The Shortened Side Step. The Follower’s Molinete in one respect it has become the staple of the dance due to the fact that the dance is no longer a walking dance but rather a turning dance. This, aspect, is due in part to the fact that the Ronda (the line of dance) no longer moves, it hesitates, it hovers. As such is the case, we have become students not of the walk, but of the Follower’s Molinete and the Lead’s Giro in Open and Close Embrace. More the Close Embrace variety more than anything else. And so that we hit all the hot spots here, that idea of Close Embrace is in an Open Vee, Closed Vee, Pseudo, Berlin, and/or Square Embrace format. In any and/or all of these varieties of the Embrace the Follower’s Molinete and the Lead’s Giro is the staple or go to turn. Even though there are 7 other types (Milonguero Turn, Ocho Cortado – Circular or Linear, Single Axis, Colgada Turns, Rock Steps, Walking Turns, and Calesitas.) that we want to use to create a little bit of variety with our dance on multiple levels. Not just from a vocabulary standing but from a musical interpretation position. But that’s a horse of a different color for another day. As it stands with the Follower’s Molinete there is a huge or monster issue that happens in that turn that is created by 4 separate issues that create a less than desirable experience for both Lead AND for the Follower. Before we get to those 4 issues. So without further yappage, the Follower’s Shortened Side Step.
What is the Follower’s Shortened Side Step ? It’s exactly what it sounds like, it’s a side step that is much, much smaller. By default when we’re performing the Follower’s Molinete (as Followers) you may have been told early on by various and sundry teachers that we want to create evenly sized steps. The reason for this is really simple: Predictability! That predictability is, so we are told, a way for the Lead to be able to rely on the consistency of your steps as a Follower. They require it. They need it. They can’t possibly dance any other way. That’s not true by the way. There is another way which Tango Topics teaches and promotes, and that’s Intention Based Dancing. Part of the goal of Intention Based Dancing is to create a hyper-awareness in the dancer so that they can and should be able to ‘feel’ via their nervous system the small and seemingly imperceptible changes that can occur in someone’s posture, body position, body placement, weight position, foot position, foot placement. And in ‘listening’ to those cues we can surmise where someone’s body is in space and time and then enact Newton’s 3rd Law of Thermodynamics in real time! So the Follower’s Shortened Side Step is really a side step that allows for a Lead to have not only predictability but also gives control back to the Follower. Control ? You see in this entire discussion of the Follower’s Side Step of their Molinete, they’ve lost control over their choices. They’ve been told this is how things are supposed to be done, when in fact they have oodles of choices. Lots really. This idea of the Shortened Side Step is just one of them.
About The Video. This video is 10m:51s in length in 2 sections. Lead causes and then Follower Technique is shown in the video only. There is virtually no Lead Instruction in this video.
Today’s Tango Topic is for the Lead. It is for the Lead that wants to see a few tango habits that they may not be aware of. It is for the Lead that is on a pathway towards greater and greater physiological and kinesthetic awareness. It is for the advancing Lead that wants to create a dancing experience that is extremely desirable for their Followers and really for the entire room. If this sounds like you, then read on. If not, then don’t bother with this stuff. Honestly. It’s a complete waste of your time. And no we’re not kidding. Why ? Because what’s above and below is about what some call minutiae, or nitpicking, or being a Tango Perfectionist. And for those that just want to have a ‘fun’ time out social dancing, then these things, as far as you’re concerned are a complete and utter waste of your time. So don’t bother reading any further. There are cute cat videos that await your attention on Facebook that you haven’t seen today.
Also what’s contained in the video above, and what’s in the article below has absolutely NOTHING to do with Follower Technique in any way, shape, or form. There’s no information here for the role of the Follower. However, that doesn’t mean that the Follower should tune out, in fact ideally we want the Follower to tune in here. Why ? So that they can recognize these things when they happen and point them out during practicas and or private practice with their partners.
Today’s Tango Topic deals with 5 of the more common elements that happen for the Lead without involving the embrace. It should be noted that these are not the only things, it just means that we didn’t have time or space to include the entire list here or to shoot them all. To be clear, there are a host of things that a Lead needs to be conscious of in order to create a dance that is desirable. Like for instance:
and that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This listing is just a small taste and by no means the exhaustive list of things a lead has to be conscious of. Nor is the video above meant to be an exhaustive list, more like a brief reminder of things for you to consider.
That Said!…
From the Intensive Process comes Five Common Lead Errors that Tango Topics has pulled from its archives, reshot, retooled, and condensed into byte/bite-sized chunks for easy digestion. It is by no means going to change your dance. Not one little bit. In order for change will only occur, if you put the time in to actively take charge of your tango (re) education. And that means concerted, continuous, near daily reminders about the execution of technique, solo practice, private partner practice, private lessons, and social dancing. It means working on your foundation with clear, detailed, and intricately laid out instruction with oodles of visual, verbal, textual, and kinesthetic examples. Every. Single. Day.
These Five Elements, by themselves, won’t necessarily create a dance that’s unbearable or undesirable for most Followers, but over time, because we’re dealing with ingrained leading habit, these behaviors tend to repeat themselves so it is very possible for a lead to generate an experience that is marred by these things. Thereby creating an experience for the Follower that is less than desirable. 🙁 It should be noted that assuming if you just make these 5 changes that this is not going to improve your ability to dance. Nor will it improve the execution of your vocabulary. Nor will it improve how you hear the music. It will not improve your embrace, or your other habitual errors that you aren’t even aware of! The only way these things will change is with continued, concerted, and detailed study of your movements with a Qualified Instructor of The Intensive Process! These things will only clean up these errors but won’t fix the underlying problem (see the section the underlying problem below).
