[Tango-L] What I Have Learned About Tango

[Richard Isaacs]

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WHAT I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT TANGO
by Richard Isaacs, RBIsaacs at attglobal.net


With gratitude and thanks to the caring and supportive tango community
of the New York City Argentine Consulate and the teachers there,
Alicia Cruzado, the best tango coach in New York, and Fran Chesleigh,
the best tango teacher in New York. They have collectively made me
understand the concepts of friendship and charity. 


 We dance because we hear music and our bodies feel impelled to
 respond. Argentine Tango is a wonderful and particularly elegant
 social dance. It is challenging, fun, and a pleasure to do for
 everyone from the beginner (as long as you as a beginner keep to
 things within your capacity: Otherwise it is like going on the black
 diamond slope when you should be on the bunny trail) to the expert.

 Argentine tango is broken into two broad categories: Social tango and
 stage tango. While I, like many others, was first attracted to tango
 by stage performances, I am a social dancer, not a performer, and
 anything I say here refers only to traditional Argentine social tango
 (I will just call it tango from now on). Tango nuevo, American tango,
 and international tango are different dances than traditional
 Argentine social tango, and will not be discussed here.

 As a beginning tango dancer I picked up a number of helpful hints
 that I wanted to pass along to other new dancers to help make tango a
 bit easier to leap into. I have continued to add hints as I have
 become more knowledgeable. I have gotten these tips from teachers and
 other students. None of these are my own ideas, and I do not take any
 credit for thinking them up.

 I hope you get as much pleasure out of tango as do I, and that these
 brief notes will help you avoid the common pitfalls that most of us
 fall into, and speed your entry into the world of tango.


 1. A given tango is a three to five minute deeply intimate personal relationship.

 This intimacy, which is not sexual in nature – this is just a social
 dance, folks – is inherent in tango, because as a leader you must be
 so attuned to what your follower is doing in response to your lead or
 invitation, and as a follower you must be so attentive to what you
 are being led or invited to do. It is said that at a certain level
 you will not only feel your partner’s heartbeat, but will find that
 your breathing has become synchronized with that of your partner as a
 result of this total concentration. This need for total concentration
 is the reason that it is impossible to talk and dance tango at the
 same time.

 Because each dance is a deeply intimate personal relationship, the
 most important part of the dance is not the steps, figures, and
 sequences of steps, but the sense of connection, the feeling of
 intimacy. You can watch couples dancing simply but with intimacy, and
 recognize this as good social dancing. You can also see couples
 dancing with dazzling sequences of steps but no sense of connection,
 and recognize this as bad social dancing. As leader, your follower
 should always feel this intimacy, so if you find that you are so busy
 concentrating on the sequence that you have lost this connection –
 this awareness of your partner’s leads, invitations, or responses –
 then you are doing it wrong.

 Carlos Gavito has noted that tango is the embrace. To emphasize this,
 some teachers, who know that abrazo also means hug, have beginning
 students start by literally hugging. This hug (and no, this is not
 close embrace) gives the appropriate physical sense of the intimacy
 of tango. To put this into American terms, think of dancing to a
 romantic Sinatra song at a wedding. There you will be dancing
 intimately, with little movement, simply embracing your partner.
 Social tango should have exactly this same feeling, and this same
 level of simplicity, albeit moving with the line of dance.

 This sense of intimacy also gives us a clue as to the level of
 civility that should accompany the dance. Thus, it is considered good
 form for the leader to dance a whole tanda (the three or four musical
 pieces linked together by the DJ or orchestra in each set) with each
 follower before moving on. And when you are done, say “thank you,”
 and escort your follower back to where you got her.

 On the other side of the coin, the convention is that when a follower
 no longer wishes to continue dancing with her leader, she merely says
 “thank you,” which is the code for “we’re done.”

 It is also considered bad form for you to dance for an extended
 period of time with anyone you encounter at a milonga. The temptation
 is to hog a good dancer, but, leader or follower, you should try to
 limit your greed to two tandas.

 While dealing with the issue of tango etiquette, this might be an
 appropriate spot to talk about dance partners. Most social dancers,
 unless they are competing (and yes, intermediate- and
 advanced-beginners can compete, though they won’t win), do not have
 or need a dance partner. If you are competing, and do have a dance
 partner, etiquette is important to prevent strains in the dance
 relationship. If you wish to go dancing on a night when your partner
 is not available, or if you want to go dancing with someone other
 than your partner, or you wish to dance with someone else when you
 are with your partner, you should ask them if it is ok. They will of
 course say yes, but asking avoids causing them the stress of hearing
 from someone else (the tango community, like most other
 special-interest communities, is somewhat incestuous and gossipy)
 that you were out dancing, which might lead them to suspect you were
 changing partners. And if you wish to go dancing with someone else’s
 partner, it is considered proper etiquette to say, “Could you ask
 your partner if it would be ok for you to come dancing with me?”

 On a related note, social dancers you know may choose to compete.
 Competitions in social tango, such is seen in the USA Tango
 Championships (held as part of the annual NYC Tango and Film
 Festival, proclaimed each year by the City of New York as Argentine
 Tango Week), are odd ducks, as the judging is generally done by well
 known and often-brilliant performers, many of whom are not
 necessarily wonderful social tango dancers. When you see people you
 know in a performance, demonstration, or competition, and speak with
 them afterward, it is appropriate to say, as you should after any
 artistic endeavor, “Thank you. I really enjoyed that!” It is not ever
 – I repeat NOT EVER – appropriate to give the artist(s) your
 on-the-spot (or day after the spot) critique, telling them all the
 things you believe they did wrong, or all the things you would have
 done in their place, making them feel dreadful.

