Women who pre-dominantly lead are leaders. Doubtful if they can be called dual role with good leading skill. One lady is exclusive leader and never follows.
The long-term solution is dual-role dancing?
- Thread starter itwillhappen
- Start date
Anecdotally I have seen the introduction of mandatory dual role dancing lead to a worsening of gender balance.
Swing has been open to dual role dancing since I started about 16 or 17 years ago. Most people stuck to gender norms but many of the more experienced women took up leading and danced both roles at parties. The gender ratio at parties was approximately 4:1 women to men. For the last five years (post COVID) the organisers have introduced ELEF for all their classes (everybody leads, everybody follows). This has been great for the women learning to lead as they get to attend regular classes and practice. They also all know each other so have no hesitation asking each other to dance at parties. However, the gender balance at the last party was approximately 10:1 women to men. There was notably a single dual role male dancer the rest stuck to leading. ELEF has created more female leaders (and they danced all night mainly leading) but not increased retention of male beginners.
Swing has been open to dual role dancing since I started about 16 or 17 years ago. Most people stuck to gender norms but many of the more experienced women took up leading and danced both roles at parties. The gender ratio at parties was approximately 4:1 women to men. For the last five years (post COVID) the organisers have introduced ELEF for all their classes (everybody leads, everybody follows). This has been great for the women learning to lead as they get to attend regular classes and practice. They also all know each other so have no hesitation asking each other to dance at parties. However, the gender balance at the last party was approximately 10:1 women to men. There was notably a single dual role male dancer the rest stuck to leading. ELEF has created more female leaders (and they danced all night mainly leading) but not increased retention of male beginners.
pianistamediano
Forum Master
Well, if the swing community is happy with this...
I say let them lie in the bed they have made. Maybe the remaining (straight) men are happy to have such a skewed gender ratio, and the women are happy to have a safe space with much more women than men.
I can’t say what their intentions were except, perhaps, to be more inclusive. It’s a small city with a large population of young adults (university and tech industry). I can only extrapolate that the same thing would happen in tango if ELEF was introduced. There is currently nothing preventing male followers or female leaders beyond personal preference. There’s one dual role dancer at milongas and several of the teachers can dance both roles but generally don’t.Well, if the swing community is happy with this...
I say let them lie in the bed they have made. Maybe the remaining (straight) men are happy to have such a skewed gender ratio, and the women are happy to have a safe space with much more women than men.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
A good strategy in general for couples is to support each other and maximize their overall payoff.
So, I support my SO learning to lead - a significantly positive payoff for her these days. And so I'm learning to follow implicitly a bit, even if I see no real "business model" for me. At least in our relationship, this doesn't put a strain on things. (That might be different for beginner couples!)
I find more or better dance partners when I go to a milonga with my SO, for whatever reason. And it seems to me that I find even more or better dance partners when she leads me occasionally, for whatever reason. So, there is my positive payoff too.
pianistamediano
Forum Master
The university society I started tango in has always followed ELEF in its classes and encourages it in student milongas, and it was relatively massive pre-COVID; Salsa was biggest, of course, but we held our own. Even having gone through it from the very beginning and knowing all the benefits, I would still discourage full implementation in favour of just letting people decide what they want to try first.
With ELEF, progress is much slower at the start, and that discourages a lot of people — which is where I draw the line, since drawing people in and retention has always been a big issue in tango (And I speak from experience, because I've also served on the committee and as president of said tango society). We could do it because we made it seem casual and fun and got people to stay because we had social nights out and they made friends. But even in classes, we ultimately respected a person's choice whether to focus on one role or both.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Organizers need to find enough (paying) participants for their events, and I see significant administrative advantages with ELEF.
And yes, women apparently network better than men. My SO is soon going to a women-only tango weekend, with cooking and eating together, and sleeping together in one house. Should I complain that I'm being discriminated against as a man?(*) You're free to choose; our private workshop group is entirely geared towards heteronormative (dance) couples, our living room milongas are gender balanced. But although even there, the women are better connected with each other.
If more people are participating and dancing now than before, then that's something to be welcomed, at least if one doesn't prioritize men's interests over women's. I also fear an imbalance among beginners, but what will be, will be. In my estimation, even better times are ahead for skilled male dancers. It would only be problematic if women generally hoped to have half of their tandas led by skilled men and to lead the other half themselves. After a tipping point, the numbers simply wouldn't be right anymore.
(*) In Germany (Europe?), organizers are allowed to design leisure events according to their own goals; for example, exclusively for men or exclusively for women ... or even role-balanced or gender-balanced.
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As a leader if you have a regular female partner, either a SO, GF or even just a friend, you get more dances. This has been observed in social dancing. Not only in tango. Why this happens I have no idea.
Are you sure?