So without further adieu: Here are 5 Common Lead Errors.
1.) Stepping Away From The Standing Leg. This first topic is seemingly innocuous. Almost a throw away until you realize that where you step and how you step has monster implications and reactions on the embrace and how your partner embraces you. So put simply, this isn’t an innocuous topic, it’s probably one of the biggest issues on this list aside from the next one. How, and in this case WHERE we step is insanely important. There is a sweet spot to where we want to step. And while the video above shows you one example of where this comes out, what it doesn’t show you are all the places where this can and does occur. So here’s a list of those places off the top of our head: Hmmm….you see only a paying customer gets to see this list, and since you’re not one, not so much with that. However, here’s a tiny taste – Think of the Argentine Wrap and/or Argentine Gancho that if you don’t step into the right position things tend to go awry. We mention these two because they’re the more common places where these things come up. In any case, this is just a small example. But what the video doesn’t talk about is one reason why we want to fix this issue, and it’s the one we alluded to above. Because this can and will affect your embrace. The closer you are to the Follower’s standing foot, the easier the walk becomes. Most Leads tend to blame their Followers for their walk when in fact it’s the Lead’s foot placement that generates the issue of Follower stability for a variety of reasons. Either the Lead is too close, or too far away, which can and will create an instability in the Follower where they’ll either topple forwards or backward. It should be noted that sometimes we’re talking about an egregious amount of space away from the Follower’s standing leg, and sometimes we’re talking about more than a few millimeters.
The Sweet Spot ? As alluded to above there is a sweet spot, the ideal distance, as to where you want to step or place your feet from the Followers, as far as walking is concerned. However, seeing it done and doing it are only 2 pieces of the puzzle. For this stuff to be successful you need to develop your proprioception skills. So that you can feel where your feet are in relationship to the Follower’s at all times. You must be able to feel where the Follower’s weight is at all times. This too is part of the skill of Proprioception that you absolutely must develop and then deploy!
2.) Wandering Giro Center. First a little Spanish lessons: ‘Giro’ is the Spanish 1st person singular verb form, which when translated into English means “I turn”. However, when we apply this to Tango it means that “I LEAD a Turn”. Ok, not really but that’s sort of what it implies. 🙂 A ‘Giro’ is the Lead’s side of the equation of the Follower’s Molinete where the Lead is the center of the Follower’s Molinete, they typically act as the anchor to that Molinete or circle and the Follower revolves around them. So whats a “Wandering” Giro ? It’s the Lead’s side of the Follower’s Molinete but where the L/lead continually moves the center of the Molinete. And in doing so the Follower’s Molinete becomes oblong, construed, distorted and/or a boatload of work for the Follower to actually follow the leads.
Most Leads don’t realize that they’re wandering or moving the center of the circle, and thereby making the Follower work harder than they need to. Ideally as L/leads we want to stay over one point, however that may be somewhat challenging that you may not be aware of. The reason it’s challenging is because some Leads have their heads down or are watching their Follower’s feet in the turn to validate that the Follower is stepping in the right places. Ideally we don’t want to do this. This should be felt by means of the skill of Proprioception. However, knowing it and doing it, are two very different things. Still another reason has to do with the Lead’s posture and the dreaded ‘head-tilt’. Uuuugh. What’s happened is that the Lead’s sense of equilibrium is a little off due to the Head-Tilt, and so they ‘wander’ a bit in the turn. And sometimes, it’s not a physiological error, it’s a habitual error. They just do it because they don’t know any better.
The reality is that if the center of the circle moves even by a few millimeters, it will seemingly not create a problem. And that’s not the case. Those ‘few millimeters’ are magnified in degrees of the arc or the distance that the Follower has to cover in order to ‘catch up’ with their L/lead. Sometimes this turns into the Lazy Man’s Turn and/or Armpit Dancing! 🙁
3.) Stepping Into The Middle. This tiny little problem comes up in Sacadas, it’s where the Lead will step in the middle of the Follower’s feet, where they’re expecting a Sacada response (a leg displacement or a clean resolution displacement), and they’ll end up with one of 3 things (note: the video only notes 2 of them): 1.) The Follower ‘hears’ the Sacada step as a Wrap or Enganche. 2.) A sweeping Leg Displacement without a resolution (as shown). or 3.) [not shown in the video] A Rebounding Enganche where the Follower’s leg will rebound off the Lead’s and thereby create, by choice and habitual response, a small circular Boleo! This is not the Follower’s fault. It’s the Lead’s because the Lead is being wholly unclear in where they’re stepping. Sometimes due to the position of where they’re stepping, and thereby their leg placement, it can appear and feel a little intimately invasive, and the Sacada by definition should never be.
