Milonguear for women

This - recently shared on Facebook - is pretty good advice for leaders who want to "milonguear", but it barely gives the follower any hints. Point 2 is this:

"Dance with a partner who can milonguear.... I usually don’t invite a woman to dance if I’m not confident I can navigate the floor safely with her."

I think the followup post is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go beyond the obvious: refrain from silly kicks and don't stick your elbow out.  It makes it sound trivial and ignores everything behind it, which is how people normally talk about women's work. I dance as both follower and leader on a lot of full floors, at various levels of orderliness, so I'm here today to start filling in the gaps.

First the big picture, then the details. Big picture:

1. Be very communicative, so that your partner can always feel exactly where you are and what you are doing. Communication is two-way, continuous, truthful, and uninterrupted.
2. Be very accurate. Your movements, response and expression are at high resolution, so very little space is needed for a detailed and interesting picture.
3. Be very steady. Your partner can rely on you to keep within your own space and your own balance, all the time. They can confidently and accurately predict where you will go in response to their own movements, within a very small margin of error.
4. Be very musical. Your feeling is fully expressed within your movements, whatever those movements are, and regardless of their size. This means complex steps and large movements are options, not necessities. You have your own ideas about how the music makes you feel, and you are expressing them within your embrace.

The actions you would take to get these things working are mostly in common, so you don't need to prioritise them one above another.

I'm not going to talk about things like not habitually flapping your heels around like a halfwit, and not insisting on a rigid, stuck-out arm or a bent-back international ballroom hold. They are obvious, they come under the heading "have a bit of common sense," and one sentence is enough.

Communication

This depends on having a very clear, simple, and reliable relationship between the position of each of your shoulders and the position of the corresponding foot. It's usually called "having a good axis". You don't bend sideways or forward at the waist, drop the chest, push one hip out, pull it in, wriggle, lock one hip or knee, or stand with one leg tense and the foot held stiffly clear of the floor. All these things will break the line of communication. When you are doing it right, your partner can clearly sense the position of each foot in a close embrace. In effect, your  legs and feet are included in your partner's proprioception. Making this possible is 90% a follower skill and only 10% a leader skill.

You can practice and enhance your axis by standing, walking, doing solo pivots, or dancing, with a book or a heavyish bean bag balanced on your head (some dried lentils in a freezer bag are totally fine). This really helps to find the vertical line that you want to move around, feel how it moves in your body as you move, and make it thinner. Change weight, step slowly in all directions, turn gently.

Generally, you want to think about simplifying, firming and straightening your movement so it can be exactly as you mean it to be. Everything else below will also help.

Accuracy and Resolution

This means you can interpret signals for direction, size, and speed over a wide range of each, but particularly at the smaller end. And these dimensions are independent; your smaller steps can have as much colour and detail as your larger steps, and all of this colour and detail is communicated to your partner, rather than being directed outwards.

You can change weight one toe at a time, if the leader is capable of leading that. You can follow a pivot separately from a step and you don't automatically add a step just because you've pivoted. You don't mechanically stick one leg out when there's no reason to do so. You have the freedom to reverse from any point. Your feet move in close parallel lanes, not crossing each other or changing lanes unintentionally. Your free leg does not exaggerate or fly out anxiously in turns.

Get a practice partner to lead small movements, slow movements, and movements that start one way and then retract, and pivots that don't end in a step (they might just stop, or go back the other way).

You'll need to create stillness and quietness, to make a smooth space for the high level of detail. Simplify your movements. Drop any movement that you don't have a clear positive reason for doing. Don't "extend" when there's no reason to do so except stagecraft. And your partner needs to be listening to you.

Steadiness

You can stop, pause, go back at any point in any movement. If your partner loses their balance somehow, you can probably rescue the situation, and if not, you will still be standing there. Your partner can fall over all alone, if they truly insist.

Physically, this comes from a consistent relationship between shoulders and hips and having the position of your centre of gravity well under control. Everything already mentioned will help. You are stepping with your own intent, and not flapping about, wriggling, or putting yourself in any position you can't freeze in. It's not exactly about balance - you can balance in a position where it's easy to push you over. Groundedness is about very rarely passing through a position where it's easy to push you over.

Smooth the transitions between steps, push continuously through the step, get your legs used to the transitions in all directions, and have your feet fall wherever they need to be, under your centre of gravity.

A good (and fun) exercise with a partner is to dance normally and have someone stop the music at random moments. When it stops, you have to freeze in whatever position you are in. If you try to freeze and you have to take another step, then whatever you were doing is probably something you don't do well enough to do in the milonga yet. Both leader and follower are independently responsible for their own ability to freeze. (I am indebted to Andreas Wichter for this exercise).

A good exercise to find out how it should feel is to have someone hang on to a scarf wrapped around your hips, and give you resistance as you walk. Or you can walk in water and focus on keeping upright.

There is a fun test for this. Leaders who are poorly grounded will often lead bigger steps than they mean to, then fail to follow up with the rest of their bodies, unbalancing themselves and their partners. The effect is that the couple skitters around like a foal, and they bump into people even when they think they are leading perfectly sensible movements. Learn to notice when this is happening, and edit it by stepping within yourself and insisting on keeping yourself straight; don't rush around trying to keep up with phantom leads and nonsense. When you get it right, the leader will suddenly feel safe, because two of the animal's four feet are consistently underneath it and going where they intend to go, instead of constantly having to catch and correct. This takes some experience and decent physical condition to do successfully, but mainly you just have to know that it's possible and a good idea.

Of course, some people can lead huge, fast steps without unbalancing themselves. In that case, go ahead and put your big wheels on.

If you struggle with any of this physically, the fastest way to make a noticeable difference to  everything I mention here is about 3 sessions a week for six weeks of practically any training that will strengthen your core. You can use one of those 7-minute workout apps, a samba class has worked well for me, ballet or yoga would work, press-ups, crunches, or any form of upper-body training will work, even running, if you do it right. Or you can do it how they did it in the 40s and just wash and dry all your clothes and bedding without a machine.  If your regular work is not sedentary (for example, if you are a nurse, site engineer, market trader or care worker) you probably won't need to do anything special. You don't need to be super fit or powerful, just strong enough to to be stable without effort. The result is that your partner can feel where your feet are, and the subtle changes in your body as your hips turn.

Musicality

This means that you are using the full duration and shape of every movement to express your feeling about the sound. Your partner can feel this.

The aim is to make it feel as though the music is coming from inside your body, from somewhere roughly in the middle. It's not that you're hearing something and pointing it out visually for an audience; it's internal and coming out because it has to. This is the answer to the beginner question "when am I supposed to do ornaments?". Do them when you can't help it, and otherwise don't worry about them. They are supposed to come from you. Find all your favourite tango tunes on YouTube and just bop along to them however you like. Wave your arms, wiggle, dance around, make faces, whatever, until your body knows what it wants to do and has different ways of expressing that. Learning specific ornaments by heart is tedious and can have embarrassing results, so I suggest not doing it.

You can practice and enhance how this works physically in the dance with some exercises, like refusing a step. They will also improve your communication. Get your practice partner to lead something, and then just don't do it - actively refuse it in the embrace. Stop the step. Hold it up. Slow it down. Do it at different times during the step.  Backlead a little to find out how it feels. Have your partner go with your suggestion, or not. Now try it musically; have your partner choose the movements (keep it simple), but you decide how smooshy or spiky, soft or sharp or decisive, it will be. You will find out what you can do without breaking the connection, what is interesting and fun, and what causes problems or confuses you. Turn your 'musical satnav' up and down. Make as many mistakes as you need, to feel confident that you know what you are doing.

