Tango as it crosses over with the relationships, seduction and sexuality

[WhiskeyPapa]

The leaders are just the 'pole' to dance around so she can be the exhibitionist she is.

I believe it is Alejandra Matinan who described male leads as “dresses” she puts on and takes off.

 

[Tango Newbie]

This is the first time I have doubts whether your girlfriend is really as experienced as you think.

Well, I suppose in some people's eyes she might not be experienced. Here are my reasons to believe she is;
-Has extensive collection of high-end tango shoes and dresses that have been worn (not just sitting in her closet)
-Has taken several trips to tango festivals in Portland, SF, LA, Chicago, Tucson, San Diego (our home town), and other cities
-Has taken 3 trips to BA for a week or more each visit, the most recent was in 2019
-20+ years dancing tango, and before that several years of salsa
-Executes embellishments flawlessly with 'seasoned' leaders who are also instructors at several studios.
-Knows how to interpret tango music and their meanings, and how to dance them (waltz vs milonga, etc)
-Has extensive collection of tango CD's at home
-Had wood floors installed throughout her home to create a dance floor in the living room
-Has invited instructors and followers to her home throughout the years for classes
-Has many follower and leader friends, including instructors in tango communities throughout CA
-Spent a vast majority of her free time attending milongas in SF, LA, Orange County, and San Diego

The only things that has kept her from performing are; her profession and lack of a steady dance partner (before me).

Has any of that changed your thoughts?

 

[opendoor]

I'm not a flagpole either and followers who think my job is to...

I have the impression that in the milonguero style the woman draws attention, in tango de salón the focus is on the man, while in escenario both roles are more balanced.

 

[Brummbaer]

I have the impression that in the milonguero style the woman draws attention, in tango de salón the focus is on the man, while in escenario both roles are more balanced.

Not an invalid observation, but I'd say it's down to the role the leader plays, and the reasons, in each of those scenarios. In the two former styles it's about a social way of life. And those 'reasons' might just be how we interpret those customs, almost like in a nature documentary.

Not much point having a (usually) male 'lead' not 'dancing' in escenario. You may as well put up a flagpole and bring on the chorus line to kick-and-flick.

Interestingly we're talking about the historical reasons for these customs and styles in a different culture.

 

[JournalInTime]

This is the first time I have doubts whether your girlfriend is really as experienced as you think.

Experienced, but perhaps also stuck in her ways. Experience can give skill . . . but it can also lead to bad habits that aren't merely hard to fix, but entrenched behind landmines and concertina wire.

These things are just physical or status symbols. They tell me nothing about dance skill:

-Has extensive collection of high-end tango shoes and dresses that have been worn (not just sitting in her closet)
-Has taken several trips to tango festivals in Portland, SF, LA, Chicago, Tucson, San Diego (our home town), and other cities
-Has taken 3 trips to BA for a week or more each visit, the most recent was in 2019
-Has extensive collection of tango CD's at home
-Had wood floors installed throughout her home to create a dance floor in the living room
-Has many follower and leader friends, including instructors in tango communities throughout CA

These things could mean nothing but years of ingrained bad habits and/or groomed partners with whom those habits are not a problem:

-20+ years dancing tango, and before that several years of salsa
-Executes embellishments flawlessly with 'seasoned' leaders who are also instructors at several studios.
-Spent a vast majority of her free time attending milongas in SF, LA, Orange County, and San Diego

And these things might suggest a willingness or capacity to fix years of bad habits:

-Knows how to interpret tango music and their meanings, and how to dance them (waltz vs milonga, etc)
-Has invited instructors and followers to her home throughout the years for classes

The flagpole/flag or picture/frame approach isn't a good habit. It's a bad one. Both partners should be equally visible in the dance, if at different times, and good dancers – leaders and followers – give their partners chances to shine about 50% of the time. It's a partnership. If all the leader is doing is being a barre or pole for a follower to hang from, that isn't good at all.

"Executes embellishments flawlessly" kind of worries me, I confess, because there are plenty of followers who go too far, and plenty of leaders who let them because it hides the fact they're not all that interesting in themselves.

I'm not a flagpole either and followers who think my job is to stand still while they show off a bunch of random moves can think again.

Same.

My dance is dynamic, with a lot of changes of direction, height, and momentum. It also has lots of pauses and long walks where I explicitly adjust the abrazo to let the follower take over. I listen for proposals and openings she wants to give me, and I respect what she does in response to my proposals and openings for her. I can't really imagine just pacing along, stopping every so often, and letting my follower show off while I play the part of a glorified kabuki stagehand (even if I do prefer black).

I usually ignore all the "follower is the picture, leader is the frame" and "flag/flagpole" etc analogies. They help leaders to understand that they are not the centre of a dance and that there are two people in a partnership. It's usually trotted out in the beginner/intermediate phase when leaders are trying all the moves even the followers' because they look more complicated.

This is true, too. Leaders are just as prone to treating followers as accessories to their fanciness as followers are to treating leaders as poles. The two are equally terrible. Honestly, I do find just walking boring, but at the same time, when I see two dancers being fancy, I kind of like to see them try to walk, to determine whether they can actually dance or just belong to the same mutual admiration society.

