[Tango-L] women leading

[Euroking@aol.com]

Igor,
 
My apologies, there are gender neutral in English. Language is as self  
limiting as it is expansive, connotative meanings vs denotative meanings.  
Otherwise, I agree what's the problem?
 
Bill in Seattle
 
 
In a message dated 5/25/2006 3:43:49 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
ipolk at virtuar.com writes:

I still  do not understand that fuss about "leading" and "following" in the
tango  community.

These words where not chosen to be "gender neutral". These  words are used
all around the world at least for a hundred of years to  describe relations
between dancing partners. I have heard it since I was a  boy! "Lead me",
"I'll dance it if you lead it", "He is such a good leader",  "He led me so
well" - that is routinely is used in russian language.  Without any negative
feeling whatsoever. About women we usually say  differently. She - dances. I
lead her in the dance. I'd like to know how it  is in other languages.

At times at some places there was not enough of  dancers of the opposite
gender. So what? They danced with each other. No  problem whatsoever. This is
less interesting, of course, sometimes funny,  but it is better than to seat
in the corner. Literature, movies, personal  memories vividly present such
episodes. There are few of them, because  nobody even paid much attention to
it: it was more than normal, it was  unnoticed. You know, there are things
which we do, but do not pay any  attention to it, we take it as granted.

May be in Argentina, where at  times there were many more men than women,
dancing women presented  something extraordinary - they ignored men.

For me to "follow" is to be  able to perceive and react to the lead well.
This is it. Just a name.  Because of my limitation in language and culture, I
do not sense any  negative connotations. I could say "feeling". There is such
thing like  "feeling of the partner".

Igor

PS.
I am not really good in  English, but I have to tell you how I see the
problem, then you might  understand me better.
In Russian, there are 2 words equivalent to English  "Lead": "Lead", directly
borrowed from English, (leadership), and "vesti" -  a slavic root. The
first - "Lead" has to do with authority. "Bush is  an  American leader".
Russians would use exactly the same word. The  second one, "Vesti" means "to
show a path". A father leads his baby along  the path, a man leads a woman in
the dance, a TV host leads the show or a  discussion. We can say: "We lead
the conversation". It means we have the  conversation, we go along the same
path, when one speaks - he leads it, we  exchange our roles in conversation.
But it does not have much relation to  authority.


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