4.) The Unled/Led Ocho. This particular form of the Ocho is clearly an error. Most Leads start out leading a little bit of Disassociation when they’re leading Traveling Ochos, and then over time, slowly but certainly they realize that the Follower (once they’re trained to respond properly) that less and less and less and less physiological disassociation is required to get the same response out of the Follower. It’s like magic. And pretty soon before you know it, they’ve dropped it altogether. It’s right about this point that they start to use their hands and arms and push and pull a bit to get the same response. “If I push here/pull there…they ocho!”. While that may not be the conscious thought that happen in their heads, in the end it doesn’t matter. The L/lead stops actually leading their own Disassociation which results in Applied Disassociation (or what you erroneously think of as a ‘Pivot’) in the Follower. So as a result the Follower has to infer “Ummm oh wait, I’m supposed to ocho here because the Lead is pushing there/pulling there…”. They get used to every L/lead that they dance with exhibiting this kind of behavior so it becomes standard operating procedure for them. This is how the dance is supposed to happen.
Not. 🙁
Ideally we want the Lead to actually Lead their own disassociation, and to actually lead the Follower’s Ocho. Just as a side note, typically the Lead’s right side is almost never actually led. It’s the closed side of the embrace, and the one that’s inferred the most. The Lead (person) will sometimes lead (action) the left side of the embrace (open side), and think or believe that they’re rotating/disassociating on the right side of the embrace (closed side) when in fact they’re not.
So as a result of all of this not actually disassociating: The Follower Infers an Ocho. When in fact they shouldn’t Ocho at all.
5.) Blaming The Follower. This one is more psychological more than anything else. It’s where the Follower is led to do something and the Lead changes their mind quickly and does something else, and as a result the Follower has to magically read the Mind of the Lead that while they were feeling ‘X’ coming from their lead (the action), the were actually being led to ‘Y’, and then the Follower Apologizes to the Lead for missing the lead (action).
Say what ?
You read that right.
The Follower is apologizing to the Lead for the Lead’s mistake in the form of “I”m sorry for not being a mind reader”.
9 times out of 10 the Follower apologizes for a lead’s mistake in leading something or half leading something.
As a direct result of this the Lead tends to Blame the Follower for their inadequacies and their own mistakes.
The Wrap Up: These are the 5 areas where there we see common errors where things can and do go awry. “Awry” probably isn’t the best word there. Party these errors happen due to habit, and partly it’s happenstance, and sometimes it’s just an execution of poor floorcraft.
Let’s be clear about something, this isn’t about Perfectionistic Tango. Yes Tango can be ooooodles and oooooodles of fun. While for some the fun can be just on the surface, and that’s fine. There are some dancers who get their enjoyment from working in the minimal and more importantly the smaller seemingly infinitesimal! This is a vastly different kind of enjoyment of the dance. In this instance, that enjoyment comes from having cleaned up errors like this so as not to mar the experience of the infinitesimal communication that can happen between Lead and Follower to allow for a completely free flowing communication where the physical constrains do not get into the way of that line of communication. And errors like these mar that line of communication because the Lead is quite honestly stopping the communication. 🙁
Some Leads, once they learn how to do something, do not want to have to go back and re-learn how to do something properly. They view it as a point of ego. They already know how to do X, Y, or Z. What they may not realize is that they’ve drifted from the relevant material, and thereby are generating errors via their physicality. The tiniest thing can throw off their leading ability and they may not be aware of it.
So it’s generally a good idea to video one’s self periodically to watch for postural issues, vocabulary errors, walking errors, and yes musical errors. And once or twice a month to get one’s self into a private lesson to address or at least look at one’s errors. And, yes…you are generating them on a regular basis, you’re just not aware of them. And if you’re thinking that no one is complaining so they’re nothing wrong. There’s a reason why no one is complaining….it’s because they can’t. The rules of the Milonga prevent any kind of feedback that would give the Lead any indication that something is amiss. Then there’s the fact that the Follower generally doesn’t want to hurt a lead’s feelings by telling them that they’re squeezing the living daylights out of them, or more to the point that something isn’t working. However, they may only understand that X works with everyone else, and it doesn’t work with you but they’re not sure why. Where ‘X’ is a piece of vocabulary. So a bi-weekly private lesson series to address your issues isn’t such a bad idea. Then again, in lieu of the local teacher that you may not trust. You do have access to a resource that can clearly explain X, Y, and Z: TangoTopics!
This video shows you Five places, which isn’t an exhaustive list, where you can change your dance for the better but unfortunately it doesn’t show you how to fix it, or how to change it. For that you may want to subscribe to Tango Topics and look at the vocabulary videos and their corresponding articles as a subscriber to help you to change these things. To understand why something works and then how to change it for the better!
Buenos Aires for a lot of people, is their trip to Mecca. It is mythological. It is magical. It is the next logical step in their evolution. In their mind they have seen the videos of dancing at Salon Canning, or Villa Malcolm (pron: Vee-Jah Mal-cum), or the crowded floor at La Viruta with 300 other people, or seen the Sunday nights at Villa Malcolm, or the ‘practica’ at De Queresa, or Cachirulo, or La Glorieta, or La Catedral, or any of the hundred plus milongas and practicas per week there, and dreamt of what that must be like. And then to actually be there and then they’re hit with the reality of ‘Oh shit!’ I’m dancing in Buenos Aires! It’s right about at that point when they see the quality of dance, and the speed of the rotunda, that several things happen for them. Fear comes to mind, then excitation, and then more fear (for a different reason), and then hoping that you can manage the floor (as a Lead or a Follow). It’s right then that they wished they had studied harder or paid for privates with the visiting Argentine instructor, and they try to remember everything they’ve ever been taught. They conveniently realize that they’ve not spent any time Preparing For Dancing in Buenos Aires.