 

[Tango Newbie]

Experienced, but perhaps also stuck in her ways. Experience can give skill . . . but it can also lead to bad habits that aren't merely hard to fix, but entrenched behind landmines and concertina wire.

And these things might suggest a willingness or capacity to fix years of bad habits

My GF isn't the atypical follower; she has taken classes continuously throughout her entire dancing career, didn't build up years of bad habits, and never rested on her laurels. She's humble enough about her skills and knows what she needs to refine, or when she needs to clean things up.

The flagpole/flag or picture/frame approach isn't a good habit. It's a bad one. Both partners should be equally visible in the dance, if at different times, and good dancers – leaders and followers – give their partners chances to shine about 50% of the time. It's a partnership. If all the leader is doing is being a barre or pole for a follower to hang from, that isn't good at all.

"Executes embellishments flawlessly" kind of worries me, I confess, because there are plenty of followers who go too far, and plenty of leaders who let them because it hides the fact they're not all that interesting in themselves.

Most of the time she danced with skilled leaders and instructors and she's the one who made them shine, while exhibiting her own abilities. Plus, she kept those 'dance partnerships' focused on tango with the right 'connection' to make tango enjoyable (for both), and not focused on 'what' they looked like since she isn't attracted to any of them. Sure, she has 'friendships' with some leaders, but that's as far as it goes, and it's not up to her to make the leader visible in the dance. If they led it, she executed it, and did so with style (and still does).

My GF and partner with a dance instructor in a class:

 

[JournalInTime]

My GF isn't the atypical follower; she has taken classes continuously throughout her entire dancing career, didn't build up years of bad habits, and never rested on her laurels. She's humble enough about her skills and knows what she needs to refine, or when she needs to clean things up.

All of those are excellent things. I think the self-awareness to say "I'm not great at this. I need to work with my coach to clean it up" is essential to being a good dancer.

it's not up to her to make the leader visible in the dance. If they led it, she executed it, and did so with style (and still does).

Mmm . . .

It's up to the leader as well as the follower to make the follower shine, and the follower as well as the leader to make the leader shine. That's what partnership means. Each owning their own moments to shine isn't partnership; it's two people doing separate things together. There's nothing unequal about "I own 50% of the dance and my partner owns 50% of the dance," but "I give my partner 50% of the dance and my partner gives me 50% of the dance" is better.

The whole idea that "Well, it isn't my problem if they didn't do it right!" is fine in classes, where you want to learn to do it right, but not socially, where you're (hopefully) not playing "Gotcha!" with your partners.

My GF and partner with a dance instructor in a class:

To my eyes, that's an end pose for show tango. Nothing wrong with it there, but I'd hesitate to do it at the milonga. As the leader's posture isn't all that dynamic, I'd say the follower is the better dancer, but in a still, it could be a leader "showing off" a follower.

Here's one of my (blurry, not dynamic, needs-work) end poses. I'd never dance it at the milonga.

 

[Tango Newbie]

Looking good despite the blurriness.

All of those are excellent things. I think the self-awareness to say "I'm not great at this. I need to work with my coach to clean it up" is essential to being a good dancer.

She has great self-awareness and knows her strengths and weaknesses (namely a little 'rusty' as a result of the pandemic).

To my eyes, that's an end pose for show tango. Nothing wrong with it there, but I'd hesitate to do it at the milonga.

Yes, my GF knows the risks with doing moves that might endanger the other dancers by kicking her foot up, etc.

Me with GF at a 'practilonga' a couple weeks ago. We're both in our early-mid 60's:

 

[Tango Newbie]

To my eyes, that's an end pose for show tango. Nothing wrong with it there, but I'd hesitate to do it at the milonga. As the leader's posture isn't all that dynamic, I'd say the follower is the better dancer, but in a still, it could be a leader "showing off" a follower.

Yes, she knows that leg-wrap is for "show" and does these (mostly) in class. That leader in that photo is clearly not the best, even though he's the class instructor and hosts bi-weekly milongas. She said she had a little difficulty dancing with him since he's shorter than her, and is chubby. Plus, he's one of those leaders who has had romantic partnerships with other dancers.

In fact, one night when I was leaving my home dance studio after a beginner class, I saw him getting out of a car parked near mine with a couple other people. I didn't know him (and still don't), but he kept looking my way as if he was wondering 'who' I was, since as a beginner, I'm new to the local tango community.

Nonetheless, my GF and I are supposed to pay a visit to his studio in a couple weeks, so I'll get to meet this guy then.

 

[Tango Distance]

Experienced, but perhaps also stuck in her ways. Experience can give skill . . . but it can also lead to bad habits

This is the first time I have doubts whether your girlfriend is really as experienced as you think.

