Hello everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Before we begin, I want to thank Carolina Jaurena very much for covering my class last week. Carolina is a wonderful dancer and teacher, and we've heard that everyone who took her classes last week had a terrific experience. We're very grateful that she was able to step in and take over for. Pat and I were so sorry to have to miss a week due to my hernia operation: we missed all our Firehouse friends, and we're delighted to be back.
And now, let's get to our Tango Tip of the Week.
Most contemporary American, European and Latin social dancing, even at the highest levels, adheres to a principle which I would call "direct lead/follow." Basically, this means that the leader invites a specific movement by giving a precise lead, and the follower responds by taking a specific step. In social ballroom dancing, this step would almost certainly be the beginning of a continuous sequence (multiple steps which form a figure - think of the "progressive basic" or the "box step" in Foxtrot, for example.) In social Tango at a fundamental level, "direct lead/follow" consists of a specific lead for a single movement, and doesn't imply a continuous sequence. Once the follower responds to the lead by taking a single step, she comes to a stop, finds her balance, and waits for the next lead.
With Tango, there is - potentially, at least - a second layer of interaction between leader and follower, which goes well beyond basic lead/follow as described above. This is where Tango becomes far more collaborative between the partners - where they become virtually equal participants in the dance.
The best way for me to explain what I mean here is to describe a typical interaction at this level of the dance. A leader takes his follower to a cruzada through a salida - as is so often done at the beginning of a dance. At this point, he may have a plan in the back of his mind in which he will now invite a resolution. (If you've been dancing Tango for more than two weeks, you know what these words mean.) But his follower decides to play with the cruzada by employing a small traspie
ro extend the movement. Right now, the leader could legitimately force his follower to adhere to his plan - not permitting her to add the adornment at the cruzada, but because he realizes that an important component of the dance relationship is to allow ancillary movements by the follower in the form of adornos or embellishments, he waits while she completes her traspie. As he is waiting for her to complete her embellishment, he changes his plan, and decides to lead an entirely different follow-up series of movements. During this ongoing, improvised exchange, whenever he feels that his follower wants to add something of her own, he either decides to allow it to happen - or, if his plan is very important to him, he denies her the adorno and continues with his leading.
Notice that even when the leader allows maximum participation by his follower, the elements of the dance continue to be generated by his motivation, by his lead. A good leader will be very sensitive to moments during which his follower seems to be indicating a desire to add something. A good follower will, at the same time, be sensitive to when the leader agrees and when he does not.
Most beginning leaders do little more than run their followers (ragged) around the floor form the beginning of the dance until the end. In such a context there is no chance for the follower to express her creativity through the use of adornment - unless she wants to turn the dance into a war.
Leaders, if you know that your follower would like to attempt a few embellishments, try waiting between steps from time to time, offering her the opportunity to collaborate at this higher, very satisfying level of the dance.
Followers, see if you can insert an adorno once and a while between individual steps. This will sometimes be enough to slow your leader down a bit, so that he gives you more room to breathe - and to create.
