Hi everyone, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. One of the subjects you’ve heard me talk about again and again in these pages is what I refer to as the lead/follow mechanism. I do this, of course, because I believe that lead/follow is the essential foundation for dancing social Tango with any degree of skill and competence.

During previous Tango Tips, I have described in great detail what I believe to be the essential elements of lead/follow. Today, I want to explore a somewhat more complex characterization of this crucial skill set, one that I think will more fully embody the manner in which experienced Argentine social dancers actually interact with one another. I base this discussion on a series of highly focused conversations/lessons I had the good fortune and privilege to engage in some years ago with the late Carlos Gavito, a close friend, Tango mentor, and principle dancer in the world-famous Tango extravaganza, “Forever Tango.”

When discussing what actually occurs between a leader and a follower during the dance, Carlos said on many occasions, “I invite her [the follower] to take an action. She responds. I monitor her response; I become the follower as I accompany her action.”

I believe that within this deceptively simple expression, we find the very essence of the lead/follow mechanism:

1.      I invite an action.

2.      The follower responds to my invitation by executing the action.

3.      I monitor her response.

4.      I become the follower as I accompany her action.

Over the next several Tango Tips, I plan to explore each of these elements individually in order to clarify what they mean, and how each contributes to the execution of each movement in the dance by a leader and follower. For purposes of this ongoing discussion, I am going to rename the words “lead” and “follow” to “invite” and “respond.” Instead of the terminology I’ve been using to date; i.e., “the lead follow mechanism,” I’m going to call this skill set “the invitation/response cycle.” As we will see, this newly coined terminology is designed to far more appropriately define what actually occurs between the leader and follower in the collaborative execution of a single step in the dance.

Please join me next week for Part 1: “I invite an action.”

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