[Tango-L] Right hand lead?

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

I've been the victim of that many times.  It's rather unpleasant.  It was still being taught in the 90's, but I'm glad that it's gone out of fashion.

It's useful to remember that the women way back when didn't take classes like the women today.  The attitude of the man was that the women didn't need to learn anything, they just followed.  When the first women's technique class in BsAs started in the 90's, the men scoffed at it.

This attitude carried over to the teaching in the U.S in the 90's.  Women only assisted the male teachers.  Many of them didn't talk.  I remember going to workshops a few months after Milena Plebs began partnering a new partner.  Everyone really came to study with Milena but she didn't say anything.  She prompted her much younger partner on what to say and he said it.

Given that environment, I appreciate the difficulty someone like Susana Miller had to go through just to be able to teach the man's role.  It would take an incredibly strong character.

Trini de Pittsburgh



--- On Mon, 11/22/10, Sergey Kazachenko <syarzhuk at gmail.com> wrote:

I am visiting San Francisco and got to Gabriel Missé's (
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/arts/dance/11tango.html ) workshop
He was saying that leading with the chest is a later invention and
that old milongeros used the right hand lead.
If you press the right palm down, that's a signal for the lady to
switch her weight to her right. If you press the right elbow down,
that's a signal to switch the lady's weight to her left. I tried it
and it seems to work!
Anybody else familiar with this?

Sergey