Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Today, we'll be taking a look at the last of your four Tango checklists. To date, we've seen "Me at Rest," Me in Motion, and "Us at Rest." These checklists are designed to offer you a definite game plan for approaching the challenge of dancing social Tango in a precise, conscious way. Once the music starts playing, once you've walked out onto the dance floor, once you've formed el abrazo del tango (the Tango embrace), you're ready to go. This fourth checklist offers you a final action focus as you contemplate taking your first steps.

We're going to call today's checklist "Us in Motion." If there's a central theme for this checklist, it is this: Your dance is her dance. What we mean by this simple -- but absolutely essential -- concept is our subject for today.

In checklist #2, "Me in Motion," we defined the three phases of an individual step:

1.     Beginning (Initiating/responding to the lead/follow mechanism)

2.     Middle (Implementing motion)

3.     End (Balance -- creating the neutral position)

How we handle each of these three elements becomes crucial, when dancing with another person. Let's discuss them, one at a time, demonstrating how each helps achieve the goal: Your dance is her dance.

Beginning: The lead/follow

Every individual step you take as a leader or follower begins with an action, which I refer to as the lead/follow mechanism. The leader initiates a movement; the follower responds by starting to take the step. As she does so, the leader verifies that she is responding appropriately, and he accompanies her action with an action of his own. This initial phase of every individual step is a very complex interaction between the leader and follower. It is the part of the step that is interdependent -- meaning that we need each other in order to make it happen.

As we've discussed many times before, in the lexicon of linear dance, there are five basic possibilities for movement: Forward, Backward, Sideward, In place, and Pause. For each of these movements, there is a specific lead. If the leader offers a lead that the follower doesn't understand, in the ideal she'll wait for a lead that is comprehensible to her. Unfortunately -- but very predictably -- many, if not most, followers feel that if such a lead is offered, it is better for them to do something, anything, in response -- so that the leader won't become upset. The result of this is that the dance simply falls apart, at least for that moment.

It is very important for you as a leader to recognize that for any action you take -- whether it is an actual lead, or perhaps nothing more than an accidental "fidget" of some kind -- your follower will almost certainly try her best to respond to it. Since you haven't offered anything we can easily respond to, she'll go immediately into her head, and try to figure out what you want. This is exactly what shouldn't happen. Her dance relies on intuitive responsiveness, not thinking her way through what your intentions are. For this reason, leaders, try to remain still unless you want your follower to do something, which might not be what you intended. Using the principle we proposed earlier (Your dance is her dance), if you move in some kind of random way, you're giving her a false lead. And what she does with that false lead is your fault, not hers. To put it another way, if you break it, you own it.

Middle: Motion

Phase two of an individual step is what happens immediately after -- and in response to -- the lead. The follower moves; the leader verifies the accuracy of her response, and accompanies her movement in a manner of his choice at that moment. In executing her step, the follower acts independently, just as the leader acts independently in executing his accompaniment. The leader does not "carry" his follower through her movement, nor should she expect to be somehow physically conveyed from one end of an individual step to the other.

In the "YouTube" world of "look-at-me-everyone" fantasy (which has, unfortunately, often supplanted good social dance practice today), leaders are at times solely intent on blundering their way through what they think is going to be a game changing, stage-oriented sequence (meant, no doubt, to impress some audience they feel is doting with rapturous attention on their every move). In this blissfully delusional universe, they are as likely as not to practically haul their unsuspecting partners around like annoying baggage from one step to the next.

Whew! I got that off my chest, didn't I ....

Leaders, when you set your partner in motion, please leave her alone, so that she can use her inner resources to get herself through the movement you asked for with your lead. Your job in this moment is to execute your accompaniment, or, if you choose, to simply stand there, and look on admiringly, as you prepare to lead your next movement.

End: The "neutral" position

As a teacher, I tell my student followers to come to rest at the conclusion of every step. Since they don't know what their leader has in mind at the end of any given movement, anything else would fall into the category of anticipating or "back leading." In coming to rest, the follower creates what I call the "neutral" position -- she becomes completely still, as she brings herself fully into balance. In this state, she is now ready for anything at all that the leader might choose to invite in the next moment.

The problem here, of course, is that an unskilled -- or perhaps uncaring -- leader (that same benighted wannabe virtuoso I just described above) is probably not paying any attention to the end of her steps. In fact, chances are, he's actually tossing her like a rag doll from one step to the next in his witless quest for YouTube glory. If you ask him why he's engaging in such behavior, he may say the music demands it, or that particular figure only works at high speed, or his follower is moving too slowly to keep up with his needs. It's also possible that he won't have any idea that he's keeping his follower constantly out of balance -- which suggests that he really has no idea what the word "leading" means.

In any case, the end of every one of the follower's steps brings us full circle back to the original theme of this Tango Tip: Your dance is her dance. It is imperative -- let's say essential -- let's say obligatory -- that the leader enable his follow to balance -- i.e., bring herself into the neutral position at the end of her steps. This isn't a choice; this isn't one of several possibilities; it's the very nature of Tango. Without balance, the follower has no viable dance, and neither, therefore, does the leader.

In going over this last checklist in your mind as a leader, try to focus on each phase of your follower's steps -- the beginning, the middle, and the end. This won't be easy, and it will involve putting your YouTube career on the back burner for a while. But I guarantee that if you pay attention to the principles outlined here, your dancing will improve significantly almost immediately.

Give it a try!

The following folks helped set up, break down and clean up before and after the milonga. Without them, there would be no Firehouse Tango.

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