That’s how I have seen it in all the workshops and classes. But with solo leaders. I can’t remember a class or workshop where there were more followers than leaders.
POLL: are solo followers encouraged / allowed / discouraged/ not allowed to take classes / workshops without a partner?
- Thread starter Miradamiranda
- Start date
I've encountered a few.
The interesting thing is that an unpartnered leader doesn't seem to get the same feelbad experience as an unpartnered follower.
I hypothesize that the difference in role responsibilities probably has something to do with it. Followers, doing their job well, are principally reactive. Put them on their own, and there's nothing to react to--they need to work in an entirely different frame of mind. Compared to leaders whose job is principally active; put them on their own, and they can keep the same brain space, they just don't need to react to the reaction.
Now I need to go back and claim proportional refund in almost every class and workshop I have been to
Among the social dancers there is a common discussion that men need classes more than the women. Whether it is AT, swing, salsa, or bachata, the classes mostly are teaching patterns or figures. As you said follower has to react. They don’t need to know or learn patterns. Men in all these dances think (incorrectly) that learning patterns (quantity) makes them better dancers. Once a follower starts going out social dancing, need to attend classes which are primarily teaching patterns is of very low value.
When it comes to AT, I heard of enough men who complain they can’t find ladies who are willing to go to practicas regularly. That is ladies aren’t interested in practicing.
Sometimes I get asked by someone if I would be interested in registering as a partner for workshops. My problem is that I find little value in most workshops and partnering with those who ask will be me compensating for their lack of skill level. There are only certain instructors whose teaching I like. Almost none of them are local. There is also the issue of the logistics and timing. A lot of things have to fall in right place, absent a regular dance partner.
Where you are living? My experience is Czech Republic and countries close to Czech. Everywhere is more ladies eager to dance AT (lessons, workshops, milongas), then men. Never seen solo leader on workshop. Such event's are annonced as event on FCB, shared thru Whatsup Tango groups and if there are free leaders or followers, it is communicated in advance. If there is message like "Follower wanted", almost immediatelly is accepted by someone.
There is a phenomenon in the ballroom world that I suspect exists everywhere, but I've never seen spoken about in exactly these terms anywhere else. It is the notion of leader hell and follower hell.
The idea here is that, while both dance roles are equally difficult, they are difficult in different ways and the most challenging domain of learning does not appear at the same time for each.
Leader hell afflicts beginners and intermediate dancers the worst. The leader needs to master not only their own individual movement, but also consider how to clearly communicate their intentions (projection) and live a few seconds in the future for the purposes of floorcraft. That is a nasty, almost impossible expectation for someone who is still mastering posture and walk.
By contrast, follower hell comes much later. When dancing with a leader in the depths of leader, hell, a follower isn't getting the kind of consistent, clear, non-disruptive signaling that allows them to work properly on their craft. So they approximate and muddle through and essentially wait for the leader to become good enough that they can start earnestly working on themselves.
Once a leader is high-intermediate or advanced, they stop constantly disrupting their follower, and then the follower enters follower hell. It is similar to leader hell, with the required deep focus on many topics at once. But in some ways it is worse, because the follower may have gotten used to a half-baked, defensive approximation of their role that is the maximum the poor lead would allow, and they now believe that this approximation is actually what the role entails in full. It can require basically a complete brain rewiring, with a ton of long-ingrained bad habits needing to be unlearned. With the followers I've studied with, it can lead to a crisis of confidence, because the dancer thought they were so-and-so-good, only to suddenly have the entire critical attention of the coach focused entirely on them, seemingly out of nowhere.
I bring this up because I think it is the what causes the phenomenon you described, where leaders want more practice (leader hell) that followers aren't especially interested in (waiting for leaders to get through hell), as well as the perception that men need more classes-- because, in the phase of leader hell, they absolutely do.
And there you have it... my current dance journey in a nut shell. Bad habits and full out confidence crisis mode when dancing with experienced leaders. Thanks @fiesta0618!
Since I have no experience in Argentine Tango other than spectating, I didn’t vote.
No need to skew the poll numbers.
But, I am grateful for the sharing of experiences in this thread. There are situations and scenarios explained here that never crossed my mind, especially coming from an all follows are welcome salsa/bachata background. The world of AT is mostly a mystery to me so this is quite fascinating.
Leader’s hell is a very common term used by everyone in partner dancing world. Not so the later term.
Till the intermediate level in social dances the follower role is not considered as challenging as leader’s given what you have described below:
Yes.
Not many but among long time dancers it is known that followers have much higher hill to climb around time the leaders start to plateau. One salsa instructor also had a graph for both. Showing steeper curve for the leaders at the start and steeper curve for followers latter.