 Finally, it is an unfortunate truth that in tango younger women tend
 to be asked to dance by new and beginning-intermediate leaders before
 older women. Better leaders want to dance with better followers, not
 younger followers. On the other side, however, new and intermediate
 leaders tend to be afraid to dance with women they don’t know, so
 they are much more likely to dance with women with whom they take
 classes. Women address this issue by becoming part of a community of
 dancers that know her, like her, and want to dance with her. Other
 men, seeing her dancing, will be more likely to work up the courage
 to dance with her. To deal with women who are not part of their dance
 community, it is considered civil for a leader to look to see if
 there is any woman who has been sitting without being asked to dance,
 and to dance with her.

 How does a leader ask a woman to dance? The tradition in Buenos
 Aires, called the cabaceo, is to make eye contact. If the woman does
 not wish to dance she will not make eye contact. If she is engaged in
 conversation, eating, or otherwise obviously occupied and not ready
 to make eye contact or dance, leave her alone until you can make eye
 contact.

 An interesting issue for women is turning down invitations to dance.
 It turns out that there are many leaders with frail egos and long
 memories. If these men ask you to dance and you simply say “No” or
 even “No, thank you,” they will never ask you to dance again. Not
 ever. If this is a leader with whom you will never wish to dance –
 possibly not a bad decision – this is a perfect solution. If you are
 not quite sure, it is more politic to cushion the crushing rejection
 by saying something like, “I would love to, but I am tired and
 resting now” if that is the case, or “I would love to, but I am with
 my dance partner” if you are, or “I am waiting for someone” if you
 are hoping for someone else to ask you, or “Not now, thank you, but
 perhaps later” if you are willing to dance with them later at this
 milonga, or any other reasonable lie appropriate to the circumstance.

 Can a woman ask a man to dance? If it is a man you know – a classmate
 for example – it is generally safe to ask. If it is a stranger, it
 will depend on the mores of the milonga: in some locales it is
 considered acceptable and in others it is not, and this may differ
 from individual to individual. If you are not sure, ask a more
 experienced dancer. I am given to understand that many teachers and
 almost all professional stage performers do not wish for an unknown
 woman to ask them to dance.


2. Tango is about the music.

 Tango is done to tango music. Your dancing should be about
 musicality, rather than fancy sequences of steps, and the musicality
 needs to be about the music of tango. We are fortunate to live in a
 time when we have unusually good access to music, and, as dancers, we
 should take advantage of this. Those of us who have broadband access
 to the Internet can listen to tango 24 hours a day at
 http://radio.batanga.com/radio/tango/listen. It is important for you
 to listen to a lot of tango music because

A) it is difficult – particularly for a beginning dancer – to dance to unfamiliar music,

and

 B) you otherwise might be limited in the music to which you can
 dance. I have seen a number of leaders who consider themselves to be
 good dancers who have no problem dancing to DiSarli or other
 orchestras with a strong clear beat, but are uncomfortable outside
 this rhythmic realm because of their unfamiliarity with the wider
 variety of music that is available to them.

 While you should be familiar with a wide range of tango music, there
 is nothing that says you should like every piece of music. And there
 is nothing that says you should dance to music you don’t like. Just
 be sure you are not confusing challenging music with music you don’t
 like. Also, keep in mind that not every piece of music – particularly
 if you are not familiar with it – can be danced by everyone.

 Finally, many non-Spanish speaking tangeros feel bad that they don’t
 understand the lyrics. Don’t. As with all popular music, the lyrics
 are often silly or depressing (think Country Western). As an example,
 my personal favorite piece of tango music, both for listening and for
 dancing, is Milonga Triste, interpreted by Sandra Luna in her album
 Tango Varon. The lyrics for this long and lovely and long piece are
 about a beloved girl who has died, and are somewhat morbid. But only
 if you understand them! By the same token, some Argentines will tell
 you that tango can only be danced well by, no surprise, Argentines.
 This is too silly to require further comment.


3. Tango is an improvisational dance (and lead versus convention).

 There are only six steps that can be led in tango (though there are
 figures that are done by convention, and not directly led). These six
 leadable steps are a step forward; a step to the side; a step back; a
 change of weight with no step; a pause with no step or change of
 weight; and a pivot. As a leader, at any given instant your only
 decision is which of these six choices to pick to lead.

 This is very liberating for a new leader because the concept of tango
 as an improvisational dance frees us from the trap of structures. If
 you are taught the “basic eight” as a dance sequence, for example,
 you will find yourself dancing those eight steps and wondering what
 to do next. If, on the other hand, your goal at any given instant is
 merely to decide which of the six leadable steps to pick next, you
 can go on all night in comfort.

 As an added benefit, this means that any sequence of steps is just
 that: Some permutation of the six possible leadable steps, each of
 which must be individually led and followed. While doing an intricate
 sequence of steps is daunting, knowing that at each stage you merely
 have to choose the appropriate lead from among one of six possible
 choices is less daunting.

 Note that there are figures done by convention, where an invitation
 acts in place of a lead. What do I mean by this? Well, with the
 fundamental six steps that can be led, any adequate leader – and most
 beginning leaders – can lead a brand new follower to do these, and
 the follower will do them. While the level of subtlety of the lead
 will vary from follower to follower, even the most inexperienced
 follower will do these six steps.

