When
we talk about tango we want often to define the true tango, what tango
really is and most of the time I agree with the descriptions! Still, I would prefer to present my experience of tango as a
path the dancers are advancing on, a mental landscape I am passing through.
When I started out the tango
WAS about steps and ochos and turns and figures for me. Fast music urged me to
move fast forward and a slow song gave me more calm steps. To manage
the difficult figures made the joy burst hilariously out and l was
looking for more challenges! My dance was external and the music
expression was external! Everything in my dance was easily visible to
others!
The paradigm shift was the change from the external dance to an internal one!
One
day my partner was rising tall at the end of a musical phrase and I
felt that it was the most beautiful thing ever! For me, this was the
first time I clearly experienced the external movement and its internal
equivalent. During the external years, I had developed the internal
equivalents for tango and an ability to recognize them within me. Now we
could just stand there with small movements released by the music and
enjoy a tanda! The best ever! :)
Today I can fall off to a
totally external dance during a fast milonga but a heavy Pugliese could
tease me down to the most internal dance instead!
Tango keeps
surprising me! The sources of joy during the first years were different
compared to the delights now. The scenery of today will change and the
path will run through different landscapes during the coming years and I am
curious! It is wise to find pleasure from every period of tango, from every section of your path!
the followers drive their car on the prepared road
Following & Leading period
From the very beginning, I have been uncomfortable with the idea of following to be a passive role but it has been a challenge to find a way to describe the active parts included. It has also been impossible to find one picture integrating the whole life of a dancer. The feeling during the first years was totally different compared to the experience of a tanda 20 years later.
What kind of a metaphor could then describe the first years when the leading and following roles have the strongest presence in the couple. In the beginning, we are learning how to move our bodies to Argentine tango and how we relate to music so the dance becomes enjoyable even during your first years!
In classical music, the idea of a musical landscape is common so the idea of tangos creating their own sound landscape was a logical development. Even if some of the song texts are about soccer, heart, blood, and difficulties the music still creates different parallel paths the leaders can choose their favorite among. This is the leaders advantage or often a responsibility during the first years.
The Road Constructor
It is also easy to think a leader as a road constructor when he is choosing the musical path for his feet and body, building the road, which he is offering to the follower too. His skill to navigate and adapt to the other couples will create a safe road on the pista for the couple. Is your road rough or has it a smooth surface? How can your follower recognize the signs for speed limits? Other signs? Are there spaces for scenery stops?
The Car Driver
The follower is not a car as suggested so many times but the driver. It is the follower's decision how to drive that car! It is her decision to keep the vehicle on the offered road and to follow the speed limits and other road signs from the leader during the journey. What is your style of driving? Is it slow or fast? Is the driving occupying all your capacity or are you able to enjoy the path, the musical landscape around you?
The lead/follow period is about learning how to create the tango movements and sequences with your body and how to communicate all that to the partner. It is much more about learning and not so much about improvising yet.
Yes, this is just a metaphor and it doesn't meet all the leading and following aspects but it shows a possibility for a dynamic experience in both roles.
This is the metaphor for the first period on a dancers path! You can here below find the different possibilities there are for us!
https://leadingladyl.blogspot.com/2019/05/three-stages-of-tango-followlead.html
It took time but when I discovered this 3-stage development in my dance it facilitated the acceptance of certain difficulties. I knew it was not forever but for now!
This development chain can be activated in different situations during the dancers' life. It is the main tendency but it can also be activated when you want to learn a new skill or technique. Sometimes you maybe need to adapt your dance to a partner or pista at a different stage.
Following - Leading period
I consider that these two roles were created just for learning purposes! When we were starting up no one knew how to take the steps together in tango so the process would have been chaotic - to organize the learning the split of responsibilities was activated as well as the leader/ follower hierarchy. During this period the dancers learn to manage their own body and tango moves as well as the communication with, to and from, the partner.
I still remember how I was physically moving the follower during my first leading year. When she started to recognize my lead and we were able to complete the sequences then the lead, the physical impact could be lessened. Back then the leaders talked about moving a piece of furniture during a tanda but I am sure we were many, who acted as a moving service even when the follower was doing her part beautifully.
Later on we learn to communicate more effortless but my ability to adapt to surprises was still fragile. If the follower didn't respond by the book, if her response was not the one I expected the dance crashed, we stopped and restarted the sequence from the beginning.The same happened when another couple disturbed us!
