[Tango-L] Nuevo lead and follow and repressed teaching

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

--- On Sun, 7/27/08, Jack Dylan <jackdylan007 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Jack Dylan <jackdylan007 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Nuevo lead and follow and repressed teaching
> To: "Tango-L" <Tango-L at mit.edu>
> Date: Sunday, July 27, 2008, 2:28 PM
> Trini,
> Very true. When a lady is tipped into a Vocada, she needs
> to be able to keep her body straight so that only a horizontal force
> is exerted against the man. The man can then support this with his body weight and no strength is required. [The typical Gavito Lean]. 


On top of this, guys will take a new partner and try to lead her into a volcada without even checking if she's comfortable with a lean first.  
That's irresponsible.  So we always tell our students to check first by leading her into a bridge or a small calesita with a lean.  And if she can't do that, don't even try a volcada.

But for the woman, the other issues are 1)having a loose leg and 2)trusting her partner.  So a small step diagonally away and then back again may result in a small volcada, which the woman could interpret as simply a cross off-axis.

>From the perspective of teaching, however, I have found it useful to teach the exaggerated movements to get women to loosen their free leg and develop a core.  What I have noticed in our community recently is that the newer women are not taking classes but they are still getting danced with.  So the women may get the step but they are not developing the technique and bodywork needed for the moves to develop naturally.  So they are confusing pattern recognition with following.  Which means the intermediate men don't get the feedback that they really need.
This is a new phase for our community, so we'll see how everything turns out.

Trini de Pittsburgh