What is Preparing for Dancing In Buenos Aires ? This video is all about helping you out with a few vocabulary choices that can change your dance in Buenos Aires so that you’re not freaked out by it from either role. This video is an important tool that can, at the very least, prepare you, and help you to enjoy dancing in BsAs more than you would ordinarily. The reason is a really simple one: Experience. This video covers the ‘how-to-prepare’ yourself for dancing in BsAs for both roles. However, it’s really just a precursor to the toy that you really want:
Dancing In A Small Space. It should be noted that while this 5 point guide is on the technical aspects of dancing in Buenos Aires, it should and can also be applied for Dancing in a Small Space (DIASS <-Follow The Link…really). The techniques are exactly the same that is described herein this video. The skillsets laid out herein are not only the same but even more applicable because while you’ll only dance in BsAs once per year (if you’re lucky) and only for a few short weeks (sadly), you’ll definitely visit a crowded milonga anywhere in the world far more often! Learning how to manage the floor, manage your space, introduce simple but clear, and small vocabulary from a Leading and a Following perspective is absolutely crucial to your continued success as a dancer especially in Buenos Aires!
Free Tip – When leading the Follower’s Molinete in Buenos Aires, you do NOT want to “open” or turn away from the Follower. This creates an opening that you can not recover from easily. It creates space or a gap between the couple that is tenuous at best. Followers want to essentially do 2 things. 1.) is to over-rotate a bit on the Back Step of your molinete, and 2.) constantly be repositioning yourself even though a good portion of your leads are not going to allow it to happen. I hate to point this out to you, and not to beat a dead horse but the fact is that all of this stuff is present in this video and more.
Pre-Requisites: So that we’re all clear on this part, note the difficulty rating below, it is not an exaggeration! Do not attempt this stuff unless the following is true: You have mastered 1.) your walk. 2.) your stability. and 3.) your equilibrium. 4.) your turns (either role – milonguero turns as well as the follower’s molinete at minimum).
IF …
a.) you need to stabilize yourself against your partner when walking. b.) you need to use your hands or arms in any level of tactilecompression. c.) you are in the habit of watching your partner’s feet (but don’t realize it). d.) you are used to using resistance – compression – rigidity – tension – or force to engage your ideas.
THEN… dancing in small space (DIASS) and/or preparing for bsas will be challenging for you. That’s why it’s a good idea to subscribe to tangotopics.com and clean up these issues ahead of time.
About the Video: Preparing for Buenos Aires is 19m:11s HD in length in 8 sections. This is not a technique video, for the individual techniques discussed in the video, it is highly advisable that you go look to their individual technique sections in the TangoTopics Library that is provided with your subscription. This video is more of a how to make things to work from a Leading & a Following perspective, what to practice before you go, and how to practice them.
Before another word is said, I want to address 3 things: 1.) If you are someone who is a hobbyist of Tango, I have a very special message for you below. Stick around, you’ll want to hear it. 2.) I’m not wearing shoes or socks in the video. And 3.) is the reason why I’m not wearing shoes or socks.
That said….
Story Time: Once long ago when I was just an itty-bitty Tango Miles. After leaving the care and feeding from my first tango teacher (after having been at his feet for 4 months), I was back in San Francisco, CA, living out of a car, and studying tango 7 days a week. All day. Every day. It was my sole enterprise. Tango 24/7. If you don’t know my story, you can go here. In short, I was living out of an enterprise rental SUV and sacrificing everything to learn to dance. Some people call it intense. I called it what I was doing in order to learn to dance Argentine Tango.
During this time, I found 3 or 4 practice partners that wanted to work with me. Wanna see an example ? What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had issues. Serious structural flaws in my walk, my embrace, and my understanding of what I was supposed to be doing. Those structural flaws were compounded by the Follower’s issues as we were ‘practicing’.
I thought I was doing what you were supposed to do, which was practicing what I learned from my teachers. What I realized later on, much later on, all that practice really did was bake in the problems without actually fixing or changing anything. So whatever problems I had never got addressed, even though I was studying with 6 different teachers, for 2 hours every day of the week. Nothing got addressed, changed, or modified. I kept paying my teachers thinking that I was learning tango. I wasn’t. That was their fault and mine and the way that tango is taught today. Nobody wants to tell anyone that what they’re doing is less than desirable. No one wants to give feedback that’s going to hurt someone’s feelings. That doesn’t sell classes. And the goal is to sell private lessons, not improve the quality of dance.
I digress. Throughout all of that I had to back and re-work my foundation later on. I had so many issues that I had to go back to the very foundation of how I walk and literally pull up my tango floorboards and replace the floor I was standing on. It was THAT bad. I had to basically teach myself how to walk all over again, several times. The reason it was several times was because there is a lot of confusion in what different teachers tell people about how to walk. I had to pick and choose from what I thought was clear, definitive information to what was poorly communicated information which moved right into flat out wrong information. From there I had to rediscover everything and figure out what worked, what didn’t and why it didn’t, and then figure out ways to make things work. This rediscovery would later help me in more ways than I knew at the time.