 With figures done by convention – the cruzada, the ocho cortado, the
 little cross spring to mind – it is impossible to lead an
 inexperienced follower into doing the figure. You can indicate that
 the convention is being invited, but you cannot induce – or even
 physically manipulate – a follower unfamiliar with the convention to
 do it. The invitation may be subtle for an experienced follower and
 more obvious for an inexperienced follower, but the lead has, in
 fact, been replaced by an invitation, with the follower needing to
 recognize that she is being invited to do a figure done by
 convention.

 As an example, the invitation for the cruzada is two steps outside
 partner to the leader’s left (by yet another convention we do not do
 a cross to the right), combined with an upper body disassociation to
 the leader’s right. With an experienced follower the disassociation
 of the upper body might be much more subtle than with an
 inexperienced follower.

 While you might think of this invitation as the “lead” for a cruzada,
 it does not fall into the category of a lead as I am defining it,
 because you will never be able to lead a follower unfamiliar with the
 convention to put one foot in front of the other in such an unnatural
 way. This holds true with the cross in ocho cortado and the little
 cross. Plus, it gives new followers the misleading impression that
 the direct response they get from the lead for the six leadable steps
 will be as reliable as the knowledge-based response they get from the
 invitation done for figures done by convention.

 The molinete, also done by convention, is somewhat different. The
 invitation is a led ocho, with the leader continuing to turn in a
 circle around his axis, with no further indication as to what the
 follower should do. The follower familiar with the convention will
 continue to pinwheel around the leader, alternating forward and
 backward ochos. An inexperienced follower will either walk around the
 leader, or do all the pivots in the same direction. However, you
 could convert the convention to a series of individually led pivots
 and steps, in which case it is no longer a molinete. Equally, if for
 some reason you wished to convert the molinete to a series of forward
 or backward ochos, you could lead those as individual steps, in which
 case it is no longer a molinete.


4. Tango is a lead-follow dance.

 From the follower’s point of view this means that it is the leader’s
 job to lead you to do one of the six leadable steps or invite you to
 do figures done by convention, and your job as follower to look
 beautiful through the way you respond to that lead or invitation.
 From the point of view of the leader, it means you lead or invite
 your follower to do something, verify that she is indeed doing what
 you have lead or invited, and then you accompany what she has done.

 When a step is completed, from the follower’s perspective the dance
 is over until the next lead or invitation. This means, for example,
 that in a sequence like the ocho, the fact that a pivot has been led
 does not mean that you as a follower should automatically do a step
 in expectation of an as-yet un-led invitation to do so, or, worse,
 embark on a series of un-led ochos.

 If as a follower you don’t understand the lead you shouldn’t guess.
 You should wait until a clear lead is given, or say “I don’t
 understand your lead,” which puts the ball back into the leader’s
 court.


5. Tango is a sophisticated dance.

 Tango is a very sophisticated dance, and requires time and effort to
 do well. Some consider tango the social dance equivalent of ballet,
 and estimate that it takes six months for a follower to become
 marginally competent, and three years for a leader to become
 marginally competent. You cannot rush the process by taking classes
 beyond your capability. You can take all the advanced workshops that
 you wish, but until you are ready to learn something, you simply
 won’t be able to learn it, and skills that will be simple when you
 are ready for them will seem difficult or impossible. Plus you will
 slow down those for whom the class is at an appropriate level.

 Indeed, when you are a new leader, even private lessons will not be
 of value to you: A good teacher will tell you when it is time to
 consider private lessons, which may be up to a year or more after you
 start. With practice and the passage of time, basic steps and complex
 sequences that once seemed impossible mysteriously become accessible.

 By the same token, watching instructional videos – even those dealing
 with fundamentals – will not allow you to learn things beyond your
 current ability. Instructional videos tend to be of value after you
 have been dancing for a while, and are less of a learning tool for a
 beginner than one might expect because they tend not to deal with
 fundamentals. YouTube is even less helpful because most of the
 demonstrations we see, no matter how simple, are nonetheless
 performances, and pretty much by definition take up way more space
 than is available on a dance floor. As an example, if one looks at
 the YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPqGzIZh79k ) of
 the brilliant Gustavo Naviera and Giselle Anne walking, one is
 dazzled. But, as with virtually all demonstrations/mini-performances
 on YouTube and elsewhere, there is little applicable for a social
 tango dancer: Just imagine another hundred couples on the floor in
 any of the demonstrations and you will clearly see the problem.

 It is also important to avoid the trap of finding a teacher whose
 dancing you like, and trying to emulate their style. Since tango is
 an improvisational dance, the object is to learn the building blocks
 from the teacher, and have your own style emerge. Otherwise you end
 up with a group of students whose dancing all looks the same.

 If you happen to be competing and have a dance partner, don’t dance
 only with each other when taking classes. It is important to know
 that your follower is actually following, rather than merely
 pre-knowing what you are doing, and the only way to tell this is for
 you as the leader to lead multiple followers successfully, and for
 your follower to successfully follow multiple leaders. On the other
 hand, it is perfectly legitimate if you are competing to dance only
 with your partner at milongas: This way you will develop your own
 style as a couple.

 It is a good idea for the beginner to go to milongas just to watch
 people dance. You will like the way some people dance and not like
 the way others dance. Try to figure out why, so you can adopt the
 things you like and not adopt (or eliminate) the things you don’t
 like.

 You can observe a lot of things in others that might be hard to see
 in yourself. For example, some leaders dance bent over, rather than
 standing straight. This pushes their follower off balance. As another
 example, you will notice that followers dance as close as they
 choose, but that some leaders want their follower to dance even
 closer. The leader therefore crushes his follower to him, pulling her
 off balance.

