noticed any significant problems in communication, regardless of the continent on which people learned.

I would say the minimum for the leader would be - able to cabeceo/mirada (if they are strangers, if say its better to respect the codigos of the milonga more closely), knows how to enter the ronda and knows which way the ronda flows. Able to navigate inside the ronda (not going backwards, changing lanes randomly) A non painful embrace, either open or closed. The ability to calmly and seamlessly execute about 3 different steps, preferably to beat (no stopping to complain or apologize). Clean shirt, maybe a smile.

 

[opendoor]

..dont know anyone who would cancell the invitation after the other person warns them of their level..

From an analytical standpoint, you're absolutely right. But subjectively, I couldn't break free from it for a long time. I wanted to be the humble beginner, happy to receive attention. Paradoxically, I get completely different feedback when I happen to run into these followers after 20 years again: You were arrogant and very calculating: "You single-mindedly pursued your own agenda". My perception and how others perceived me simply are not compatible.