Today when I’m working with a student, they honestly don’t want to do that kind of work. They just want the answers. “How do I …?” so I show them what to do, and then how to do it. But that starts with going right back to their foundation. If they’ve been dancing a while, they think or believe that they already know what they’re doing. And to a certain extent they do. But in reality, the fundamental elements have eluded them and they’ve ended up in a place of physical compromise for whatever reason. Once they get over that fact, and they get into a routine that we’re going to do nothing but walking (as a Lead and as a Follow) for 6 weeks straight, then we begin the real process of learning Tango. They go through a movement study (as seen in the Follower’s Exercise and Lead’s Exercise) to emphasize this point. As time passes and they rediscover their foundation, and we move onto the 5 social figures of Argentine tango, I usually get THIS question:
“Miles, what should I practice ?”.
My answer has always been the same, “Your walk”. However, I do expand on that because it’s not just the walk. It’s also a host of ideas that one wants to skillfully and gently remind of one’s foundation and at the same time guide one towards a cleaner, and better foundation. Which is where I remind them that there are 3 things they want to practice:
I practice in bare feet. However, that’s me. You ? You want to do what’s laid out in the video in SOCKS. Not tango shoes. Put simply the shoe will compensate for your equilibrium issues that you have going on that you may or may not be aware of. So take the shoes off. Further still we want to feel the floor and see what our foot is doing. Specifically you are looking for how your toes are reacting to the stress and strain you are putting on them. If your toes are coming off the floor at any point, you have problems!
The Hobbyist’s Notation.
Let’s address the ‘hobbyists’ in the room. You don’t believe in practicing, and you certainly don’t believe that you need to do any kind of conditioning work. And articles like these are a complete waste of your time. Right ? Your belief is that you are here to have fun and nothing more than that. Am I right ? OK, if that’s true, then let me ask you a SIMPLE question: why are you at every practice, and every milonga, every night or weekend ? If this was JUST a HOBBY then why the attention ? One could rightfully answer: “I’m there to see my friends and to hang out because it’s fun”. Good answer, okay…then riddle me this: If this is just ‘fun’, why are you trying to get better and better dancers to dance with you ? You see a hobbyist wouldn’t care about that stuff. If you’re here to have fun with everyone and that stuff shouldn’t matter to you. Right ? But it does! And that’s the point. It does matter to you. A lot. Because of that, then might I suggest we stop pretending that practicing, form, comprehension, clarity, and that ‘wasting’ all that time on a ‘hobby’ DOES matter because it can and does create a better dancing experience in the end! So let’s dispense with the hobbyist mentality and get down to business?
Part One – Solo Practice Enters the Chat!
It’s right here that I’m going to tell you that the only thing that consistently improves one’s ability to move efficiently and effectively is SOLO PRACTICE. So here’s what you’ll need: a pair of sliding socks, a little grit and determination, and last but not least, a desire to be honest with yourself and not cheat yourself. Every time that you do compromise or give up, you fail yourself! There’s no greater failure than when you do not accomplish what you set out to do. This stuff requires your due diligence. It requires abject honesty. While you are the only one that knows just how much time you put into this stuff, your partners will feel the difference when they dance with you. The efficiency of your movement, the clarity and cleanliness of the motion, and more importantly, your ability to control and contain yourself WITHOUT needing to hold onto anyone else to execute.
Part Two – Preparing the Instrument.
You do have to do a little prep-work. And that prep work is ‘Presence’ to start with. Presence, if you don’t know, is a Tango Topics-ism. It’s the first part of every movement. This state comprises 5 different things: 1.) Feet in Social Collection. 2.) A micro bend of the knees. 3.) Elongation of the Spinal Column. 4.) Lifting the Head! 5.) Breathing through the Solar Plexus. This state of Presence puts the body into a state of awareness and preparedness for anything that comes at it, or you will ask it to do.
Part Three – Working On Your Walk.
The walking exercise isn’t one exercise.
It’s three > Extensions work, WalkingExercise, and finally a ‘Box’ step.
First we start with extensions: Forward, Side, and Back. In these extensions we engage the idea of ‘Walking In Opposition’ in the extreme, and then embed that idea in those extensions. The reason this is done is because it’s set up for Disassociation and Applied Disassociation. Details matter here. Meaning ? You’re working on everything in the extreme, going as far as you can with your opposition AND your extensions as well as your how you’re landing your feet.
Next we engage a ‘version’ of the Walk. Let me be clear, this is an exaggerated walk for several reasons. In my reasoning that exaggeration exists because we’re always “overshooting to under-do”. That means that we want to do things in the extreme here so that later on, when we may want to do something that requires it, it’s not a stretch or a strain but instead it’s easy for us because we’ve already done that work. This version of walk uses a null embrace format so that you can see embrace collapse if that happens and then correct for it. This version uses BOTH forward and backward steps, not just as a lead or as a Follow but both roles! This version also embeds the idea of Opposition, in the extreme. This version also embeds intention (a little forward lean). This idea pays attention to details like how you land your foot, ‘popping the knee’ as we extend backward, intention, passing thru social collection, posture, etc. The idea is to do this slowly, carefully, in a contained way.
Lastly we engage the idea of a Box Step using all 3 steps, going in both directions. Lead left and then Lead Right. Side with the Left, Forward on the Right, Change weight, Side with the right, Back with the Left, and then reverse it.