 By the same token, some leaders dance faster than they or their
 follower are capable of dancing. And some inexperienced followers
 will imprudently allow themselves to be rushed. This is a bad idea.
 Within the constraints of the music and your skill level, you should
 dance at an appropriate speed: If you are a beginner, you may simply
 not be able to do a molinete at full speed on the quarter notes, but
 will be able to comfortably turn on the half note or full note. Don’t
 rush, and don’t allow yourself to be rushed.

 You will notice that good leaders give a clear invitation that their
 follower can understand (and can follow) while bad leaders lack a
 clear lead. Others simply manhandle their follower, pushing her
 around with a total lack of subtlety or grace. Incompetent and
 abusive leaders will tell their follower what she, the follower, is
 doing wrong.

 Last, but far from least, some followers look happy while dancing and
 others look distinctly unhappy. Try to figure out what the leader is
 doing that is either pleasing or displeasing to their follower, then
 do the former and avoid the latter. And a leader that looks happy is
 someone with whom you, as a follower, want to dance. So leaders, make
 an effort to look happy, and to dance with enough connection – total
 focus on how your partner is responding to your leads and invitations
 – that your follower looks happy.

 Followers have their share of observable problem behaviors. For a
 start, you will see that some followers anticipate what their leader
 is going to do, and respond in advance to a lead that has not
 occurred, and might not be anything the leader intended to do. You
 will observe that other followers over-ornament, or ornament by rote,
 always doing the same ornament on a given step. Worst of all, you
 will see that some followers drape themselves over their leader’s
 shoulders, physically dragging them toward the ground by the mere
 fact of having abandoned their own axis. This can be really damaging
 and painful to the leader. Leaders, once they have returned from the
 chiropractor, tend to avoid these dangerous followers. By the same
 token, a follower who abandons her own axis when she leans on her
 leader tends to sway her back and stick out her behind in a fairly
 painful-looking, as well as unappealing, manner.

 Sophisticated or not, it is important to remember that tango is a
 social dance, and that it is supposed to be fun. Some beginning
 dancers (and even some good dancers and some good teachers), working
 very hard to be good dancers, get upset when they see bad dancers.
 But if the bad dancers are enjoying themselves, that is ok: Not
 everyone can dance well, but everyone should be able to enjoy the
 process. As Winston Churchill said of his painting, “Anything worth
 doing is worth doing badly.” Because of this, it is more important
 that you enjoy dancing at a milonga than it is for you to dance
 perfectly at a milonga. Ideally, you will both enjoy the dancing and
 keep working to become a good dancer.


6. Learning to lead is hard.

 There is a consensus opinion that while following is hard, leading –
 at least at the beginning level – is harder, because as a leader you
 need to know what you want your follower to do, how to lead or invite
 her to do what you wish, how to verify that she has done what you
 think you have invited or lead, which foot her weight is on at every
 given moment during the dance, and how you plan to accompany the
 steps and figures you are leading or inviting her to do. It is
 important that the leader understand and internalize this
 responsibility. One experienced leader was overheard to explain to a
 new follower who was concerned about where her weight was supposed to
 be, “My job is to know where your weight is, and put it on the foot
 where I want it to be. Your job is to have feet.”

 Many leaders don’t lead very well, either through not having yet
 danced enough to gain skill and experience, or through unwillingness
 to practice enough to gain skill and experience, or to take lessons
 to solidify the fundamentals they haven’t mastered. This inability to
 lead includes by definition all beginners. It also includes an
 embarrassingly large percentage of leaders who have danced long
 enough that they should be intermediate level dancers but are not,
 most of whom think they are better dancers than they really are.

 In theory inexperience is not a problem: You lead those steps and
 invite those figures that you know how to lead and invite, and they
 eventually become more fluid and musical. And by practicing new
 sequences at prácticas, you will eventually get better at leading
 steps that you hitherto have not led well in combination.

 It is legitimate to try to invite a figure, and, if it fails, to try
 to invite it a second time. If it fails twice, the leader should
 simply not try to invite it again. While it is conceivable that the
 woman might be at fault twice – unlikely, though certainly possible
 if she started the dance by saying something like “I’m a beginner,”
 or “I took my first class today” – the greater likelihood is that it
 is an unclear or bad invitation. Go on to a step or figure that you
 can lead or invite. Remember that figures done by convention are not
 led by physical manipulation: Either your follower knows the
 convention or not. If your follower does not know the convention, and
 does not understand, for example, that the invitation for la cruzada
 is the leader walking two steps outside partner on his left with a
 disassociation of his upper body to his right, don’t do this figure:
 You are there to dance, not to annoy or insult or manhandle or teach
 your partner, and you should be able to forge a pleasant dance from
 the steps that you can lead, without embarrassing her with figures
 she doesn’t know.

 If you as a leader are trying in a práctica to lead some
 choreographed sequence you picked up in a class, and can’t yet quite
 figure out how to lead the six possible leadable steps in the order
 that make up the sequence, it is likely that your follower will ask
 you to tell her what you are trying to do. Resist the urge to tell
 her: The object of the game is for you to be able to lead, rather
 than to be able to have your follower back-lead you. It is more
 useful to ask your follower what she is feeling at each point in the
 sequence, so you can figure out where your lead has gone astray.

 Keep in mind that at a real milonga you shouldn’t do any of the
 performance sequences and figures you have learned. You absolutely
 shouldn’t do things like ganchos or stage boleos which will leave
 those unfortunate enough to be dancing near you black and blue. And
 you shouldn’t normally do figures like the molinete which are static,
 and will bring the line of dance to a halt, unless someone in front
 of you has already brought the line of dance to a halt, and you need
 to dance in place. Since this happens all the time, you need to build
 a repertoire of figures you can do when the line of dance grinds to a
 halt, as it does all too frequently.