In social dancing by this time most followers have long stopped taking lessons. Nor are they used to coaching or personal attention. Among the social dancers, the swing followers are the ones who are more aware and start talking private lessons. In AT it depends and only motivated followers try to make that jump beyond intermediate level.
I was talking about the leaders at 10 years mark in Tango. What you say is true for the beginner leaders which in AT can mean two years to five years before they are truly intermediate. How fast AT leaders get to intermediate depends on how much they practice and what they practice. There are always exceptions who can dance at intermediate level in less than two years. Compared to other dances there is an additional overload for AT leaders because it is a traveling dance in close embrace. In the beginning it is easier to dance in open hold than close hold. Traveling dance means able to navigate the floor craft and line of dance.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
I don't really understand the choices. Since when or why would anyone not be allowed to take classes without a partner?
I haven’t experienced such rules, except in minor exception requiring to sign up with someone in opposite role for one-off special workshops. For the regular classes I haven’t experienced any restrictions on solo dancers dropping in.
My guess is if the class tends to get in heavy direction for one of the two roles, it degrades experience for everyone in that role. If you have to constantly wait every few rotations without a partner that’s no fun. Some people decide to not switch or rotate. Some instructors (in Tango specially) are very bad at calling out the rotation and switch. They forget. Then person without partner is missing out learning for significant chuck of time.
brujo
Well-Known Member
West coast USA sometimes you’d get 3 or 4 times more men than women. Specially in Seattle / Bay Area due to demographics. Even in Portland there are usually a few more men than women in beginner classes but it kinda balances out because some men want / get to learn to follow.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Of course, it's allowed, but it does not make sense.
You just won't dance with other people's partners.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
I'm familiar with the terms "leader hell" and "follower purgatory." The latter, however, in the meaning that after a certain amount of time, followers can more or less follow the usual figures. And further individual improvements then no longer automatically leads to dancing with better leaders, because these improvements don't necessarily feel better for the leaders.
And, at least in Northern Europe, fewer (male) leaders started out; they had less interest, less prior skills, and a more strenuous learning curve, so they gave up tango long ago. And due to the high dropout rates, "nurturing" mediocre leaders is often not a satisfactory individual strategy.
So there are simply too few good leaders, and it's no use being twenty years younger than the men when this age group is already frail.
The situation then leads to helplessness, dissatisfaction, finally workshops like "Women's Choreography Project" or "Tango & Yin & Yang". These days, it's often workshops like "Women Leading Women", which at least makes sense in my mind.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
In Northern Europe, there are usually more women, and the teacher can simply ask who might want to learn to lead or who can lead. In the large drop-in class (>100 participants) at "El Corte's Chained Salon", it takes less than a minute for pairs with two female leaders to voluntarily split up and help out. Nowadays, this problem can therefore be solved in practice.
But if the real problem in the background is a latent, subconscious dissatisfaction with group membership, recognition, and self-esteem, this obviously doesn't help much. Tango isn't primarily mercantilist; just as life in general isn't fair anyway. It even starts with the fact that some people have a life partner who doesn't dance tango, and they also bear the consequences!
This is a key point with recruiting and retaining. It depends where and how such rules are applied.
Intermediate/Advanced workshop - it's a partner dance, you want to dance with others, but you're paying money not to be left out because someone can't find a partner. I won't say that there aren't aspects of some moves that can't be practiced, or learnt, solo or with props (e.g. volcadas, colgadas, sacadas, ganchos...) but probably taught, and learned, more easily with a partner. We probably all did some of that during Covid lockdowns (mops were sometimes quite useful). Only those 2 suffer the, sometimes hell, of learning a partner dance together - the occasional conflict resolution.
Beginner/Novices - the course can be adjusted to teach in a different way, but at some point you move away from drills and need a real partner. Even a mop is inadequate. Yes, there can be change of role from the sex-based norm, but maybe some want their chosen role once they reach some level of skill. It's about numbers: 4+ leaders/followers left out without some scheme to integrate them is going to turn them off. Some in the group won't rotate; some don't get chosen (just like the milonga!) for many reasons. I recall an extremely tall and attractive, young, amazon follower with an occasional penchant for low-cut tops. Close hold you certainly had your head, and vision, at an interesting
level. Some leaders found it, let's say, a little overwhelming, to dance with her so didn't choose her. Unusual, but there are many reasons why people get left out. People are weird - and tango aficionados are a special case.For a particular makeup of a group and level, such rules can help the group and make it easier for the teacher (doesn't have to teach in a different way), but they can discourage prospective newbies. If it's run as a drop-in in a metropolis, then I guess the teacher has to be adaptable to whoever turns up. It can be good or bad. At some point it becomes better for all to ensure role balance, but that doesn't mean you don't rotate partners. At that stage you should know that, ideally, you need a partner.