Delivering this physically takes some time, so if you are a beginner, don't let it worry you; just solve the problems in front of you, allow yourself to bop and get excited to tunes and rhythms you like, notice what you like, let your body respond, starting from the heart or centre, and it will get more coordinated with practice.

You want your body to be a window for your emotions.

Note that there are quite a lot of 'good' leaders who have no interest in the follower's musicality at all, except in terms visible to an audience; they want an obedient partner, of the highest available social status, through whom to show off, mainly to each other and themselves. The partner might as well be a car or an overpriced handbag. They are not listening to anything an audience can't see. I think it's dull and silly, but it's up to you to make your own sincere choice about what you want to do.

Mon's Legs

Finally, I give you Monique's Stupendous Legs again. They are full of music, and also apparently full of water. Watch and learn.

A post shared by Eleanor Durrant (@spikylellie) on May 20, 2017 at 3:07pm PDT

You don't have to be especially mobile or athletic; those things give you some extra options in the range and variety of movement, which are very good for dancing with certain people, but you're entitled to expect your partner to dial it back to what you can keep up with.

What happens

If you get it right, some curious things happen:

• It becomes rather pointless to lead lots of steps, which makes the dance less exhausting.
• All the possibilities of leading are still there, up to the couple's skill level, but they are now a free choice, over which you have a great deal of influence. They no longer need to be trotted out one after the other to avoid boredom, or planned in any way. 
• Leading becomes both practically effortless and much more interesting to do.
• The distinction between leading and following becomes somewhat beside the point.
• You may find that you care more about who you dance with and what to.

Leading Conversion Course - Playlist

This post talks you through my YouTube playlist of people I think it is helpful to watch if you are a woman who is a good follower and is learning to lead. Most of this will also be of use to anyone working on their leading; with the usual obvious caveats about who you want to dance with, how you want to dance, and what your priorities are. My own dance prioritises pleasure above prestige. YMMV. There are more videos in the playlist than the ones I'm going to talk about, and I might add more from time to time.

Léna Lamorelle

I suggest watching Léna to give yourself a mental picture of what a woman's body can look like, leading well. I hope it will help you visualise better what you want to do, without the visual confusion of a drastic difference in body shape.

Sin Palabras

Notice the beautiful walk from 02:00 and the turn at 02:17.



More videos - vals and milonga - in the playlist. You may also notice the waterfall* at 02:52, very characteristic of the French dancers for many years and popularised by Carlitos in this no-brakes vals. It took me way longer than I expected to figure out how this is done. It's fun but not necessary.

Oscar Casas

Some of Oscar Casas' teaching summaries are in English, some in Spanish. A lot of them give you simple, reliable ways to do really useful things without overanalysis. The ones with Ana Miguel are generally of higher quality, except for two essential ones with Mary Ann Casas.

Linear Salida

As an exercise, this is a staple of the Nuevo Tango teaching approach. Learn to lead back, side, and forward steps at will, then curve it and wind it up into a turn, then change direction. ("Nuevo" and what is often called "Milonguero" are essentially the same thing with a different sensibility or goal).



Note that this method of leading a cross - the 'lazy' or sideways one - is pretty bulletproof and will usually work well with beginner followers.

Shark Walk

Possibly the most practically useful two and a half minutes of tango video ever made. What Oscar does in this is everything you actually need for tango, vals, and milonga. If you are musical and sensitive to your partner, which you should be if you already follow well and you can learn to keep your place on the floor, you have everything you need for social dancing. Everything else is optional. Some people manage perfectly well with much less.

Analysis of systems

This begins with a simple, reliable way to lead a linear or salon-style cross. You can break it down further and get a lot of different options, but you'll also be completely fine if you just use this one.



Lots more in the playlist. One side note - I suggest ignoring Oscar's technical advice to followers, which he only offers when Ana isn't there.

Alexis Quezada

Alexis is a Chilean living in Barcelona and teaching in France and elsewhere with Celine Giordano. He is a 'lazy' leader, using solid technique and interesting musicality to create a very appealing, pleasurable, low-apparent-effort dance. He does practically nothing useless, superfluous or showy: watch any of it, pick something you like, and try to work out how to do it. You probably won't get it, at least at first, but it's almost impossible to avoid learning something useful while you try.

El Jagüel

The chained swoosh* at 01:05, and in general a wonderfully sensual approach to this beautiful Di Sarli instrumental. One I personally prefer to the 'mundial' style (often branded 'salon') with its intensely tedious, glossy, chilly turns.

Sinsabor

Rocked ochos from 01:39 - and generally, this one is full of things that are brilliant in their simplicity.

Mañana zarpa un barco

Crossed walk from 00:35 to 00:41. This is technically not easy, and risky in social dancing, but it's a brilliant exercise to have on your list of things to try. The tango is followed by a calm milonga in the same video.

Milonga Criolla

I draw your attention to 01:09-01:15 and 02:08 to 02:18. Sure, I can lead those movements (the second is just a well-timed weight change), but would I ever have thought of leading them then? Admittedly both of these require an excellent partner to be worthwhile; they would be utterly wasted on someone who just follows and doesn't dance with you to the music.



Alexis feels absolutely solid to dance with; he is extraordinary at creating stillness and a sense of perfect security and calm, to which the face like a decaf koala contributes less than you might think. On a good day, I remember to aim for that stillness in my own dance.

Melina and Detlef

This is a summary of a fundamentals class. The verbal explanation is in slow French with a German accent, but this is still useful to watch even if you don't understand French well, or at all. I provided a translation some years ago. They discuss posture and embrace, and then give one very simple and reliable way to lead each of a weight change, a side step, and a walk.



Their book provides very useful information about various technical options, with tips for productive practice, and the accompanying DVD includes a good way to practice pivots at home without injuring yourself. You can use it as a comprehensive course, but even if that's not your approach I recommend looking at it if you are in a position of having to teach or mentor anyone, especially yourself. It will save you quite a bit of time if you can figure out how to make best use of it - my full review and user guide is here. Check the troubleshooting checklist hidden on page 156.

Oscar Moyano

A video I find not so much useful, as motivational.  I watch this sometimes to reconnect myself with how I want to dance, and avoid getting sucked into how other people want to dance. My favourite bit is the sensual perfection of 01:35, which is how those are supposed to work.

On using video

I've made this playlist because it contains a lot of things that have been very useful to me. However, bear in mind that it's very difficult to comprehend, visually, a movement that you can't already do yourself. In case you do what I suggested above (pick something you like from a video and try to work out how to do it) I want to prevent you getting discouraged by telling you that at least all the following things will happen, and they are normal and completely OK:

• You will spend hours watching and rewatching, just not being able to understand what on earth is going on. Tip: if you save a copy of the video using something like savefrom.net or whatever you normally use, and then watch it on a tablet, phone, or computer with a free media player like VLC media player, you can play it in slow motion. It will still take ages. Try to work out just part of it and go from there.
• You will spend hours trying to do a mirror-image of whatever it was you saw, which is much more difficult than the original version.
• You will totally misunderstand what was happening and learn something else entirely. Eventually, you will work out what it was you actually led.
• It will just not work because crucial information is missing or something you had overlooked is much more important than the thing you noticed. You will come back to it a year later and find out what the thing was.
• Etc. Don't worry about it. An account of my own approach is here.

---------------------------------
* In this post I use my own English names, like "waterfall", "swoosh", and "rocked ochos" for some things that don't have established names in English. These are just my names for things that need names.  They're probably not the same names you would come up with if you didn't know how they felt to follow. Go ahead and use them if you like them, but don't expect anyone to know them. I think 'swoosh' is obvious, and 'waterfall' refers to the tumbling, chaotic sensation of following it.