 You can get a good idea of what is appropriate at a milonga by
 looking at the rules for Argentina’s salon tango competition, which
 say (not my translation):

 26 - Once a dancing couple is formed, they shall not separate as long
 as the music is playing. This means that they cannot break the
 embrace (abrazo), which is considered the tango dance position.

27 - For the position to be considered correct, partners must constantly hold each other by means of the embrace. Even though during certain figures the embrace may be flexible, it must never be broken, and this shall continue during the entire piece.

28 - All movements shall be performed within the space allowed by the couple embrace.

29 - The Judging Panel is judging 4 different areas: musicality, circulation, walking style, and the consistency of the embrace.

30 - Within these guidelines, dancers may perform any figures commonly used, including barridas, sacadas close to the floor, enrosques, etc.

31 - Ganchos, leaps, trepadas (lifts) and any other typical tango escenario choreography are absolutely excluded.

 32 - Couples shall constantly move counterclockwise, like in the
 milongas (tango dance places), and shall avoid remaining in the same
 choreographic place in order to avoid interrupting the dancers’
 circulation.

33 - No dancer may raise his/her foot above the knee line.

 Point 32 tells you that at a milonga there will be – or more
 realistically SHOULD be – one or more lines of people moving in a
 circle counter-clockwise around the room. You can do walking steps
 forward, you can do walking turns forward, and you can lead your
 partner to do backward traveling ochos in the line of dance, but you
 can’t stop to do sequences in place, as that would bring the line of
 dance to a grinding halt. We note, however, that if you look at
 videos of any of the USA Tango Championships, even with only four or
 five couples on the floor the line of dance frequently stops…

 When the floor is crowded, you can dance close embrace. While
 neophytes think of close embrace as a way to be dancing pressed
 against a partner – they haven’t yet learned that you dance as close
 in salon style as in close embrace, although in this case with the
 closeness breathing depending on the step – the more experienced know
 that close embrace is a way to dance in crowded venues without taking
 up a lot of space. And crowded dance floors can be very crowded: In
 Buenos Aires you are likely to have roughly a square yard of space,
 which moves around the line of dance.

 Close embrace, unlike tango Nuevo, is not a dance distinct from tango
 de salon. Close embrace is a construct developed by non-Argentine
 teachers in which you always dance pressed together: In Argentina you
 would merely dance close when there was no space, and not do figures
 which took up more space than was available. Because of this, close
 embrace uses a subset of available tango techniques, many of which –
 ocho cortado springs to mind – are somewhat abbreviated and more
 linear. It precludes steps which require space, such as a
 conventional forward ocho, where there is simply no room for the
 follower to do the pivot and forward step. We note that the
 unsophisticated leader can force forward ochos in close embrace –
 many things that, by convention, are not done in tango are
 nonetheless physically possible – requiring the follower to make
 space by sticking her behind out.

 It is critical to keep in mind that in close embrace, as in other
 iterations of tango, both partners keep their own axis. While the
 follower has forward poise, so that her weight is over her toes, she
 does not lean on her partner, giving up control of her axis.

 It is also critical to keep in mind that differences in style are not
 generally significant, and that we non-Argentines are not locked into
 the style used in some particular neighborhood in Argentina. Instead,
 we can do whatever tends to fit with the moment, which includes our
 partner, the music, the space available, our mood, our energy level,
 et cetera.

 Can tango de salon also be done on a crowded dance floor? Of course,
 but you have to dance smaller, which you should be doing anyway.

 Some leaders attempt to bypass learning to lead by telling their
 followers what they – the followers – are doing wrong, rather than
 recognizing that the lead was unclear. The appropriate response to
 this needlessly insulting behavior is for the woman to knee the
 leader in the groin and walk off the dance floor, either before or
 after the music ends. Other possibilities are to tell the leader to
 stop it, or to ask for a teacher to clarify what is happening. When
 this last choice is taken, the teacher will generally end up saying
 that the follower is doing fine, and that it is a problem with the
 lead.

 Be aware, however, that there is a near-overwhelming desire for a
 leader – even a new leader – to give his follower advice,
 particularly regarding figures done by convention. While advice is
 sometimes solicited by a new follower, the advice given is invariably
 wrong. It is unlikely to be solicited by an experienced follower, for
 whom it will be not merely wrong, but insulting. Solicited or not,
 unless you are a tango teacher it is really better to control your
 impulses, and, in the case of the new follower, to dance to her
 level. If your follower doesn’t know how to do a cruzada, don’t do
 them. If she can’t do a molinete, do something else. As a leader in
 social tango, your primary job is to make sure that your follower
 enjoys the dance. There is no need to ruin the dance experience for
 your follower by turning it into an impromptu class filled with
 misinformation. Instead, stick to the six leadable steps.

 If you absolutely are unable to control your near-pathological
 impulse for teaching, instructing, and giving
 helpful-albeit-incorrect suggestions to your follower, they should be
 should be chosen from among “you’re beautiful,” “you’re talented,”
 and “you’re wonderful,” none of which are likely to intimidate or
 offend even the most self-conscious follower. If none of these three
 seem to fit the circumstance, ask the teacher or keep your mouth
 shut.

 When dancing with a significant other, there is a belief that it is
 ok to tell your partner – leader or follower – what she or he is
 doing wrong or should be doing better. Annoying as this is for the
 person on the receiving end, this is a relationship issue, not a
 tango issue, and there is not a lot you can do about it, so just grin
 and bear it.


