Women leading

[Charles Roques <Crrtango @AOL.COM>]

Since most of the responses will be pro on this subject I will interject some
con to enliven the discussion.

My experience is that women do not learn to follow better by learning to
lead. They just learn something about leading. Their following stays the
some. At least they don't show it in their dancing with me or in their
technique as I observe it. Most bounce too much and lead with their arms. The
ones who are good dancers to begin with may learn something, and they should
if they are going to teach it, but the ones who are still having problems
continue to have them. Now they have added even more things to have problems
with. Dancing with each other, either men or women, is fine and if you have
fun doing it then go right ahead but if you are using it for a didactic tool
and shortcut to improve your dancing it won't work. And asking each other
about how they have improved is like preaching to the choir. Let the leaders
be the judge of that. By the same token there are plenty of men who have
learned to improve their leading, quite impressively sometimes, but whose
overall technique and form are still very awkward. Many aspects of the dance
are interrelated but refining one won't necessarily improve the other.
There is also an historical misperception about men leading men. During the
golden age of tango and before, men practiced together mainly because
respectable women weren't allowed out to practice. Men didn't have much
choice. They wanted to impress the women when they did go to the milongas so
they had to practice together. But now in our modern age it is no longer
necessary to practice with each other because it is easy to practice with
women and vice versa.

Most people just don't want to put in the required practice and miles of
walking and following needed to become a good dancer. They would rather
resort to watching videos, taking privates, changing teachers every few
months, taking every workshop that comes to town ( not so bad in some places
but here in New York we have workshops almost bi-weekly) and learning the
partners part instead of doing the boring hard work of practicing the basic
steps. You don't perfect back ochos and molinetes by learning to lead, you
perfect them by practicing them, for months and years, not a few weeks of
classes.

Many "modern" women are uncomfortable about men having all the "control" in a
dance. I personally find the exchange of lead and follow just another gimmick
to sell videos.

If a class is short on one gender or the other than mix it up and give
everyone the opportunity to learn the material but don't assume that by
learning the other part that you will be improving. You will be only adding
more material that you will need to practice, at the expense of the material
that you no longer practice very much because you are too busy with the new
stuff. It's like people who learn too many steps too fast (most people).
Their technique never improves but they build up a huge vocabulary of badly
executed steps.

Cheers,
Charles Roques

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