Some things I have learned from leading socially

A few things I have learned about dancing, by regularly dancing both roles socially for two or three years. My experiences may or may not be in common with anyone else.

• There is a tremendous range between OK, good, and great followers, of which they are almost all totally unaware.
• Leading poor followers is very difficult; it requires a range of skills, resilience, and physical training.
• Leading OK followers is fun, especially if they are interested or enthusiastic and easy to be with.
• Leading good followers is more fun, especially if, etc.
• Leading great followers is amazing, and you don't feel like you have to do anything, and whatever you do do is totally effortless.
• There are a lot more than those categories.
• Don't bother raiding the cool guys' “harems”, they're disappointing, dance-wise.
• In a good ronda, under good physical conditions, with good followers, leading is cognitively much less demanding than following. The difference is dramatic. Getting the basics to a good standard is quite a lot of work, but if you can do that and then stay within what you've mastered, good and great followers will dance with you, and it is effortless.
• It is possible to flirt with the table of glamorous Dutch lesbians through the medium of another woman's body.
• There exist men who are both hot and good followers. Hang on a minute –

On social maleness

mikeintonbridge, in a comment on the previous post, says an interesting thing:

As a man who likes to dance with both women and men, and to lead and follow I confess I don't think much about what my choice of clothes says about that. It's fascinating to learn how much more this means to a woman - or perhaps just to this particular woman.

I can't make general claims about other women who do this. I may have thought about it more carefully than most, because the subject interests me.  However, there are a few ways of looking at that difference, if we assume it exists.

One is that women generally have a lot more choice of look within the range of what counts as usual female clothing, so automatically we have to make some choice. All clothing means something. While men have to go quite far out of the usual, or be unusually thoughtful and sophisticated, to do anything beyond dressing either well or badly.

A second is that in this context, a conflict exists for me that is, as far as I can see, much less marked for men. When I originally floated the idea of a talk, Ray reframed part of my thought as "can a woman lead [and remain socially female]?". 

As is so popularly observed, gender and sex are two different things; while sex is more-or-less  biological, gender is a social concept, more-or-less performative, and what that peformance consists of can be anything - it depends on the particular place and time and social context. You can perform the gender society assigns you, or another one, to a greater or lesser degree, and other people can accept that performance either more or less. And there is obviously no reason to expect that the kinds or levels of work to perform any given gender in any particular context will be equal; you can't even assume that there are only two genders. Humans can, and do, assign themselves and each other to as many different classifications as they happen to feel are required to understand their world.

In my specific context, it is easier for a woman to perform male gender than for a man to perform female gender. I can do it almost accidentally to a surprising extent by just skipping some tedious tasks that advertise peformance of female gender, like painting my toenails or the customary depilation and exposure of the legs; if in addition, I ably and publicly peform a male-gendered task, I am half way there, and need to think about counteracting it a bit (such as with earrings).

When I lead socially I become, in certain limited but noticeable respects, socially male. For example, as soon as I started leading socially, publicly, to a barely-acceptable standard, I had a strong sense that my social presence and social boundaries were treated with more respect. Of course, the effects are incomplete, and unreliable. But they seem quite noticeable to me.

So I can, and therefore I must, make a choice whether to counteract or to enhance that social maleness with my dress - and there are sacrifices involved either way. The deep, instinctive sense that I sacrifice a valuable social masculinity, and that what I get in return is less valuable, is one of the things that I struggle with in deciding what to wear.

The bottom line is that it takes quite a lot of good dancing, of feeling loved, of the meditative high and skilful challenge of following, quite a lot of pleasant male bodily presence, connection, and attention, quite a lot of male appreciation, even admiration, to counterbalance that sensation of people just mysteriously acting like you actually matter. Even though I love all that stuff. There's a trade-off, and the answer isn't always the same. It depends.

While a man who follows is, socially, just a man who follows. (Men who follow - is this false? Ray suggested that, at least for gay men, it's a bit more complicated than that. I'd be interested to read about how it's false - or not - in your experience).

Where's my mermaid trousers? A wardrobe for both roles

This is a somewhat edited and expanded version of the 15-minute talk I presented to the "Queer Tango Salon", which was two days of presentations and discussion organised by Ray Batchelor, a retired academic who is deeply interested in Queer History and its relationship with dance, and artist Birthe Havmøller, in September. My talk came out of a conversation with Ray about how dress and gender presentation interact with the roles and the social aspects of a partner dance. I hoped to learn by reflecting on my own experiences, choices and motivations and comparing them with the obviously different experiences, choices, and motivations of that community.

I found it extremely interesting to think about this question, and to put together my experiences in some kind of order. This is a very long post, and inconclusive. It's not exactly what I said - that was, necessarily, shorter - but the headings and quotes follow my slides, and the text follows my speaking notes.

Introduction

Hello!

I don’t claim to be part of the Queer Tango community, or any Queer community – that’s up to you – I am just one of the very many women who regularly dance both roles socially in one of the strands of social practice that is not Queer.

I hope this talk will be of some interest, even if only for comparison with your own experiences and thoughts. What do I wear when I go dancing, what choices do I have or make, what experiments have I tried, how do I feel about them, and what, if anything, do they mean?

Tanguera Battle Dress

Final Pista 2015 – Screenshot (video © Aires de Milonga). Click through for original video

“… when all men wear a white tie and a black tailcoat in the evening, the individual character of each man is made more important, not less; and a curious effect then occurs in mixed company. If each woman at the ball is carefully wearing something different ... the faces might as well be all the same, just as if the same doll were dressed in many different ways.” (Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits)

This is the look in relation to which everything else is gets its meaning. Anything I wear to dance tango does whatever it does in relation to, and by contrast with, this look. In as far as any look is prescribed to me by authority, this is it – although the rules of the Mundial specifically say that they don’t prescribe it.

In fact, this is a two-part look. The women have one part, and the men have one part, and there is such a gulf between the two that it seems they are trying to look like different species. It’s tempting to suggest that the men’s part would also be appropriate in a gathering of only men, while the women’s part would be out of place in a gathering of only women, but I expect that’s not true for everybody.

I’d like to introduce Anne Hollander, who wrote books about the history of fashion, considered as a genre of western art – I don’t claim her ideas are right, I don’t know, but I have found them helpful in understanding my own experience. I recommend Seeing Through Clothes, Sex and Suits, and Fabric of Vision, the catalogue of the wonderful exhibition curated by her at the National Gallery.

Hollander’s argument is that the overall look of men’s and women’s dress, considered as genres of European art, diverged from the seventeenth century, so that surface decoration, visible complexity, colour, exposure and detail became reserved for women, and as a result, became coded as un-serious. She then says that they started to re-converge in the early twentieth century, with women reclaiming seriousness, and then in the later twentieth century with men reclaiming visible complexity, decoration and detail.

My Tanguera Battle Dress

© the author

© Emilia Patruno – Estoi, 2016

I have a complicated, on-off relationship with this look.

For me, most of the time, this look feels like an armour, a cloak, a symbol, a subterfuge, a surface, a distraction. I may feel good, I may feel pretty, I often get compliments and much more overt interest from men than I do otherwise, but I also feel that the purpose it serves is to say “I am other” – a different species from you – and no threat. There certainly are many men who will not even perceive my invitations if I don't “other” myself sufficiently by wearing a dress. They don't care at all that I lead – or even, often, notice – they only care or notice what I'm wearing.

But those men are not much of a loss compared to the women gained; the best dancers will almost always have the confidence to invite and respond to invitations; and in some situations this all works entirely to my advantage.

"Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." (Boswell, Life of Johnson)

I mention Johnson's famous line because this look mainly draws attention to the fact that I am a woman, and distracts the eye rather dramatically from how I dance. There is, perhaps, a partial exception when I dance milonga with an excellent follower and both of us are wearing heels. The whole point of heels is to look spectacular, and two pairs apparently being worn by a single animal dancing a fast-or-daft milonga will, by their designed function, get you a few vocalisations of applause. Or you could consider it as just more of the same thing.

The Mezzo-Soprano Trouser Role

© Charlotte Hammer - Lillehammer, 2015

This is a tactical look, a transitional experiment for me that was all about social signals.

This picture is from a three-night weekender before everyone knew that I danced both roles. I’d specifically promised the organisers that I’d lead about half the time, which really helps them at role balanced events, so I wanted to make sure I could achieve that. I wore wide, tailored trousers made of a substantial fabric, with a waistband at the natural waist, and a full blouse tucked in. The effect is slightly Romantic, and certainly influenced by theatre. I wore this for the first half of the milonga, focused my invitations on the women, and led exclusively. I then disappeared for a tanda, changed, and came back in battle dress. This only really works at a long milonga, because you lose a few tandas in the change.

It is a lot of logistical effort. I didn't change my hairstyle, since if there are more than about 150 people present, those who didn't know me might have thought I was two different people.

My problem with this look is that the tailored trousers go a little too far towards being read as socially male. If I go too far towards this look in general social dancing at home, I start to resent that. I feel like I’m pretending to dress in a masculine style for theatrical effect – just a bit inauthentic, as though the costume is doing too much of the talking, and I feel cut off from my own sexuality. Having tried it, I find that it’s not self-expressive for me.

As I got better at leading, and better known, this strategy became unnecessary, and I probably won't wear it again – I'll come back to what I do now in similar contexts. The trousers were rather expensive, but luckily I can wear them to work; and I've found a couple of tops that can take them in a different direction.

Alternatives - a road not taken

Peninsula Cho and Jinsuk Muchacha,
video still, Lihui Tango - click through
to the original video

I thought briefly about going in the suit direction, but I quickly abandoned the idea. This look would feel even more theatrical and inauthentic to me; even if I entered the Mundial, I wouldn't wear it. (What I would wear is an interesting question, but hypothetical, as it's really not my style). This look would not get me a single dance that I wouldn't get anyway, and I wouldn't feel sexy, so there's no point.

For me, it also has, sort of, the same effect as leading in heels. It neutralises the threat. The message to the men of leading in heels is “I am a different species, and no threat”. The message of this is “I am one of you, and no threat”. But for me, of course, I am a threat, and that's not a million miles away from the point.

I do have a made-to-measure corduroy jacket that looks very classy with my jeans, and has the full set of pockets like a man's jacket (1), and I often wear it for dancing outdoors. I also own a couple of good suits for business, and they look great, but they're too long in the leg – they are made to be worn with  heels.

Dressing as a woman in exactly what the men wear

Paquita 2016-17 © Letizia Gianni

“… When two women wear the same dress, however, the first thing you see is how different the actual women really look.” (Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits)

At a certain point, it struck me that in some situations – especially afternoon milongas at festivals – I could look sort-of feminine and definitely-hot by wearing precisely what most of the men wear – well fitting jeans and a striped or checked shirt. Here I am dancing in this outfit with a partner who is wearing the version with chinos.

Notice in the background, my friend on the stage is wearing the same outfit as me - cheerful stripes and jeans - but quite a bit more cleavage.

By not doing 'femininity’, except perhaps with earrings and hairstyle, I almost accidentally visually emphasise my femaleness: how our individual bodies really look in comparison to one another.

It functions almost like the leading lady look (which is next), but it feels subtly different to me.

Leading Lady Style

Video still: Praesenjit Saha,
Esta Noche de Luna
Click through for original video

Demanding a man's status, but as a woman, not as a man: My body as “a visibly working, self-made and unified instrument” (Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits)

This is more like what I usually wear at practicas, and is more or less what I feel most comfortable leading in. For social dancing, I usually “feminise” this look with bare shoulders, or lace. I want a simple shape and a matte texture, colour by all means, but a smooth envelope over separate and articulated legs, so you can see what I am doing with legs and shoulders. It functions like a suit, without the bulk (and it’s much more revealing).

What I feel about this look is that it exposes the quality of my leading. In the video, which is from a couple of years ago now, I’m not leading particularly well, but I and everyone else can see exactly to what standard I am doing it, without distractions, and because I am ambitious to do it well, and willing to put the work in, that’s exactly what I want.

I get a beautiful cognitive dissonance from seeing pictures of myself leading: I look so small compared to the men. Inside my head, I'm the same size as they are.

Leading Lady - Léna

Léna Lamorelle and Marie Primat (Clermont Tango)
at Saarbruecken, 2014. Click through for original video.

To explain why I like it so much, I'd like to show you how this look functions at its best. This is Léna Lamorelle, leading. I admire her dance: and her look, in this, is what I’d most like to be wearing when I lead.

It says stability, dynamics, and power. For me what this look does is demand to be taken seriously and emphasize the physical power of the female body. To make it look good, you have to deliver, dance-wise. I’m not really delivering in the previous video from Provence, it's just barely ok, but I’m fine with that. I will one day. Lena does.

I encourage you to click through to the video and watch the whole thing, but with particular attention to the walk from 01:58, ending with the "Wonder Woman" turn from 02:17 to 02:27. Why would you watch any stage show when you could watch that?

She dances basically the same style and technique as Carlitos, but it looks totally different because her body is totally different, and this look reveals that difference instead of replacing and concealing it with another, artificial one.

The problem with this style is that although it's not remotely masculine, and it also looks great, it is still read as a leading look. It’s also just not what I’d most like to follow in. The problems can be overcome, up to a point, by changing shoes, but it puts too much on the shoes, practically speaking. If I really want to spend half my time following (or more), in most social situations, I need to do something more complicated.

The Mermaid

John William Waterhouse, The Mermaid (1901)

Nudity above and scales below: “It is really no wonder that women seeking a definitive costume in which to enact their definitive escape from such mythology should choose trousers … women have ordinary working legs, just like men (not … flashing under tinselly froth) … ” (Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits)

So I am often searching for a compromise:

If I wear a dress, I will get new dances as a follower. If not, I will mostly only get old ones. I will generally get new and old dances as a leader no matter what I wear, if conditions are otherwise good in the sense that there are plenty of people I want to dance with and they know enough to watch the floor and look for invitations, and provided I can get the first one.

I want an outfit that looks like a dress to the men, feels like a dress to me, in the sense of formal, glamorous and appealing (complex and questionable concepts I don’t have time to unpack in a 15 minute talk or in an overlong blog post), but at the same time gives me a unified outline, looks 'right' with both heels and flat shoes (2), and steps away from the Mundial look, because the Mundial look mostly does my head in.

Recovering 'femininity" in mermaid trousers

Milonga with Andreas Wichter
at Abrazos 2017. Click through
for video (3) © Matthew Cooper

Ballet slippers. © the author

This outfit is a pretty good compromise, but not the final word. I have this in black, in purple and silver, and in peacock blue and green, with or without midriff exposure.

It's extremely comfortable and cool to wear, and the rather 1910s shape works well on my figure. It looks relatively serious, but can be very colourful. It looks equally complete and harmonious with heels and with ballet slippers - just not with my 'good' leading shoes.

It even has pockets. They're concealed between hip and knee,  and are more than adequate for a tissue and, if necessary, my glasses.

I feel totally comfortable following, and pretty good leading. It’s what I wear at festivals where following is a priority for me, but I will still want to lead.

