[Tango-L] Leading with hands... and even legs

[Caroline Polack]

Hi Jonathan,

I get what you are saying. I really do for reaons esoteric to me.

Caroline,

As you are the third person to email me on this point I'll go into a little
more detail though I long ago discovered the list is not particularly suited
to these sorts of discussions.

A hair lead is not a specific lead. As I now understand what Daniel Trenner
was hinting at was that he was indicating that there is more involved in the
interaction between partners than simply giving a formal "lead" with a
formal response. Rather the partners are attending to one another and
processing information through all their sensory channels. By "hair lead" he
was referring to the information that the movement either seen or more often
felt adds to knowing the intention and movement of the partner. It is not a
system, not formal, and yet there are subtlies of the dance partnering that
are outside the formal system.

One person stated to me privately that this obfuscated the definition of
lead. I think that is true only for some people who think more in terms of
formal systems. For other people Daniel's noting that leading/following
involves awareness of intention from multiple sensory channels might turn on
a light and expand the possibilities. I will say it was a passing remark he
made. He didn't make any attempt to teach it. It was only when I took
contact improvisation that I understood and began to appreciate where he was
coming from with that startling comment.

In a contact improv class one spends a lot of time experiencing these things
not talking about them. I don't want to  struggle with a purely verbal
explication of something that is so entirely sensory motor. I just wanted to
make the point that leading and following can involve many components of the
sensory motor system, or as in the case of called dances only one, the
verbal instruction of the caller.

Jonathan Thornton

On 6/28/06, Caroline Polack <runcarolinerun at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>"Some years later I took a class in contact improvisation (and note that
>Daniel had originally gone to Argentina to teach contact improv) and now I
>know what hair leads are!"
>
>Well, do illuminate us! Can't believe you would mention hair leads and
>then
>leave me hanging - come on, what is it?
>
>Caroline
>
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"The tango can be debated, and we have debates over it,
but it still encloses, as does all that which is truthful, a secret."
Jorge Luis Borges

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