Part Four – Rotation – Disassociation and Applied Disassociation.
This part of the article ….
Part Five – Fred Torture.
is not visible to you….
Part Six – Time To Spend ?
because you are not a full subscriber …
Part Seven – The Common Errors!
if you subscribed, you’d see the full article and the 45 minute video.
— IF YOU WERE A SUBSCRIBER YOU WOULDN’T SEE THIS ANNOYING MESSAGE! AND YOU’D BE ABLE TO SEE THE FULL VIDEO (46 minutes), and READ THE FULL ARTICLE —
A Notation for Advancing Dancers.
I got news for you. YOU NEED THIS STUFF JUST AS MUCH AS BEGINNERS DO. Perhaps even more so. Your technique needs to be refined, clean, cared for constantly. And if you thinking dancing is the answer here. It’s not. You still have to take care of your foundation. Judiciously. The only different between you doing this stuff and say someone that’s been dancing for a year or so, is that you don’t have to do this stuff as often > once or twice a week. But you STILL need to do it. Just because you have reached your level don’t mean that you don’t have to continue to do your own personal work.
This Work Will Not Make You A Better Dancer!
Wait! What ?!?!?!?!? Let me be clear here: The mere fact that one is working on their walk, and by extension their foundation, this work IS NOT going to make them a better dancer. What it will do is prepare the instrument, their body, IN ORDER to dance with better partners! Let me say that again for those in the back that seem to think steps, patterns, figures, and one’s embrace make you a better dancer. IT DOES NOT! What makes one a better prepared dancer is reworking one’s foundation. Preparing the body and nervous system to build muscle memory, and neurological memory, so that one reacts properly when the time comes. This is the foundation of that work.
This is why we work on ourselves in SOLO PRACTICE and NOT in PARTNER PRACTICE!
The mistake I see so often is someone practicing with a partner. Yes, Tango is a partner dance. So it stands to reason that if the dance is a Partner Dance, then you should be practicing with a partner. Yup. All true. There’s just one little problem with that line of reasoning. This > When you practice with a partner you are taking your issues, and their issues, and co-combining them into one larger issue, and more importantly unintended issues that can and will get generated because you are in an embrace with each other. Put another way > You have your own issues. They have their own issues going on. If NEITHER one of you addresses the underlying issues that you both have individually then you will combine both of your underlying issues to create more problems than either one of you can figure out. You’ll either get frustrated with each other or yourself. Either way, the end result is NOT good!
So ? Solo Practice FIRST and FOREMOST. Clean you. Then add someone else into the equation. See where the bugs are at. Then go back to solo practice and work out where the issues were at…and keep cycling through.
Burying The Lead.
You don’t want to hear this part. But I have to say it, and you’re not going to like it. Even if you do all that work above. Even if you find a practice partner that is doing the same kind of work. You are still going to need someone like Miles to look at what you’re doing, point out the error(s), and then give you a pathway out. What you don’t want to do is watch yourself in a mirror or video or have someone else do that, and then critique yourself. You will miss things. Yes do video, but don’t use a mirror. Video doesn’t lie. You do. You can and will miss things. Further you will misremember and compromise what you’re doing. So in the end even if you do all that work, you will need a ‘Miles’ with good Tango Analytical skills to look at what you’re doing and give you reliable feedback that’s actionable. Which is to say, plan accordingly!
In the end, remember this: every minute of solo practice you invest is a gift to your future dance partners. It’s not just about perfecting steps or looking good; it’s about removing the body noise, ignorant unaware body motion and uncontrolled movements that create problems. All the work of overshooting to under-do, of disassociation and Fred Torture—they’re not about making you a “better dancer” in some shallow sense because this work isn’t about that. It’s about preparing you for the dance of your future self. This is about re-building your foundation towards solid, clean, and consistent so that when you finally step onto the floor with someone else, it’s a dance between two well-prepared partners. That’s the real reward, and it’s absolutely worth the work in my opinion.
Improvisation in tango is one of the most desired skills, and at the same time one of the hardest to achieve. The reason is simple: improvisation means generating your own solutions in real time—not copying someone else’s. That’s not easy. In most areas of life—building a computer, repairing a car, writing code—it’s perfectly acceptable to copy and adapt someone else’s solution. But dance doesn’t work that way. Dance forces you into a place where you want to express an idea through movement, and often the challenge is that you don’t yet know what that movement should be or how it should unfold.
This is why choreographing a song takes patience, trial, and error. Sometimes the path forward is a clear vision, sometimes it’s only a vague feeling. And in tango, improvisation is both the thing most dancers are chasing—because it offers inspiration, originality, and personal expression—and also the thing that is hardest to teach, harder still to execute well, and nearly impossible to replicate through traditional teaching methods.
So if improvisation seems impossible, how do we even begin to teach it? The answer is that there is a method—but it depends on a few critical things being ‘true’: Your Walk, Your Embrace, Your Vocabulary, and Your Musical Interpretation. We’ll return to why those four matter, and what “clean” really means in each case, at the end. First, let’s look at the actual pathway: how improvisation can emerge from the simplest movements you already know.
By ‘true’, I mean ‘clean’, ‘consistent’, ‘clear’ WITHOUT > resistance, tension, force, compression, one’s arms or fingers to direct or be directed, hanging, pulling, pushing, or leaning. More on this later – see ‘The Pink Elephant In The Room’ below.