Men understand that they can invite me, but they still think they need to look at the shoes – and indeed, sometimes this is exactly what I want.

I do change shoes, but not always. And here, we get beyond how I decide what to wear, into how I decide what to do. I wear this look when that decision is going to be made on the fly, and is going to be difficult. I decide who I want to dance with - both partner and role - based on availability, partner, and music. That's a lot to fit in to a few seconds, but it can be done. Each person has a different feeling depending on the role as well as the music.

For other occasions, I find that I now usually wear some sort of ‘leading lady’ look; unless I’ve made a decision to sacrifice dances as a lead to the waiting-around time required to get dances as a follower, for instance because it’s my first visit to a place and I’m going “undercover”. (4)

So, when I get dressed to dance, I am usually embodying some sort of compromise. How complicated the decision is depends on many things, including the time and the place, who else will be there, my self-expression, their possible interpretations, how I feel about the event, and how I feel about whatever I am doing. The process of creating my solutions over time is a constant and stimulating artistic endeavour. 

Dressing as a man, in (almost) exactly what (some of) the women wear

“ ... trousers and tailoring and short hair are now wholly female in themselves … it follows that current male clothes have less of a uniquely masculine meaning even when men wear them … during the second half of the twentieth century, women finally took over the total male scheme of dress, modified it to suit themselves, and have handed it back to men charged with immense new possibilities.” (Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits)

Signing off, I’d like to reflect and remark for a moment on what the men do. I’ll show you my two friends here (both of whom follow socially a lot) and point out that what they are wearing is very stylish, but nothing like the men’s “Mundial” look. They are both just very well-dressed; with lots of personality, but no eccentricity. And as far as my observation goes, that's true of almost all the men who actually get dances as followers at the kinds of events I go to. And I find, when I honestly reflect, that it is exactly what gets my attention if I want to lead them.

What we actually see on men in social dancing – not just those who follow – is a riot of colour, texture, and interesting detail. Floral prints, contrasting piping, bright linings, stripes, suede, snake-skin, colourful shoes – I’ve seen hologram glitter – night-time satin shirts, tailored “milonguero trousers” with complex construction and flattering unnecessary seams, bright bits of pocket lining, embroidery, and a special extra pocket for the fan. The women are much more likely to wear smooth and unified black.

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Footnotes
(1) If you want one, ask me and I'll get you a referral code for modest discount. If you are a woman, it's best to ring them up and request the internal pockets, rather than just order online, but it doesn't cost any more. 
(2) The questions of how clothes look "right" or "wrong", and what that really means, is extensively discussed by Hollander in Seeing Through Clothes, in which she treats it as an aspect of the history of Western visual art. I am not sure that the conclusions are fully supported by the evidence, but I found it full of beautiful and inspiring ideas. 
(3) If you click through this video you may notice the leader in front of Andreas and me, whose solution to the same problem is different from mine.
(4) Reflecting as I edit for the blog, there's definitely something that I haven't unpacked about the connection between femininity and youthfulness, and how that creates a tension with what looks 'right' for leading. There are lots of trousers that are wholly feminine, but specifically not youthful. We might say that both split skirts and skinny jeans, when worn by a woman, are both youthful and feminine because they expose the knees; however, the aesthetics and physical requirements of the dance generally suggest that the motion of the leader's knees should be somewhat heavily glossed over. All types of harem trousers, and a lot of lamé, could be seen as sidestepping the conceptual youthfulness of female knees. I don't know what the answer is, for the present. Maybe it's a basque, or something.

Following and information

Having the opportunity to learn to follow before attempting to lead - which women do by social right, and men once did for practical reasons - is not only a matter of having better information than someone who comes to it 'cold'.

It also allows you to solve about 90% of the big physical problems of posture, axis, embrace, balance, coordination, control of momentum, cognition and proprioception, before you start worrying about any of the much smaller number of problems that are specific to leading. 

For me, leading is mostly just one quite challenging problem, which is training my brain to perceive and command a lot of quite complex and unexpected movements that my body can already easily do. And solving that one problem gets slowly but steadily easier with practice. 

Most of the other problems are relatively straightforward, when taken in isolation from the problems that are common to both leading and following. You can focus properly on the specific problems and solve them without confusion.

Another benefit is that you have already developed an accurate idea of what you might want to do, and why, which makes you unlikely to waste much time on classes that are not useful. I don't bother learning to lead anything I don't personally like to follow.

A third is that you have access to good followers and are in a state where you can avoid annoying them, if you have any trace of sense, and repay their investment in you quickly. 

And a fourth is that, with luck, you may also have found, or even become part of, one or more communities where the leaders behave nicely on the dancefloor rather than some combination of charging about like ants on coke, wrestling and pouting. This will reduce the stressful side, and also give you access to crucial information.

All these are blessings. But if you learn to follow well and then start leading and take it seriously, you damn well ought to be better than average in a couple of years, or you're doing it wrong.

Teeny!

Sometimes people take video clips of tango events I travel to. And occasionally, like everyone else, I can see glimpses of myself dancing, in between other couples.

If I see myself leading, which is rare enough for me not to be used to it, the one thing that really hits me is how TINY I am.

Now, this could be partly in relation to my partners. I usually (not always) change into flat shoes if I want to lead, and most (not all) of the women I dance with usually (not always) wear about a 7cm heel for following. I am about 166cm tall, which when I look it up turns out to be two to four centimetres taller than average for an English woman. The women I dance with vary a lot in height, but most of the time their heels will prevent them looking much smaller than me. And I am rather lightly built, so I don't look like much of anything from a distance.

But I don't think that's what makes me look tiny. What does that is the contrast in size and bulk of us as a couple, with the other couples led by men. And that's something I simply never think about, and am never aware of, until I see it.

I am like a little dog that doesn't know what "small" is.

On sports car metaphors

Trud on a metaphor often used thoughtlessly:

The video (which up till now has been shared 500+ times) is meant for fun, yet it reminded me that it still exists, this idea that “a good follower is like a sports car”. Ok, I can see why “sports car” could sound like a compliment. I mean - quality and exclusivity and generally being the object of desire for most guys? C’mon, you’d be stupid not to want to be viewed like this. There’s just one problem with the metaphor: a car does not have a mind of its own. It doesn’t even have a brain. And for following, you need a brain.

I agree and disagree, for different reasons.

I completely concede that most women are likely to understand this metaphor as referring to an inanimate object that looks pretty, serves someone's vanity or pleasure, and has no other meaning. Because the world of sports cars - as often the case with STEM fields in general - is likely to be seen as unwelcoming to them, they will not have in mind any of what the car really represents.

But, for reasons particular to me, my default interpretation of 'sports car' is not, and never has been, a scaled-up designer handbag driven by a prat in shades. These do exist, of course, and they may well be what people have in mind when the metaphor is used. But I don't have to interpret any metaphor the way the speaker has in mind. Instead, I interpret it as a car designed for sport, that is, to win races.

Secondly, a racing car is much more than an inanimate object. It did not grow as it is, like a plant or an animal, or erode like a mountain. It is a made thing, made by people. Nor is it made to serve the driver; it is made to serve their mutual purpose of unreasonable speed. The two are made and chosen, respectively, for that alone.

If you think about what and who is really represented by that physical object, you will see something between a few hundred and several thousand people. The numerous highly skilled workers who made all the pieces, put them together and kept them in perfect working order; the enormous logistical effort; the trackside operation from the team principal, to the race engineer, to the fifteenth mechanic; and significant numbers of people with centuries' collective knowledge and experience of complex technology and critical engineering, materials science, physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics, electronics, computer science, and so on. I once briefly dated a guy who wrote scientific papers at a famous university about how the tyres worked. That's the kind of brain-power you need to put a racecar on the road, even a bad one. Driving is a skilled job, but it takes a lot more than that level of skill, dedication, or talent, to make a racecar.

