[Tango-L] Creating a strong connection

[Victor Bennetts]

Virginia, I don't see this so much as an issue about connection per se as an issue about the different ways in which leaders and followers (and indeed different dancers) develop. First off, be grateful for the fact you have a regular dance partner. I too have a regular dance partner (my wife) and at various stages of our tango journey she has helped me, at other times I have helped her. But the more we dance together the sweeter it gets and particularly in the last six months or so (since we got back from BsAs particularly) we have really started to feel like 'one animal' as Cecilia Gonzales puts it, when we dance. We are at the four year point in our tango journey. It has been a long road and there is plenty more left to travel.

Consider, a follower can get to a reasonable level with work and lots of social dancing in six to twelve months. It takes much longer for a leader to master all the skills necessary to successfully interpret the music, navigate the floor, create a varied and interesting dance, embrace sweetly, have good posture, keep shoulders in line with follower's etc. In fact, if you ask the experienced leaders in BsAs, they will tell you it takes thirty years+ of constant social dancing! Perhaps an exaggeration, but not as far from the truth as you might think.

Demian Garcia explained it to me in a lesson once by drawing some graphs. For a leader he described an arc that was exponential (i.e. slow to start then fast much later) and for a follower one that is logarithmic (i.e. fast at start slowing down to a virtual plateau later) and I think that is pretty accurate. In fact this is why I work so hard at dancing well. My wife is already a divine dancer who is competent to dance with the best leaders anywhere in the world and often I feel like my legs are made of wood in comparison. But to succeed as a leader you need to accept that you have to work twice as hard as your follower to give her the sorts of challenges she needs to improve.

Having said that, there are a couple of things he could do that have worked for me personally, both pretty obvious really. The first is to make sure your partner gets to do lots of social dancing, at least once a week, and preferably two or three times a week. Classes and practice are no substitute for social dancing with a whole lot of different followers which is the fire that makes the leader into gold. Secondly, so far as lessons are concerned, just find a teacher (preferably try a whole lot of teachers) who concentrates on the *basics* in a close embrace context and focuses on those until the connection improves. You don't need a lot of steps, just constant reinforcement of the correct way to stand, embrace, walk and ochos. The basics are a lot harder than they look because there are so many things to concentrate on for the leader all at the one time and bad habits are so common. Fabian Peralta described it to me as like learning to drive a car. To start with trying to do all those things at once for a leader seems impossible, but miles on the dance floor coupled with a strong focus on getting your basic technique correct will work wonders. One day it will just seem to your partner that he has gone from one finger typing to touch typing and you won't even be sure how it has happened.

Victor Bennetts

>Hi there,

>This is my first posting to the tango L-list so be nice!

>I have a question...I'm a follower and I've been dancing for about two
>years. I've been practicing with a steady partner, but I still go to
>milongas and dance with other people, so I can tell that my partner
>and I lack the deep connection that I sometimes experience with my
>favorite leaders, that sense of a silent conversation. My partner has
>good balance and posture and has been dancing for a long time, though
>mostly in open embrace...now we're trying a mix of open and close. I'm
>not sure what's wrong. It's good - just not great. Do any of you
>leaders have any advice? or suggestions for how a to strengthen the
>connection? I apologize for covering what must be well-worn ground.

>Best, VSN

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