If my SO or a GF wanted to lead me at milonga, that would be very different. It would be less for dancing reasons. More to make her happy. Also I could tell her what moves to avoid if I can’t do them as lead. You can communicate things that you generally wouldn’t with other partners. For example posture and arm leads. Both are an issue when most women lead. Assuming you don’t communicate at all and are dancing traditional roles, dancing with SO/GF is still different.
I assume ELEF means everyone leads, everyone follows. I had to scratch my brain a bit to figure out what E stood for.
My question is logistical. If ELEF, how do you ensure everyone gets a fair chance of leading and following. With traditional roles , if there is an imbalance of two or more of either roles/gender, it causes dissatisfaction among those in the class whose roles have excess participants. So if class is leader heavy, leaders are unhappy or unsatisfied. If class is follower heavy then the followers feel shortchanged. Making sure everyone leads and follows makes that like 4x worse. Now to make everyone happy all should have fair time in each role. How do you switch? Is it like in first half of the class you are only suppose to stick to one role. Then in the next half of the class you only stick to the opposite role. That is the only way I can think of running a ELEF class. What if those that don’t want to switch role either continue in that role or leave the class. Now class has more people in one role and less in other unless there is dynamic switching. However as an instructor this is really a mess. Someone people are going to end up being unhappy.
P.S. - I have seen instructors struggle in traditional classes, when role-switching causes further imbalance because some are without partners resulting from lack of opposite role students. When attending a class I usually switch because 95% of classes I have attended in life always had more men. I can’t remember a single class or workshop where there were less men and more women.
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Practically and in reality I don’t, if you are asking people to pay.
Last year we had three different instructors launching progressive workshops for teaching followers to lead. So there must be demand because I know some followers who signed up for it. They tell me the class had between 10 to 20 women. All classes were at initiative of either solo female instructor or female instructor of the pair. There was not a single class offering men to follow. Which means no demand? There was nothing in the classes advertised for teaching women to lead, that said men could join the class as followers. Rather description for these classes strongly suggested it was women only. And the practical effect was only women signed up. I didn’t see them doing any leading at milongas. None felt confident to.
But it is not. I see less people. Esp after Covid. In 2010s less new people were entering/starting social dancing than in 2000s. While true in Tango, it was more pronounced in Salsa.
In 2000s university tango class (with non-students also attending) used to have 60-70 students at least. Now it is down to 20-25 max.
May be it is different in your area.
Imbalance usually starts at the beginners and then amplifies as people drop out.
It's not just the role you dance; it's also the sex/gender of your partner in a partner dance. (I occasionally used to alternately follow/lead with a large hirsute male when roles didn't match up in class, but not my general choice. I usually lead, but it's leading a different body form)
brujo
Well-Known Member
I went to an event this weekend that was a beginner swing night ELEF. They didn’t even use words like lead/follow for the rotation but basically assigned folks as birds and trees. Trees stayed in place while birds rotated partners. They showed parts of the move and the birds lead that. After a while, the birds became follows for the same thing while the trees were now the leads. Everyone got to try both roles and it was wonderful in theory.
On the drive home my female friend said that it sucked for her because a lot of the partners in the rotations just chose a role they wanted even if it was different than what the teachers said. So she ended up doing a lot of leading which she hates. Even in the parts where she was supposed to follow her rotation partners just made her lead. This was very different than my experience as a guy because every rotation I had people just did what the teachers said.
There was also this weird 10 or 15 minutes where teachers were explaining something more complicated and they forgot to switch roles.
It’s great in theory but gender expectations still sneak it a lot. Also a lot of guys just don’t like dancing with other guys. In the dancing afterwards I only saw guys following other guys that were their friends and women leading women but not one instance of a woman leading a man.
I have had ELEF tango classes. The teacher lined everyone up by height so you mostly ended up dancing with the same gender. Honestly it was a better class because we were doing ganchos and practicing with a same gender partner weirdly took away a bit of the sexual awkwardness from it. Don’t know how it is for women but as a guy who ended up with a more experienced tango person as a partner he gave me great tips on the expectation of momentum and such.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Same would apply to married men, because they are theoretically unavailable to other women and therefore more desirable. Also, a certain prestige I suppose. As well as the fact that they are less threatening than single men by virtue of the fact that they are already taken and no longer looking. Basic psych stuff.
TTanguero
Forum Master
Given how many teachers seem to struggle with simply remembering to tell people to rotate partners, this does not surprise me!
I haven’t seen married men getting more dances. If man or woman is married and is at social by himself/herself (because the partner doesn’t dance) you won’t know unless they volunteer the info. I don’t have a habit of watching ring and not all married people sport a ring. Half the women I have danced with have been married but their husband/partners don’t dance. Overtime they will divulge that they are married.
Speaking to my female dance friends, none has ever shared that relationship status of a man is factor in whether they agree for a dance.
What I suspect is true is that followers could feel that man of a couple will be less likely to hit. But I don’t think it is only that on why you get more dances when you have a female partner and people know it.