I do not argue for one moment that anyone who uses this metaphor actually means it this way. I do not recommend using this metaphor. It's more likely to be understood as crushing and alienating, than not.

However, don't tell me that a racing car doesn't "have" a brain. While trivially true, it is also total nonsense. It has hundreds, and most of them are probably pretty good ones. And if someone uses this metaphor to you, I invite you to understand it my way.

Leading and photos

I have noticed this year that the number of photos people take of me leading seems out of all proportion to the amount of time I spend leading, compared to following. I might lead only five or six tandas in a three-day festival where I hardly sat down, but four of them get photographed. At home I might lead half my tandas, but I'm still much more likely to get photographed leading. So if you looked at my facebook feed, you would have the impression that I lead much more of the time than I actually do. Why?

Obviously, almost every photograph of someone leading necessarily includes their partner as well, so I don't think it's possible that leaders as a group are more likely to be photographed than followers as a group. Nearly every picture clearly shows both. Yet, my personal chances of appearing in the pictures from a given event seem to go up suprisingly if I lead.

It's possible that I look better leading (my face is more visible and more animated), and I am therefore a more tempting subject. I certainly tend to like the pictures of me leading. If so, then, a photographer who is not trying to photograph everyone is more likely to choose me, rather than someone else, when I am leading as opposed to when I am following.

It's possible that everyone, considered as an individual, is a more tempting subject when they're leading, just because the follower's face is often hidden and the face is the most visually interesting and expressive part of any human. So that anyone who dances both roles is more likely to be photographed when leading. I think, if so, this means there should also be more multiple shots of the same leader with different partners than there are of the same follower with different partners, becaues the photographer is selecting leaders rather than followers.

It's possible that the whole thing is an illusion because I don't see all the photos of me following; some of those that don't show my face don't get identified as me, even though from the photographer's point of view they are photographs of the couple as a whole. Although nearly all the photos that show me will be seen and tagged by someone who knows me, Facebook, which is the primary tool used to communicate these things, intermittently makes it difficult to tag the back of someone's head, and people may not think it worthwhile to try.

It's possible that a woman leading seems worth photographing in itself because it's unusual. I wouldn't assume this, as it's not actually very unusual. But I would be interested to know if a man's chances of being photographed go up even more dramatically if he follows, that being so much less usual and therefore more interesting.

It could be a combination of all these, or something more complicated and subtle that affects the photographer's choices and their understanding and interpretation of what they see. Most of the people who take photographs at tango events are dancers themselves who understand very well what they are seeing, but some are not, and there may be a difference.

Any data in the comments, please. I have no problem with any of this. I just think it's intriguing.

Death to toxic inane sexist talk

Here's a quote which my friend Trud related on Facebook (it's not on her blog) from a follower technique class. She said the class was a very good one and during it the teacher said this:

“Don’t make it easy for the leaders! If you do whatever they want, even if they’re being lazy with their lead, you’re spoiling them.”

The reason Trud quoted this is that she approves of women being encouraged to focus on the quality of their own dance in class. I agree that that's a good thing to do. I don't agree that this does it.

No. What the teacher said is sexist and inane. Saying it at all conveys an unambiguous message to the women that quality in their dance exists to serve the man's, and is not worth attention for its own sake. Which is false, and toxic.

Nobody ever says to the men "Don't heave the followers around with your arms, it will stop them learning to follow". People say "Don't heave them around, it doesn't feel nice (which is bad dancing)". They say "Don't heave them around, you might hurt them (which is bad dancing)". But "Don't heave them around, you're spoiling them so they don't have to follow"? No. Nobody thinks they need to encourage a man's efforts in working on his dance by reminding him how they will improve the quality of someone else's. That would be pointless, because quality in his dance justifies the effort by itself, and he's there to work on his own dance. Whereas the women, apparently, are unpaid class assistants, automatically qualified as such because their own dance is so trivial there is no difference between qualified and not.

And then teachers who constantly remind the women how they can help the men "too", telling themselve they're just mentioning it as a kind of icing on the cake, wonder why the women dance like mice. Because you told them to, and you're contradicting yourself when you tell them to dance like tigers. The message you're not conscious of, that tells us what your beliefs are about our place in the world, will always come through more strongly, because unconcious messages are the ones people really believe. Otherwise they wouldn't give them. Because, by definition, they're not giving them on purpose.

By all means, actively and consciously recognise that women are often brought up to believe that they are there to serve and that every goal and effort must be justified and excused in terms of how it serves someone else. By all means bear this in mind, and how it drains effort and quashes ambition. But challenge it, don't affirm and reinforce it.

Tell the women to dance well. Tell them how to dance well. Tell them to make it a personal ambition, and not to betray it. Treat following as dancing. Take it seriously as something difficult and rewarding that can be done well or badly. Take it for granted that dancing well, by definition, serves everyone it is supposed to serve, and principally the dancer. Talk as though you believe that dancing the best you can is a valid, satisfying and worthy goal for anyone, an adequate justification for persistent effort, that can be allowed to stand alone. Do that by allowing it to stand alone. Refrain from talking as though you don't believe it.

People say this sort of thing all the time, it's persistent and pervasive, it has always annoyed me, from day one, and I ... would like to ask that teachers stop it.

When you hear yourself saying "Don't anticipate or guess, because it's bad dancing and it doesn't do the leaders any good either", just stop after the "dancing". Or, if the sentence still feels somehow painfully incomplete, forgive yourself for feeling like that, and then replace the missing part with something useful, and say "Don't anticipate or guess, because it's bad dancing and you are here to improve your dance, so concentrate hard on whatever happens and do exactly what you feel every time. Pay attention to small differences, which will make you get better. If you don't know what to do, ask for help."

Forgive yourself for having the stupid, toxic assumptions culture and society have put on you. Then kill them.

Leading FAQ

As these actually are, unlike most "FAQs", somewhat FA, I thought I might as well write down my current answers.

Why do you lead?
I like good dancing, I enjoy working on my dance, and I want to dance with the women as well. They're great. I was also really curious to find out what it felt like.

Do you find you keep trying to go the wrong way and do everything the wrong way round?
Yes, at first, but it wears off quickly. Having other people around seems to sort it out. Doing the mirror-image of whatever I was trying to do, also seems to be less common with time. The more I practice, the better I can visualise whatever it is I want to do.

Do you have a hard time remembering to keep your eyes open?
Yes, at first! But this also wears off very quickly.

How does it affect your following?
It's made it better. The very first thing it did, the first time I tried it, was tune me into the music a bit differently. The next thing was to give me confidence as a follower, because you discover what you've been doing right, especially just how magic it feels if you follow well and move well. When I started doing it more seriously, it improved my technique, making me stronger and better grounded. After a bit more practice, I started to learn how good the women are, and what that actually means, and what it feels like when they really start to get into it, which is enchanting. And I also find it improves my concentration and frees me from the pressure to do too much and try too hard as a follower; I usually feel in myself that I am dancing better just after I've been leading.

That's so brave!?
If you're already a good follower, and then you start leading and taking it seriously, you just have to accept that you're going to go back to not being very good for a while. You had the privilege of learning to follow first, which saves a lot of work. But it's still a lot of work; so if you want to do it, and you have the opportunity, you do it, and if you don't specially want to do it, you don't bother. The men seem to manage it.