7. Learning to follow is hard

 While for beginners following may be easier than leading, following
 is not easy, and the better the leader the more there is to do as a
 skilled follower. The initial advantage for the follower is because
 beginning followers will be dancing with beginning leaders who have a
 limited vocabulary, and who don’t give their follower time and
 opportunity to express herself.

 This changes as the leader becomes more sophisticated, and gives the
 follower opportunities to become a real partner in the dance. Because
 of this, followers benefit earlier from private lessons than do
 leaders. And followers can benefit from followers’ technique classes
 during the several years when budding leaders are still struggling
 with the three important fundamentals of tango: The music, the
 embrace and connection, and walking.

 The end goal of technique for the follower – as well as for the
 leader – is not the technique, the steps, or the adornos. Rather, the
 goal is to so master the technique that it no longer interferes with
 your musicality and sense of connection. Following the lead
 disappears as an issue, allowing the connection to burgeon. If you
 look at really good dancers, you get the impression – virtually
 always an incorrect impression, by the bye – that they are lovers.
 What you are seeing is the elimination of technique as a barrier,
 allowing the couple to express the intimacy of the embrace and the
 music, and total concentration on invitation and response.

 Note that following is hard even for the most beginning follower
 because it requires an act of faith, giving up her control of the
 dance for the control (bad at the beginning) of the leader. This is
 very difficult for almost all followers.

 It is not uncommon to see followers turn to learning to lead in
 self-defense when there are more followers than leaders and they do
 not get asked to dance often enough, because they are bored by the
 low level of leaders, because they are a teacher and want to make
 sure they can actually lead, because they want to dance with women,
 or simply because they enjoy leading. These are all very reasonable,
 albeit still requiring several years to become competent. One might
 think that it would be easier for a follower to learn to lead, since
 she already knows what a good lead feels like, but, in fact, there
 are many followers who have never danced with a good leader.

 A valid question would be whether it is worthwhile for a beginning
 leader to learn to follow. The answer is a sort of doubtful
 conditional yes and no. Let’s start with the “yes” part of the
 equation. Recognizing the difference between a clear lead and a bad
 lead for the six steps that can be led is very important for a new
 leader. Therefore doing some following with another man to get a
 feeling for what is a good lead, so that your lead can become
 clearer, is a good idea, and one that every new leader should do. I
 believe it is, in fact, imperative that a leader practice following
 at the beginning level.

 You will quickly feel that many leaders do not give a clear lead even
 for the six basic leadable steps, which will help you make sure you
 are clear in yours. You will also feel that some leaders pull you off
 balance, making it clear that you should not do so to your followers.
 You will also feel that some leaders, on inviting a cross, do not
 give you sufficient time and space to cross, making it clear that you
 should give your follower time and space. You will also find that
 some leaders try to lead a forward ocho when you are pressed to them,
 forcing you to either kick their feet or stick your behind out to
 make room, which will make it clear that you either need to give your
 follower space to do the forward ocho, or simply not do forward ochos
 if you want to retain the embrace.

 Now for the “no” part of the equation. Remember that a follower does
 (for purposes of this particular discussion) three things. The first
 is to respond to an invitation to do one of the six steps that can be
 led, which, as I indicated above, the beginning leader who is
 following should be able to do. The second is to do figures that are
 done by convention but are not physically led (ocho cortado,
 molinete, little cross, et cetera). The third is to do adornments.

 As a beginning leader who does social dancing, being able to do the
 follower’s adornments is simply not meaningful. Being able to do
 figures done by convention is also not meaningful for the beginning
 leader, though recognizing the clarity of the invitation is. But at
 the end of the day, if a woman asks a new male leader whether he
 would like to follow, and her intention is to actually dance, the
 appropriate answer is, “No, thank you.”


8. The skill levels of both partners are rarely equal

 Sometimes a leader will be more advanced than his follower, though
 for new leaders your follower will probably be more advanced. If a
 less-capable leader sticks to those steps he knows how to lead well,
 and generates the appropriate sense of involvement with his follower,
 she will be happy. If you are more advanced than your follower, then
 you should dance simply enough that your follower can enjoy the dance
 with a sense of security, occasionally adding something a trifle more
 advanced than she is used to doing, as long as she can figure out the
 surprise and have fun. When you do this properly, the new follower
 should be saying “Wow! I didn’t know I could do that!” rather than
 being made to feel inadequate by you trying something beyond her
 ability to follow.

 By the same token, if you are a follower dancing with an
 inexperienced leader, you should enjoy the simpler steps, remembering
 that the only way the leader will become better is through practice,
 and that the beginner of today is the advanced dancer of tomorrow. If
 the inexperienced leader is doing something wrong it is appropriate
 to say “I don’t understand your lead,” rather than “You are doing it
 wrong.” With appropriate encouragement, even a beginning leader
 should be able to generate the sense of connection that makes tango
 worthwhile for his follower.

All in all, the consensus opinion is that if you have three good partners in a milonga or practica you are doing very well.


9. Milongas, classes, practicas, and the secret of the better leaders

 The average new leader is terrified of going to milongas and dancing
 with anyone other than fellow students. This is because we fear
 either embarrassing ourselves by not dancing well or being
 deliberately embarrassed by something said or done by an unknown
 partner. Embarrassing ourselves might seem to be a not-unreasonable
 fear: After all, for the first year or so we new leaders can barely
 lead, have a minimal vocabulary, dance without smoothness or grace,
 and are so preoccupied by the steps as to be unable to think about
 connection. This fear, however, is rarely fulfilled.

