Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Quite often, when I'm teaching a specific sequence of followers' steps, one or more leaders will immediately raise their hands to ask, "What's my part here?" or "What am I supposed to do while she's doing her part?"

The implication of such questions - although I'm sure the people asking aren't consciously aware of this -- is that in order to lead/invite a follower to execute any given sequence of movement, the leader must also be moving in a certain memorized way. Certainly, any leader with even the most cursory experience in our western tradition of learning how to dance socially would operate in this way. The same thing must, therefore, be true of Tango.

Except that it's not.

What has become the norm in teaching ballroom dance (including Latin and swing dance forms) -- particularly in the context of commercial dance studios in America -- is that leaders memorize their parts, followers memorize their parts;  then they come together to try them out. At the end of any given class hour, students (who, after all, are spending their hard-earned money to learn as quickly as possible) can expect to pocket two, three, even four complex sequences -- money in the bank -- which they can then take right out onto the dance floor.

Look, ma, no learning process.

The fact that this teaching method doesn't work, never did work, and never will work doesn't seem to bother anybody. That's how things are done, and always will be (at least in our "studio" system). What happens, when you're on the dance floor with a partner who didn't take the class? Don't ask.

In Argentina, up until recently, at least, people didn't learn to dance by memorizing figures. "In Tango, there are no steps," exclaimed the great maestros of Tango's "golden age." (Regrettably, that seems to be changing as purveyors of Tango from Argentina find that altering their teaching methods to accommodate American and European students increases their ability to earn a living. But that. as they say. is another story.)

The traditional way a leader learned to dance Tango in Argentina was to serve as a follower to more experienced dancers, and to gradually take on the role of leader once he possessed the skill and experience to do so. The effect of this way of learning was that leaders would never even think of asking the question, "What am I supposed to be doing?" The focus instead was totally on "What am I asking my follower to do, and how am I going to lead her to do it?"

Getting back to my class ... when I demonstrate a follower's sequence, what I want leaders to be asking, when they raise their hands, is, "How do I use my leading skills in order to invite this particular sequence of movement?" In other words, my goal is to shift the focus from leader to follower, where it belongs, in the very complex social dance lead/follow relationship. Only after this way of thinking is firmly in place can we even begin to start talking about what the leader can do by way of accompaniment. If you as an emerging leader can make this very important change in approaching your personal learning process, your Tango will improve dramatically -- almost immediately!

Please give this seismic shift a try. The sooner the better.

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