How do the men react?
I have yet to encounter any negative reaction from anyone, male or female. The men I regularly dance with as a follower have without exception been enthusiastically encouraging, and they are often interested to hear my perspective and experiences as well as share their own. I have also found it's a real and particular pleasure to share the floor amicably with someone as a fellow leader and then later dance with him for the first time. Sometimes - often - they make some pleasant remark about having seen me leading.

How do you find the floorcraft?
Some places are obviously much harder than others. It does take practice, especially to avoid getting too close to the couple in front. I started out at emptier times and places.  It takes miles on the clock to be able to deal with the cognitive load of leading, responding to the follower, and keeping track of where other couples are and how they are moving. That's one reason why there is always so much you can do in practice that you can't do in the milonga. If the floor is chaotic and stressful and generally hard to deal with, my technique will be weaker and I'll make a lot more errors, my improvisation will be much more repetitive, and I'll deal with it much less gracefully if I accidentally do something I didn't know how to do.

In some places, it's very difficult, and in others it's easy, but I find I can deal with it; better or worse depending on the difficulty level.

Do you always lead?
No, it depends on the situation. To some milongas I go to to lead, to some milongas I go to follow, to some milongas I go to do both. In that case, I usually start the milonga leading, then switch, and sometimes at that point I will change my 'look' in more than just the shoes. Sometimes I decide when I get there.

Which do you prefer?
Supposing other things to be equal, I usually say that I prefer following because I'm much better at it. I don't think I have enough experience at leading to say whether one is more fun that the other under ideal conditions. I'm finding leading very addictive, perhaps because I've had less experience, and therefore improvement with work is so much more noticeable. The process of discovery is also fun in itself. And the social side is fascinating. At the moment, I'd say that they are very different states of mind and it is a bit like saying whether I prefer steak or icecream. It depends on so many things. Equality is not equivalence.

Approach to Leading

Since about January 2014 I've been taking my leading more seriously. I was curious, and wanted to dance with the women as well. They're great. So that meant I needed to choose an approach to how I was going to do that.

I have had a lot of education and I know a lot about how I learn. If I take a class as a leader, with not much experience of leading, then I will spend 99% of my time and effort trying to work out what the teacher wants me to do. Physical actions that you cannot already do yourself are very difficult to comprehend visually. It takes a lot of time and repetition. Actions you can already do, intentionally not just physically, are easy to comprehend.

This is true even in high quality classes. If the class covers something I can't already do, I'll be very lucky indeed if I ever get to work on that thing in any meaningful way.

For basic classes, there's also the problem that I'll be dancing with beginners, which is fine for an enjoyable dance if you already have the skill-set for it as a leader, but is extremely inefficient for learning.

I've also already taken a lot of classes, in which I paid attention and stored the information which I'd never have been able to remember if I'd been trying to lead at the same time. Most classes are, in my experience, much more potentially useful to the followers than the leaders, even - and often, especially - the kind where they don't really talk to the followers at all. I say potentially, because you have to think about what's happening to get the best out of them. But as a follower switching partners, you get the opportunity to really listen, plus lots of great practice and reliable experimental data.

As an experienced follower learning to lead, I already know what I should be doing, what I can do, what I can't do, and what I want to learn. I also have a lot of friends who are really good followers, and who are willing to help me out, and in some cases are doing the same thing themselves, so we can swap.

When I have access to a suitable floor and a suitable person to practice with, I want to spend 100% of my time putting in the miles and the physical effort and experimentation that's necessary to go from knowing it to doing it and understanding it. If you have a full time job and you dance socially as well, practice time with a floor and the motivation and a good follower is a scarce resource.

But I still need to decide what to do in each session.

Everybody knows that collecting moves doesn't work; the right approach is to work on skills. If you have the skills then the moves are not a problem, you just do them. If you don't have the skills then you can learn moves, but you'll be faking them and it will show. But - you work on skills by doing some particular movement. And there is absolutely no substitute for dancing in the milonga.

So, from about this time last year, I've been making sure I lead sometimes in social dancing, practicing, and studying.

Studying? Yes. Since I started dancing, there has been an explosion of high quality videos of high quality dancing. I can download the ones I find useful from YouTube using something like savefrom.net, put them in my secondhand tablet, and study them on the Underground on the way to and from work. I can watch people do things and try to deduce how they're done.

So, my approach is to work on a skill if I know exactly what it is that I need next, and can work on it in isolation. I always have in mind some overall idea of what skills I am currently working on; what it is that my body needs to get the hang of.

But when deciding where to start in a practice session, I can pick something from a video that I want to do and can't do, watch it over and over on the Tube and try to imagine how it functions, and when I actually have a partner in front of me I can try to do it. Normally, it won't work at the first attempt. We can then both try to find out why not, or find some part of it or some related thing that does work. Then I can go away and watch again, armed with this new information, and I will probably discover what I misunderstood or what skill was missing and has to be learned first, before whatever this is will work. Often, I find that I totally misunderstood what was happening; I've sometimes been doing a mirror-image. Then I can try it again next time I have access to a partner to practice with. Something, even if it's not what I aimed for, will click that time or next time. If not, I can work on something else and come back to it later. By repeating this process, I will almost always learn something, and whatever it was has a decent chance of staying learned.

Another thing videos are useful for is seeing different approaches to music. I might have danced a certain orchestra with someone who hears it one way, and liked it, but then find that that approach just doesn't work for me as a leader. I may find a video with an equally good one, that does. Or I may find a video with a particular orchestra that suggests a more practical, achievable or floor-friendly way of dancing it than my first instinctive response.

One thing I've really noticed is that as I learn more movements as a leader, it becomes easier to comprehend visually what other people are doing. I recognise more and more elements of what I see. I spot movements that it would not have occurred to me to make, and how they are being used. Suddenly I realise which different things are really the same, or have something in common.

Once I can already fairly easily do most things in the class, only then does it become possible to take the class without feeling that it's a complete waste of time. Most of the time, though, they aren't my best opportunity for progress.

The process is also a ton of fun. I enjoy doing it myself far too much to pay someone else to help me, beyond advice and feedback if I get stuck with technique. Although that doesn't mean I don't want to hear people's thinking and different descriptions of how they do things. I do. You can learn a lot from the differences and the common ground.

Thirteen Tango Terms for Beginners

I have a very dear friend who wants to learn to dance tango. She will, or should, encounter some concepts to do with basic technique. But sometimes in the social complexity of classes, these ideas get lost, or disconnected from any explanation of what they mean. And these are the kinds of things you need to get working well so that you can dance easily and happily with other people, and express yourself and find your own dance without hurting yourself or anyone else. You need this information to solve whatever problems you are having, and not waste time.

So, I've collected them here for her. I've ended up putting them in alphabetical order, because they all go together, so it makes at least as much sense as anything else. I'm not going to tell you how to achieve them; you should get someone who can already do this stuff and can see you, dance with you, and give you feedback, to help you with that.

Axis

Axis means that your partner can easily find a vertical line through your body about which it is possible for you to turn without going off balance. Like the axis of the Earth. To show yourself what it means, stand with both feet on the ground but your weight on just one of them, the other leg relaxed, and get someone to twirl you around on the spot. A good 'axis' means it is easy to do this and you don't fall over. If you stick one hip out to the side and make your axis curved, you'll find it's much harder. But the line is flexible and springy, like bamboo, not rigid.

Axis is equally important for leading and following. The line is what gives the follower neutral, accurate, racing-car steering, without understeer or oversteer or pulling to one side. It makes the leader easy to follow accurately.