Both groups will learn their own movements and communication. On top of that the leaders work on some additional responsibilities - they need to know the follower's steps, create the content and musicality during a tanda - making the leaders learning period longer. When the followers had learned their own part they could start to enjoy the dance with those leaders, who could offer some flow and smooth steps. Some followers will take this further and start to fully rely on the skilled leaders, who provide the musicality and more complex movements.
When we have developed our tango movements, a stable communication and we can manage surprises then we are well prepared for the next stage where we will meet more like equal partners. The leader/follower structure is changing to a dancer/dancer structure.
Partnering period
One day we will notice that the material is enough, the movement vocabulary and rhythmic patterns are enough so we will have satisfying variation during a tanda. Our ability to adapt to partners' unexpected moves and to react on surprises from the other couples grows and we will be able to manage the most situations on the pista without losing our dance flow. This increases our freedom and we can lessen the hierarchical structure of the roles and the dance will be a more equal type of partnering. In the beginning, I led every step but later on I knew that she was able to place her steps to music so I just communicated positions and directions. I actually danced with her upper body only and she took care of her own steps according to music and how our torsos were moving.
Because both dancers are now dancing more intuitively without constant mental control so there will be free capacity to pay attention to the partner and music. After 10-15 years of leading I was blown by the diversity among followers.
I have met the active partner followers as well as the relaxed, meditating followers and it is equally fantastic to dance with them. It seems that followers (leaders ?) who have been meditating or active in yoga have easier to relax while moving. In those cases my role has been to provide a flow of steps which is not boring but not too energetic either, just leaving the follower in the relaxed state of mind. If the dancing crowd is experienced then even I can relax and trust on the other couples' navigation skills.
A partner follower can create steps without the lead but she needs to follow the navigation lead which we have to maintain on an immature pista. If she is doing a Noelia, a rhythmic drill, she should develop a skill to continue even if the leader has to navigate or starts to dance too. It is the same demand as on the leader - I need to be skilled enough to change direction, speed and so on if the pista conditions force me to but keep our dance going on.
It was a rhythmical tango tanda where I was doing a quite fast path in the song. Suddenly I felt how she softly fall into a slower path also available in the music. It was a good choice so I hang on to the same path. I could have continued and she could have followed her choice but this time we went together.
We can also melt together when the following and leading are lost and the intuitive dance takes over. The dancing is not controlled, planned by the intellect but just happening, following the music playing. You often loose the feeling of time!
We are not any more leaders and followers but two dancers and we both listen to music and choose our steps. The challenge now is how to combine these two individual dances to one dancing couple. How should the arrangement be done for these two bodies?
Mature pista period
I had been dancing for some hours without a collision. Then suddenly I bumped twice to the same couple before me. He told me later that they were beginners - to my eye quite good dancers. That moment created the idea about a pista skill the experienced dancers have.
If you are driving a car you also know how smooth (some) experienced drivers can advance together. At the moment when you have a newly licensed driver before you the situation changes - the reactions can be too fast or too slow. They react differently and you need to pay special attention to those cars. The same can happen on the pista!
Experienced dancers are doing different steps but still they share a musicality, pista rhythm, so the movements are predictable. They go when the music is driving forward and they advance slowly when music is asking for that. They feel how different crowds move on a pista or what kind of speed certain orchestra creates on the ronda.
One of the navigation skills must be about musicality but it is also about the ability to turn your figures so you are coming out and continuing in a planned direction. The ability to vary step lengths within a figure gives you also flexibility to adapt to ever varying pista situations.
All these skills are needed to get a mature pista providing you the feeling of total freedom in your dance and the feeling of dancing to the music, with your partner as well as with the total pista!
The mature pista can pulsate! You can see it on some videos, here you have one!
How long time does this main development take? I have an estimate just for the lead/follow period coming from a tango teacher. She said that the preparation to partner stage usually takes five years and if the transition has not happened by eight years it will probably never occur.
Is the leading more important than following has been the subject for several postings lately.
This is my view: I consider the leading and following to be the core functions in our dance. The leader and the follower are equally important at all levels and more similar in effort when both partners have developed their adaptation skills and later on the intuitive dance. However at the beginning the leaders workload is larger.
I agree with the writers about the step learning. I also think that both groups learn their own steps with equal easiness. Some individuals learn more easily then others but within the groups of leaders and followers it may be about the same.
Another area to learn is how to produce the lead/leading signals and follow/receive the signals. Think about a basic ocho as an example. Both groups need to learn the signals for different parts of it and during the hours on the pista leaders and followers do develop all the variations needed for different partners.