I don't have enough data to claim truth, but my personal statistics-of-small-numbers Bayesian Network analysis puts higher probabilities on other things:

• I think the most likely case is your GF is a good follower
• I think there is a good chance your GF is not a good Tango teacher (doing something well and teaching it well are different skills!)
• I have found I have better success figuring something out asking a leader rather than a follower. I have found many followers can do something very well, but have trouble articulating what the leader should be doing. When I have a question for a teaching couple, generally the follower will grab the leader to explain it.
• I have been dabbling in learning to follow. I have found good followers who also lead well to be the best instructors for that.
• I have actually been evolving towards not being able to explain what I'm doing! I'm a technical person and had the dream of being able to describe the accurate positions and movements of all 400 bones of me, the leader, plus the follower's bones, 100% of the time. Then I had the wonderful opportunity to take a private with a visiting instructor, Patricia of Decir Tango in San Diego. She is amazing! Anyway, she was the only instructor who worked with me on mindset. We'd be going along, and she'd say "You are thinking too much!" It was true, and she is an amazing read of not just how I was leading but also how I was thinking! She explained I didn't have time to think of everything, and that I needed to dance more by instinct. Before, I could explain 100% of all the Tango I knew. Now that I'm working on being instinctive, I have found I can't explain everything I do! This bullet has been a long winded way to say I bet your GF is a good instinctive dancer (even if, as a doctor, she can rattle off all 200 bones of the body!). I like how Patricia's web page says "Don't think. Just Dance." https://www.decirtango.com/about
• Warning, your perception of good will shift as you get better. At first, I was very impressed and consider 90+% of women to be really really good Tango dancers. Even the beginner ones learned much faster than I did, looked better, learned the class' figures more easily etc. I estimated my DW (dear wife) to be a 95th+ percentile dancer. I kept trudging along with 5 years of classes. It was a bit sad for me when I realized my DW was not a 90th+ percentile dancer (mind you, still very good!), and that I have to trim my vocabulary with her... and lady X who I thought was magic before (she could follow every one of my beginner steps perfectly!) was actually rather mediocre when she returned after a 2 year absence... My perception of the ladies' skill distribution has gone from a left-shifted Heaviside Step Function (a few less skilled dancers, and the vast majority were very good) to starting to approximate a Gaussian distribution.
• Interestingly, it has also gone the other way. As I have trudged along, I have had a few cases where someone was much newer to Tango than I thought... but they were following so perfectly... hey maybe my leading is improving.

 

[Tango Newbie]

This bullet has been a long winded way to say I bet your GF is a good instinctive dancer (even if, as a doctor, she can rattle off all 200 bones of the body!). I like how Patricia's web page says "Don't think. Just Dance."

Yes, your post was quite the 'read' and full of detail I read but didn't investigate, especially the mathematical equations on probability.

My GF is an excellent dancer (follower) in the 90th percentile, but agree, teaching is not anywhere near her specialty. And yes, she's quite versed in the human body and bone structure.

On a few occasions I've danced as the 'follower' with the husband (instructor) when he worked with me on a couple things, and the wife (instructor) on a few other things. I see the value in both (leader vs follower).

FYI Decir has just canx'd their classes (temporarily) while this Covid craziness reared it ugly head again.

 

[itwillhappen]

Well, I suppose in some people's eyes she might not be experienced. Here are my reasons to believe she is;
[...]
Has any of that changed your thoughts?

Yes, in this case:
Don't listen to what she says, look at what she does.
These were (are?) veritable efforts to be successful in the competition for good leaders, to survive in the local hierarchy. That would be completely superfluous to dance around flagpoles.
Either way, she has (had) to give excellent leaders the feeling that the tanda they just danced was really extraordinary. No matter how it really was.

 

[JournalInTime]

I think there is a good chance your GF is not a good Tango teacher (doing something well and teaching it well are different skills!)

This is huge.

I know mediocre dancers who are excellent teachers because their thing is observing, deconstructing, solving problems, and reconstructing . . . not doing. I know great dancers who are garbage as teachers, because they can't articulate what they do or because they lack the kind of intelligence needed to approach the dance analytically. I also know mediocre dancers who are garbage as teachers, who are quite common, and great dancers who are excellent teachers, who are extremely rare.

I have been dabbling in learning to follow.

Me, too. I've taken classes in the follower role with women friends who wanted to lead; I've taken change-of-role lessons (about switching roles mid-dance); and when I was an accompanier, I followed in the rare classes that were short of followers. I'm still kind of terrible, but I think all leaders would benefit from the experience.

I have actually been evolving towards not being able to explain what I'm doing!

I hear you. One reason why the best dancers are often the worst teachers is that good dance involves internalizing things to the point where you can't explain them any more. Yes, brilliant people sometimes firewall doing from thinking about doing, but as I said, it's rare.

Warning, your perception of good will shift as you get better.

Certainly, the longer I dance, the more terrible I'm convinced I am.

Don't listen to what she says, look at what she does.

That's huge as well. We all talk a great game here. I do wonder if any of us would recognize one another on the dance floor.

 

[Rabbit]

That's huge as well. We all talk a great game here. I do wonder if any of us would recognize one another on the dance floor.

Look for the ears

 

[ProgressNotPerfection]

Look for the ears