Connection

Connection means, for example, that if you are led to step directly into the leader, you will do so. If half a step is led and then stopped, you will follow it half way, and stop. If you are standing with your feet apart and some weight on each one, you will stay there until led to bring them together and put the weight on one of them - and you will pass through all the percentages in-between. Connection means you can be led to change weight from foot to foot, one toe at a time. It means you follow what's actually led. Sometimes that won't be what was intended, and that's fine. Connection is a really good thing. Some people say it's the essence of tango. It means that your attention is continuously with your partner and not with (for example) spectators. One of the biggest challenges for the more experienced follower is managing to avoid learning rules, habits, technical work-arounds, and catalogues of stereotypical movements that cut off other options and destroy the ability to follow what's actually led, especially anything new or unexpected.

Connection mainly comes up in relation to following, but it goes both ways - the leader needs to be listening to the follower's body too. It means paying attention to what your partner is actually doing in the moment, and being open to it, not stuck in your own mental catalogue. And all the other techniques mentioned here go towards making that possible and successful.

Dissociation

Dissociation means the ability to point your bottom (back or front) towards the direction of travel while still keeping your torso towards, and connected to, your partner. That means the ability and willingness to twist in the middle whenever you need to do so, just as much as necessary.

Dissociation is equally important for leader and follower. It gives you accurate steering and freedom of movement.

Embrace

Embrace means you have an embrace that feels nice and works well. The basic, characteristic, close embrace for social tango has the torsos in contact and each partner within the arm of the other, rather like an affectionate hug; it can be tighter or looser, and more or less mobile, and there are lots of variations but no real rules. There are also open variations (with less contact) that some people use and others don't, either to make various things easier to do, or for practice, or just because they enjoy the feeling of bringing it in and out. The same person will often use several variations, minor or major, depending on who they are dancing with. It's not like competition ballroom dancing where there's a refined, prescribed look with specific hand positions.

Embrace is equally important for leader and follower. Whether you need a wide range of different skills, or you're only really going to use the close version, depends on your situation and your preferences.

Floorcraft

Floorcraft means having a good relationship with the other couples around you on the dance floor, sharing the space positively and not bumping into them. Although it's principally the leaders' job, the follower can screw it up royally by doing stupid things or being uncontrolled or difficult to steer. For the beginner leader, you already know how to walk along a crowded pavement or platform, or across a pub, mostly without bumping anyone, even in quite tricky situations. So you have two main challenges - integrating your partner into that, and avoiding learning any bad habits that cut off your perception of those around you, limit your choices of where to go next, or put you off balance or out of control. You'll also learn what situations to avoid, and how to cooperate with others.

Following

Following pretty much means just that. It's basically the same mental process as following someone on a rapid, zigzag path through a crowded shopping centre without needing to hold their hand. It's something you decide to do; it has nothing to do with guessing what they want, and they don't even have to know you are there. You go wherever you need to go to stay with your partner, only from in front. The power do to this at a basic level whenever you want, comes for free with being a human, or indeed a duckling fresh out of the egg. In a partner dance we practice, extend, and refine it to build connection on top of it, and then do far more with it than you could reasonably have imagined was possible.

If you have taken at least one lesson, you should be able to successfully follow weight changes, walks, and sidesteps with a more experienced dancer who you've never met. If not, something has gone wrong. And nothing you do later should take away this ability.

If you mainly lead, doing some following gives you a chance to solve some problems one at a time that you'd otherwise have to tackle all at once, and also to find out which problems are most worth your attention.

Free leg

Your free leg is the leg you aren't putting weight on right now. Being 'free' means it's free to move, and perhaps swing. So that means it's relaxed where it joins to the hip, rather than being held in a particular position, give or take some friction with the floor. The consequence is that your partner can feel where that leg is through the connection with you (try it).

It's important for both partners, but it's more obvious for following, because the leader can cause it to move without the follower doing any more than allowing it - this can produce some amazing movements which you will never see on Strictly Come Dancing. The leader having a free leg is less obvious, but makes everything more stable and clear.

Grounded

Grounded means you feel as though it would be very difficult to push you over. At first, you might think of this as like having "good balance" (I certainly did) but it isn't. You can balance in a position where it's easy to push you over. Being grounded is having habits in the way you move so that you don't get in such positions unless you want to.

Grounding is equally important for leader and follower, but leaders may need more of it more urgently. If you're leading and you're not grounded, you're likely to bump into other people, even if the follower has no problems. If you're following, and you're not grounded, then you may be out of control and difficult to steer. If you're well grounded, you can compensate quite a bit if your partner isn't, but it's hard work.

Heavy

Heavy means it's really hard work to move you at all. It has nothing to do with your physical size, but you feel like a fridge. Your partner will get a sore back, hips, knees, ankles, arms or shoulders. It's a very bad thing, as it means dancing with you can cause significant injury. People may also say someone is 'heavy' or 'a little heavy' when they only mean the connection is not working that well for some reason. In that case it's not so dangerous.

It mostly comes up in relation to following, but it's also possible for the leader to stand or move in such a way as to hurt their partner physically. When you make changes, check.

Leading

Leading is making use of the fact that another human being has decided to follow you, in order to create a partner dance. As soon as they make that decision and start acting on it, you can already lead at a minimal level. You learn how to do it better, practice it, refine it, and find out what you can do with it. It's crazy how much you can do with it together.

If you mainly follow, doing some leading is very illuminating and helps you prioritise; it may also give you more confidence in the things you are doing right as a follower.

Light

"Light" means you are easy to move. Being easy to move is not just being grounded and not heavy - it also has to do with connection. "Too light" means you tend to get away from your partner in an uncontrolled way. But exactly how "light" different people are varies naturally and there isn't just one perfect spot that's the same for everyone.

Lightness mostly applies to following.  But if you are leading and someone says you are too light, it might mean the follower can't detect where you are going at all.

Musicality

Musicality means you are really listening and moving with the music. You have dynamics. It's not just that you follow what's led or that you move on the beat; the way you move, sharply, softly, swooshily, smoothly or not, and so on, always expresses what you are hearing and how you are feeling it. Each partner can feel the other doing this, and respond. So your attention to each other is mediated through the music, and the music is mediated into the dance through your attention to each other (and often, in the leader's case, to people around you) - they are working like one thing.

Musicality is equally important for leader and follower, but it tends to be discussed a lot more in relation to leading. This is because the leader has to decide what to do - whether the next step will be slow or quick - and learning how to do that and be on the beat takes a lot of time and attention. As a result, the women can often end up thinking that their own musicality is some sort of ornamental extra that has to be stuck on top of the leader's dance, like icing on a cake - and that it's necessary to stop moving and break the connection so they can take their turn. You can probably tell I think that's a terrible way of looking at it. You want to be on the beat, yes, but it's important to think of musicality in terms of how you move all the time, how you both do everything you are doing, and how that feels in the connection, not just when you step. That's what makes someone actually feel musical to their partner.

Posture

Posture has its normal meaning. But it's what creates lightness, heaviness, axis, grounding, and a successful embrace. So it's a good place to look if you are having trouble with anything on this list.

If you are working on any of the above, directly or indirectly, then you probably aren't wasting your time in class. If you find that one of them is the reason why whatever you are trying to do doesn't work, then you have learned something useful. 

There are lots of recreational arguments in tango, but none of the above is particularly controversial. Some people talk and think about this stuff a lot; some do it occasionally; others just hate the idea of thinking about what they're doing at all.

I have not dealt with manners in social dancing. That's for another day.

What I'm aiming for is to be useful and practical for people with no previous knowledge, in a range of communities. If you can get most of this stuff working to an ok-ish level, then you can reasonably expect (at least if you also like the music) to be getting lots of practice and to be well on the way to "dancing very nicely". Then you can take it as far as you like.