 The other fear, being deliberately embarrassed by a partner, can
 happen on, thankfully, rare occasion. At one of the early milongas to
 which I went I asked a woman to dance. I started clomp clomping
 around the floor, and before the first song ended she simply turned
 around and walked off the floor, leaving me standing there like an
 idiot. Would I ever dance with her again? Sure. Putting aside the
 fact that I don’t remember who she was, I think that life is too
 short to hold grudges.

 The good news is that the more common occurrence is to ask an
 experienced follower to dance, and have her patiently work through
 the tanda, knowing that if new leaders don’t get to dance with
 experienced followers they won’t get better. There are a number of
 experienced followers who bore with me when I started tango, and I
 will be eternally grateful to them for their kindness and generosity.

 So what should new leaders do? For a start, they should be taking
 beginner classes, which deal with the fundamentals of tango. Once
 they have the absolute basics down it will not be inappropriate to go
 to guided practicas and dance with other beginning students. It is
 also safe to go to milongas with fellow students, and either dance
 with them or watch.

 After about six months to a year we all have the premature desire to
 move from beginner classes to intermediate classes, particularly when
 it comes to the classes taught before milongas. There are two types
 of intermediate classes. The first, which sadly constitutes a
 minority, deals with details of principles underlying technique.
 These classes are definitely worthwhile, but often rejected by
 students who want to learn a choreographed sequence of steps. The
 second type of class teaches a choreographed sequence of steps. In
 the majority of cases these will be performance steps, with the
 teacher assuming you have three-ish years of experience or more. You
 will not remember the sequence twenty minutes after the class ends,
 assuming you can do the sequence at all, and you will never be able
 to use it while dancing at a milonga. These classes are unlikely to
 make anyone a better dancer, and certainly not a beginner. And for
 the advanced-intermediate or advanced dancer they have little or no
 utility outside of their social value.

 So are these classes, generally wildly popular, worth taking? The
 answer is a definite yes – once you are able to at least stumble
 through the sequence. If you cannot get through the sequence –
 something that will be made clear by the fact that you keep saying,
 “What? What? What?” as each piece of the sequence is demonstrated,
 then you not only are getting no benefit for yourself, but will be
 actively slowing down whomever you are partnered with at the moment,
 as well as others in the class if the teacher tries to help you. When
 this happens you should walk off the floor, sit down, and watch.
 Which is something we have all done.

 If, on the other hand, you are able to get the sequence, then the
 class will be of value in four ways. First, these classes are an
 awful lot of fun, and fun is why we dance. You get exposed to new
 teachers and new techniques, and, if you are inordinately lucky, will
 come away with some new principle. Plus, since the sequences taught
 are often obvious stage choreography, it allows us to fulfill our
 dance fantasies with sequences that should ideally get us banished
 from an actual milonga.

 Second, you will do the class with new partners. This is important
 because it then gives you a new set of people with whom you will be
 able to dance at milongas. This will be immediately useful when the
 class precedes a milonga.

 Third, it helps you gauge your progress. It is gratifying to take a
 series of classes with a guest teacher, each a year apart, and go
 from “What? I think I should sit down!” to “I think can do this…” to
 “That is pretty straightforward!”

 Finally, and most important, it allows you to see that even the most
 complicated sequence is still made up of individual leads of the six
 steps which can be led.

 But if intermediate and advanced classes don’t necessarily make you a
 better social dancer, how do intermediate and advanced leaders become
 really good dancers? First, they dance a lot. Many have said that it
 takes 10,000 hours of practice of any skill to become expert, and
 tango is no exception. And as a leader gets better, his dance
 experience improves, and he can dance with a wider variety of
 partners. By this I mean to say that a beginning or intermediate
 leader will often complain that it is hard finding good followers.
 But, as he gets better, his leading improves, and followers whom he
 couldn’t previous lead before, including new followers and those who
 aren’t that good, will suddenly and mysteriously become less of a
 problem.

 Second, they have a secret: Private lessons. Private lessons give no
 benefit to we beginning leaders for our first year or two (though
 they can be of benefit to new followers in the first year), because
 we are still concentrating on internalizing the embrace, maintaining
 axis, and walking. But private lessons are of immeasurable value to
 the intermediate and advanced leader, because otherwise what you are
 becoming expert in may be flawed. As someone noted, it is not
 practice that makes perfect. Practice makes permanent; it is perfect
 practice that makes perfect. Private lessons help make your practice
 perfect, and eliminate these flaws.

 What do these more experienced leaders work on in private lessons?
 Things like internalizing the embrace, maintaining axis, and walking.
 As it turns out, the difference between the adequate and the superb
 dancer is not the number of figures and sequences they know, but
 their mastery of fundamentals, which gives their technique cleanness
 and precision. If you go to any milonga you will see many experienced
 dancers – or at least dancers who have been dancing for a long time –
 who do not walk as cleanly and precisely as they should, or who pull
 their followers off balance, or who have other flaws in their
 fundamentals which lower their level. These are details that can be
 addressed in private lessons, but which will go untouched in classes.

 The problem, of course, is finding a good teacher, both for private
 lessons and for group lessons. In a large tango community there will
 be many teachers, some good and some bad, and schools where the
 teachers vary from good to bad. It is very difficult for a beginner
 to figure out who is a good teacher and who is a bad teacher, a fact
 that is made more difficult because we tend to invest emotionally and
 psychologically in our teachers..