The Tango Topics Method of Tango Improvisation.
This method uses extensions, dissociation/applied dissociation, and individual component movements, as well as Beat and the 5 Pause Types as the building blocks for generating a type of improvisation that can be combined with contemporary tango vocabulary to generate a dance that is easily accessible and very familiar with near-infinite possibilities!
You’re going to have questions, like “what is defined as a ‘component’”? We’ll get to that in just a minute.
There are several primary goals with this kind of improvisation:
i.) Give the dancer an easy pathway to being ‘creative’ with their dance, while at the same time generating order and/or structure with their dancing that is easily achieved. ii.) Create relief from the ’same-ole-same-ole’ that you see all too often > turn to the left, turn to the right, walk, turn to the left, turn to the right, walk to the cross. Repeat. iii.) Use familiar vocabulary that the dancer already knows without adding anything else to their equation.
A Thought Experiment, Part 1: Components as Building Blocks
Stick with me on this one, because this is the foundation of the whole idea.
Imagine you’re in the line of dance with your partner, walking on the beat, respecting the pauses and musical paragraphs. At the next available pause, you choose from one of the familiar movements you already know. Maybe it’s a 2-, 3-, or 4-track Parallel walk. Or perhaps a Cross-system walk. Maybe Lazy Ochos, or one of the Inside/Outside Snake Walks, or one of the 6 Alternate Walks. Or in other words, 1 of the 6 Ways of Walking.
At the next pause, you switch to one of the 8 Types of Ochos. At the next, one of the 8 Common Turns. At the following pause, perhaps any of the 8 Types of Ocho Cortados. Then maybe you spice it up with a piece of specialty vocabulary — a Gancho, a Boleo, a Sacada, a Colgada, a Volcada. Finally, at the close of the musical paragraph, you resolve with one of the 256 Types of Argentine Crosses.
These 6 categories — Walking, Ochos, Turns, Cortados, Crosses, and Specialty Vocabulary — are what I call COMPONENTS. They are complete structures in themselves, and you can use them to fill the space between pauses, matching steps to beats, rhythmical structures, or instruments.
This is, in fact, how most dancers work: they string together full components from start to finish, without variation. It feels safe, predictable, and familiar to dance that way.
However, this is NOT improvisation! While there is freedom to do what you want, you’re typically following someone else’s idea of WHEN to do X, Y, and Z. This is known as the A/B methodology of Musical Interpretation.
A Thought Experiment, Part 2: Elements Inside Components
Now let’s zoom in. Let’s take one of those components like the Follower’s Molinete to the Lead’s Giro (a type 3 turn in Tango Topics lingo).
Most dancers see the Molinete as three steps: forward, side, back — usually in the sequence back/side/forward, repeated around the leader. That’s the component view.
But each of those steps is made up of smaller elements:
1.) Intention (forward or back) and Opposition. 2.) Extension (sometimes called projection). 3.) Weight transfer. 4.) Collection or passing through collection. 5.) Disassociation or applied disassociation (for forward and back steps especially).
So instead of only seeing “three steps” we see the five underlying elements that make them possible.
Now here’s the key: What if, instead of always completing the full Molinete component, you started to dance the elements themselves? What if you mixed elements with components, or alternated between the two?
Answer: You’d suddenly have more variation and more possibilities than you could ever exhaust — without adding a single new step, figure, or pattern!
In other words, you already know everything you need. You just, more than likely, hadn’t seen the complexity hidden inside the familiar!
Bridge to the ‘Rules’.
So where does this leave us? We now know that tango isn’t just about stringing together components, and it isn’t only about breaking them down into elements. Improvisation happens when you choose—sometimes a full component, sometimes a single element, sometimes a mix of both.
But choice without structure quickly turns into noise. Too many options can feel overwhelming, and without direction, variation becomes chaos.
That’s why we need a framework. Not restrictions, but a set of simple guidelines that hold the dance together while leaving room for creativity. Think of it as structured chaos: freedom inside clear boundaries.
The Four Rules of Tango Topics Improvisation Method.
Closing the Circle
If even one of these is missing or muddled, improvisation becomes fragile—because tension, imbalance, or unclear signals muddy the choices. But when all four are reasonably clean (not perfect, just clean enough), the rules of improvisation suddenly come alive.
That’s the pathway. Not memorizing endless figures, not copying someone else’s choreography. Instead, using what you already know—refined, cleaned, and recombined—to create improvisation that is personal, musical, and endlessly variable.
Leading. Often the first thing we see when looking at Argentine Tango is the Tango Lead. It’s that sharp, clear, clean visual that strikes us almost immediately. We see the the visual of someone leading, and it’s this confusion, appreciation, amusement, bewilderment and just down right awe (in some cases) of a ‘wow’. Next the thing that we pay attention to is what they’re doing, not how they’re doing it, but what specifically they’re doing. You’re waiting, with anticipation, for that next cool, flashy move that screams – ‘Good Lead’. And the last thing that you start to become aware of is the musical expression, meaning how they’re placing the what they’re doing in time to the music, not necessarily how specifically it relates (that’s called interpreting the music by the way) to the music but really the execution in time to the music.
