[Tango-L] Don't blame your follower

[Victor Bennetts]

I agree with Astrid. Nothing looks uglier on the floor than some guy who thinks he is a great dancer doing a whole lot of intricate steps without any regard for his follower. You can see him in love with his own footwork and totally disregarding the woman. Connection to me means feeling with sensitivity and accuracy the woman's axis and her response to the mark and adjusting to them. For most of us this would be a work in progress because it is easy to learn a sequence but to learn to feel the position of the woman and her readiness to step is so much harder. On the rare occasions when I have nailed this I can feel this great flow of energy coming back to me from the follower and suddenly we are both free to do so much more.

Anyway with all this talk of violins, it reminded me of when I first got my violin as an eighteenth birthday present some years ago. It had sat under a house since the 20s and was full of insect droppings and muck. I took it to the local strings guy 'Lance', who fixed it up for me and said it was not a bad mass produced violin. He offered me fifty bucks for it. The first year I played on it the sound was pretty dull and flat, but as my skill improved and as I did classes and exams with it and played with other people all the work and effort I put into it seemed to seep into the wood itself somehow. After about four or five years it gradually took on a really sweet sound and somehow in harmony with the way that I played so that I almost felt like it was a part of me. When I took it back to Lance some time later incredibly he remembered the violin and also was amazed at the difference in sound that it produced. He smiled and said that now he would offer me a hundred bucks for it. So I wouldn't say the woman in tango is like a violin, but maybe the connection between the dancers.

Victor Bennetts

Astrid> I remember the days when I would think on the dance floor:"I am this
>finely tuned instrument that responds to every subtle lead and this >brute is
>manhandling and abusing it.

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