 The fact that someone is a great performer does not mean that they
 will be a competent teacher. And there is also the matter of taste. I
 know students who think they are wonderful dancers, but whom I think
 are terrible dancers. These people think their teachers are
 wonderful, while I consider some of these teachers to be beneath
 contempt. So you have to rely on the judgment of others, and your own
 judgment, as to whether you think their students dance well.

 I do believe, however, that there are clues as to who might be good
 and who might be bad. These clues represent, of course, my view of
 social tango, as picked up from my teachers and other dancers whose
 dancing I respect, but may not represent yours.

 If a teacher deals largely with the fundamentals of social tango,
 even in intermediate and advanced classes, that is a good sign. If
 they teach you what they think you need to be able to do, rather than
 the useless stage techniques that you think you want to be able to
 do, that is a good sign. If they will not give you private lessons
 before you are ready that is a good sign, too. Unfortunately, after a
 short period of time these good teachers are likely to be out of
 business or forced to teach what everyone else is teaching, because
 most students secretly want to be stage performers (and in a week, at
 that!),and are not particularly interested in the comparatively
 mundane world of social tango,

 On the other hand, if their teaching is based around the basic eight,
 that is a bad sign. If they tend to teach pre-choreographed
 sequences, that is a bad sign. If they teach followers to lean
 against their partners, sticking their butts out, that is a bad sign.
 If they teach steps inappropriate to social tango, such as stage
 boleos, ganchos, volcadas, colgadas, et cetera, that is a bad sign,
 too.


10. Tango is a social dance, not a power struggle. Nor should it be a tool to outshine or humiliate your partner.

 As a leader, your job is to look good by making your follower enjoy
 the dance and look good. There are, unfortunately, some mean people
 within the tango community who will tell the person with whom they
 are dancing how bad they are, which kills any chance of the dance
 being enjoyable. In most cases, this is done to a new follower by a
 leader who is, in fact, unable to give a clear lead. In rare cases it
 is done by a follower who is dancing with someone new and, by
 definition, not very good.

 New dancers are painfully aware of their limitations, and telling
 them that they are bad or inadequate can drive them from tango. This
 kind of abusive behavior should no more be tolerated on the dance
 floor than in real life, and teachers need to tell students that when
 this happens to them they should simply walk off the dance floor and
 find a better person with whom to dance. If we hear or see others
 doing this, we should tell them to stop. And keep in mind that when
 you are encouraging to and supportive of new dancers with whom you
 dance, you may well be the person that keeps them from quitting
 because of people who have been mean to them.

 Dancing is enjoyable – that is why we do it – and tango is
 particularly enjoyable, albeit challenging. If you as the leader are
 not enjoying the dance, you are not doing it right. If your follower
 is not having an enjoyable experience, then you as the leader are
 doing something very wrong indeed, since your primary job as leader
 during this brief, yet deeply intimate, personal encounter is to make
 sure your follower is enjoying the experience. If you are not having
 a good time, particularly as a follower, you should change partners.


11. Dancing tango is much like making love.

 When you first start dancing tango, it is very awkward and
 counterintuitive, and you are not quite sure how all the pieces fit
 together. As you get better, it starts to be less stressful and more
 fun, but it is still hard to focus on the needs of your partner,
 rather than just your own. Eventually everything falls into place,
 and you as a leader can competently and enjoyably dance with anyone,
 with it being an intimate and pleasurable experience for both.

 However, if you are not careful, you find that your dancing has
 become routine. Instead of doing ten dances in an evening, you will
 find you have done one dance, repeated ten times. This may be masked
 if you dance with many partners. If you have a dance partner it will
 be more obvious, with your partner knowing what you are going to do
 as soon as you start to do it. Or, even worse, before you start to do
 it, because you always do the same steps in the same order, and do
 them without that feeling of connection – that focused awareness of
 invitation and response – which makes tango the intimate dance that
 it is.

 When this happens you need to step back and figure out what you need
 to do to bring the excitement, the surprise, and the intimacy back
 into the dance. This is not about adding new steps or sequences of
 steps. Rather, it is about being able to change your style of dancing
 at will, and about making a fresh decision after each step as to what
 will come next, while retaining the sense of connection, so that each
 dance feels fresh and different and intimate. Even though you are
 choosing among the same six basic steps to be led dance after dance,
 you will be doing them differently or in different order, so they
 will continue to require your follower to be alert, which is what
 sustains her intimate connection with you. When you are able to
 change both your style of dancing, and the order in which you choose
 steps, while still concentrating on your partner, each dance will be
 unique, with no obvious relationship to the last dance or the next
 dance, and pleasurable both for you and for your follower.


12. Tango is a metaphor for life, which means that it’s always the man’s fault.

 The corollary to this is that when something goes wrong a follower
 should say “I didn’t understand your lead” rather than “oops” or “My
 mistake.” While it is certainly true that any follower can misread a
 lead, most of the time the problem is an unclear or bad lead of one
 of the six leadable steps, not a mistake on the part of the follower.


13. While tango may be a metaphor for life, it is, in fact, just a dance.

 People have a tendency to turn their activities into a way of life,
 and tango is no exception. Learning tango can become all-consuming,
 with huge amounts of time going into both learning and dancing. You
 can find scholarly books about every aspect of tango, and it can be
 easy to forget that tango is just a dance. It is instructive to watch
 Carlos Gavito discuss this in a 1996 clip on youtube
 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm90s1uruxY) called GAVITO teaches
 tango y nada mas – Excerpt. In this he points out that he is a
 milongero and dance teacher, not a historian or a philosopher or a
 psychiatrist.

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