And here is the end of the list for follower responsibilities as i see it. On other hand the follower has the advantage to reach the level of true enjoyment or intuitive dancing much earlier than a leader. (a leader can experience the followers special level of relaxation and dream about joining her there some day. . . )
The list of the leader responsibilities is longer. At a later development level the conscious mental efforts and physical demands become similar for the persons forming the couple. During the journey from start to that level the leader is responsible and expected to cover for the shortcomings by learning more than a follower.
To begin with I need to know the follower steps - if not, how could I create the signals for an appropriate lead. It doubles my step learning efforts and even today it is mentally exhausting to remember her/my steps simultaneously when I am learning a new sequence.
Then we have the navigation which is much more than walking forward to an empty space on the pista. It is a complicated skill and last mastered. But when mastered the couple can intuitively adapt their steps to the space available while smoothly advancing on the dance line together with others. We can also, as couples, react to the music with different steps but simultaneously with others so the fully developed pista is pulsating to music. You can see this happen on some videos from Buenos Aires milongas.
The most demanding of the extras is the responsibility for content. The steps must be interesting enough and the connection to music needs to be satisfying. Different followers want different content. The leader must know what to suggest.
In the table below the rows present the areas of responsibilities for both groups. The columns show how much mental/conscious effort is needed for dancing. It stretches from totally conscious steps --> totally intuitive dancing. A variation of the Four stages of competence process!
For me the different stages/periods are these: During the Lead/Follow period the dancing is mostly a conscious process, demanding all my mental capacity. When partnering we both know the steps by heart and can easily adapt to each others; at the best moments intuitively. To reach to the absolute dance the couples on pista must have the skill to intuitively adapt to the other couples as well as to each others within the couple.
Finally and once more - I consider the leading and following to be the core functions in our dance. They are equally important at all levels and more similar in effort when both partners have developed their skills and later on the intuitive dance.
When I started to dance AT the leader/follower roles were fixed and no one gave us hint about that it could change by the coming years. Anyhow I did not got a hint I understood!
Today, many years later I consider the leader/follower roles to be just a good training aid, a good starting setup. It is helpful to organize the process in this way to create a clear structure for the beginners to understand the responsibilities during the dance. During the first period most of your capacity is needed to learn the individual steps and all the stuff about connection. There is hardly resources to continuously negotiate about the actions and who will be the initiator.
When the skill is developed the dance gets fluent following the tango principles and the dancers are able to maintain the connection with each others as well as with the music during the whole tanda. From somewhere here and onward the dancing couple consists of equal partners and in the end you are not able to tell apart the other persons' impact, you are not able to feel the leading or following.
During this learning continuum the willpower to take a step - the willpower needed to lead and willpower needed to follow a step - the strength of the mental impulse will gradually diminish. After a certain point there is only a feeling that the couple is moving without effort together, without no leading impulses or following impulses to be recognised. At that moment the music is making us to dance, to take a step.
In an earlier posting, *Her dancing body* i think she had passed to the state of effortless dancing where the music is moving her body. In this specific situation I was not capable to join her dance but started to follow.
I know very few followers who have continuously, daily training as the strategy to become better dancer. Most followers take courses every now and then and consider the dances with more advanced leaders as their main strategy.
Think of a tennis court where a world champion is playing with a beginner. Yes, his skill makes it possible to return all the balls and if he is a nice person, he can drop some of them to create a friendly atmosphere. His skill makes it also possible to place the balls so they are easy for the beginner to return.
The situation is totally different for these two. The beginner is amazed that she is able to play with the world champion and she thinks she is really good, playing with all her capacity. For the champion this is not so much about skill training, playing at the edge of his ability, but about caring, to be nice.
The biggest issue here for me is the situation when she returns to the same tennis court, but this time with another beginner. The match is totally different and it is easy to explain the difference by pointing this new playmate to 10 levels lower stage ( incorrectly). This kind of false idea of your own level creates difficulties in learning and you maybe get to the partnering stage later.
Partnering stage is (for me) when both are playing/dancing at the edge of their skill without compensation from the other, mutually exploring new things.
*This posting is a responce to a specific situation for followers but some parts could be valid for leaders too.
Ricardo Vidort
Every stage of your path in tango has its own scenery. This is for a milonguero who has danced for 60 years. At this point it is quite sure you got the essence of this dance clear for you.
The most important for me is this:*The body doesn’t think, the body feels the music as a way to move it and walk, and if we put attention to what our body is feeling, we shall see we are moving.*
Muma as teacher
We are different as persons and need different methods to easily learn to make moves connected to the music. It seems that Muma has a different way giving a key to some learners. Please read this story:
*In my experience, sequences held me back for years learning AT, I think because my mind didn't have the framework for them. Sequences are definitely not a necessary part of the learning experience and the first teacher able to teach me social dance, was Muma, a Molinguera who just had me walk and feel the music and then after I mastered that, she then taught me several little things like ocho cortadas (just the cortada piece which can be on the right or left), weight changes, double times, check steps, trespies, ocho steps, various turns, back steps, crosses and back crosses which can all be done in an amazing variety of ways.
I actually think that most people like me, unable to learn from sequences, end up dropping out and quiting tango and the only reason why I never gave up is because I was extremely stubborn. I actually thought that I had a learning disability until I met Muma and she straightened me out ridiculously fast. I know that some people have minds with a frameworks such that sequences work well for them and I have nothing against that. I see it as intuition vs. intellectual ways of dancing and I can respect both, but intuitive dancing feels much better to me personally. It is a real shame that there are so few teachers that can teach to intuitive minds like mine. Robert Hauk is one of the only teachers within 100's of miles of me that I can actually learn from, and kinesthetic learners like me mostly leave tango and never come back. I have talked to a lot of other people (artist types) who were unable to learn tango from sequences and I think sequences are much better teaching aids for analytical people like programmers, engineers, or mechanics, which is why there are not many artist types dancing tango.* (link to the original posting)
In different discussions the combination advanced/beginner dancer is promoted as an ideal. Sometimes I find it as an expression for greed in tango context, when the beginners try to get in to a Ferrari for a fast development. Other times the leaders, it is mostly leaders in this case, want to make a good impression to the readers by announcing their generosity in this way.
The dance skill is also more seen as a Beauty kind of quality instead of a Skill for example in skiing. The first one is a static one - you got your share and that's it.There are feelings of rejection and frustration, when your goals are far a way from your place today. Only few are using these negative feelings as fuel to grow their skill.
When I compared the dance situation to a conversation I clearly understood the difference between the appreciation for a person and the skill level.
An enjoyable dance is not only about chemistry between the partners but it's a lot of about skill too! There can be a totally wonderful person but if s/he can only 10 words of our shared language there wouldn't be a conversation.
If s/he knows 2000 word but is unexperienced, our conversation is still a struggle with the language, our communication tool.
But when we know our grammar, we know the words and we have the flow after many years of use of this language, then we can forget the tools and focus on our subject. Sometimes this kind of conversation is so intense, the exploring so focused on what is within us, me and the partner - we just forget everything else!
I
started to dance tango 1998, which makes me ancient compared to many in
our community. When I have looked back over these years I have had a
blurred feeling of passing through different stages since I started. But
for some reason this feeling has never manifest itself in writing until
two weeks ago when I in the middle of a facebook discussion put it in
this way:
"I
put it a little bit simple here, but at the beginning and intermediate
level I needed a follower. If she didn't understand my lead and did
something else => there we were standing, loading for a fresh start.
Today
I need a partner - a mentally strong follower with her own musicality.
If she misinterprets my lead, we just go on dancing, it doesn't have
impact on our flow. If I don't *feel* her presence in our dance I feel
lonely.
This
subject seems to be in the air today because a few days later I found a picture
describing the 5 stages of tango. It is well done with thoughts quite correct
and visually beautifully formed. It is a very good aid to stimulate your own
thoughts about what you have passed by and the joys you’ll have in future.
I'm sorry that the picture is not readable, please follow this link! (Ctrl + and it gets larger)
Credit to Steve Morrall, Tango UK (the author) http://www.tango.uk.com If we were able to form some kind of shared understanding of development stages for tango it would be easier to discuss. Today many of our discussions are confusing because we mix the details from different levels during one occasion. In my opinion the feeling, experience, thinking and performance of tango phenomenons are different at different levels. I hope we will some day in future have a kind of shared understanding!
An unexpected change has occurred in my dancing habits. Through all my dance years I have been very independent, heading to the practicas and milongas without knowing who will be attending. There was always people to fill the hours with wonderful dance. But not anymore! Today I am painfully depending on my most nearest dance partners. Last week I made an effort and went to a wonderful outdoor milonga knowing that my main partners were out of town. I was mingling around and I asked for one dance but that was it! I didn't got the urge to dance. I was chatting some more and then I left for home. ....................never happened before.