Truthfully depending on where we are in/at in the spectrum of leading (the activity), then this explanation of the dynamic of leading can be an eye opening experience on multiple levels for a variety of reasons (again, depending on where you are on the spectrum). At the same time, that experience is what usually shapes us, defines us, and ultimately it will inspire us to want to study toward being like that which we see…to emulate it. 🙂 Or it may turn us off entirely for a variety of reasons, perhaps because it looks too complex, too difficult, or it’s too much, or not ‘us’ at all. Again, this all depends on where you are on the spectrum of leading. If you’re just starting out then literally everything you see everyone else is doing is nothing short of magical. The further you go towards the ‘advanced’ dancer and closer towards the teacher class dancer (those who could teach but don’t) realm the less magical things are and the more technical things become, and the more you want to figure out why X, Y, and Z happens. That’s exactly where this topic comes into play.
This topic assumes that you’ve gotten beyond the “Wow!!! That’s Amazing!!” phase and have just started to get down to the actual business of leading. And to be clear, this topic also assumes that you’ve gotten beyond the rudimentary foundation of walking, embrace, turning, crossing, and leading ochos, and are looking for a change towards something that looks a bit more elegant than the random, haphazard thing you have witnessed at your local milongas that’s loosely called ‘dancing‘.
Perhaps you’ve started to pay attention to how someone is doing X, Y, and Z, and found it to be lacking or amazing and wondered….’how do they do that ?’. Or more than likely you have caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror as you turn a corner and are either impressed with what you see and want more, or generally you try to avert your eyes as you pass by a mirror or someone’s facebook picture of you. You generally try to avoid it because you know it’s just going to be awful to look at. The mere thought of you leading, or watching yourself lead, is an exercise in excruciating visual pain. You know where all the problems are at, you know what you have forgotten in the multiple private lessons that you’ve taken, you know that you should be practicing this stuff on a daily if not weekly basis but you don’t. You know all of this stuff…you’ve just forgotten it, and there it is in the mirror, staring back at you, unapologetic, and very truthful that you could do better than you are right now.
If all of that is true, then this topic of Leading Technique is all for you.
What is ‘Leading Technique’ ? First let’s get a few words out of the way. L/lead, L/led, L/leading, Lead/er. 1.) A ‘Lead’ (note the capitalization) is the person who is performing the action of initiating choices in the dance that we know as Argentine Tango. In this state, it is not a given that the person initiating choices is initiating those choices through Intention Based Dancing. More on this later. 2.) A ‘lead’ is the activity or action of the role of the Lead. In this state, this activity employs the usage of ‘Intention Based Dancing’ at every point along the course of an active dancing experience. 3.) The action of someone who is doing the activity of the role of the ‘Lead’ is someone who has ‘L/led’ or is ‘L/leading’. And last but not least, ‘Lead/er’, this is not what you think it is. It’s a person who quite decidedly uses their arms, forearms, biceps, fingers, and hands which employes layers or levels of pressure and/or compression (squeezing) their Followers to physiologically force, and/or indicate and then to direct their Followers to do X, Y, and Z. The Follower in this instance is told verbally (most often) to create ‘Resistance‘ so that the Lead/er can “feel” the Follower. This is known as Resistance Based Dancing that reinforces La Marca as the way to indicate choices and then to respond to those choices. The reason for the capitalization trickery and chicanery is to create some clarity and specificity with the language that is used to describe these things.
For the purposes of this article we will be using L/lead, L/led, L/leading to talk about Leading Technique.
Leading Technique is about how a Lead walks, how they land their feet, how they engage their posture, and how they engage their embrace to a.) Invite. b.) Cajole. c.) Suggest. d.) Propose. And then finally e.) Initiate and Follow through to the execution of some piece of intended vocabulary. But all of that stuff has to first start with a clean and clear base. And that’s what this entire video series is about. It takes the foundation material that is generic for both roles, and then applies it for the role of the Lead and what has to happen to those physiological movements in order to “lead” with Leading Technique.
This is Leading Technique.
Free Advice – Change. (Change isn’t going to happen by itself. It requires a few thing. First, a willingness to make these kinds of changes. Secondly, a good, reliable source for this kind of information. And thirdly demonstratable, repeatable information that you can play with, over and over again.
Is Leading Technique easy work? No! Although to listen to some people spouting their idea of what the Lead can and should do, you’d think you can master this stuff in an afternoon. Ummm in a word, “NOT!”. Is Leading Technique, as a whole, something you can learn in a 6-week cycle? Possibly, depending on the teacher. But really Leading Technique takes more than a few sessions to work out the bugs (as it were). First and foremost it’s about Body awareness. Your own, not the Followers. The ability to hear/feel your body in every detail and nuance. Being able to tell when something isn’t right or it is! Secondly, it’s about balance and stability, again…your own. Not the Follower! And lastly Leading Technique is about hyper-awareness, using your nervous system, to accurately gauge where the Follower is in space and time in relation to the Lead.
About The Video. This video is 9 separate videos for a total run time of 101 minutes!
Video 1 – Overview & Exercise – 00:23:21 Video 2 – Opposition – 00:17:37 Video 3 – Lead Extensions – 00:04:08 Video 4 – Lead Foot Placement – 00:05:50 Video 5 – Lead Entry Paths – Part A – 00:03:00 Video 6 – Lead Entry Paths – Part B – 00:02:02 Video 7 – Lead Embraces Foundation – 00:14:54 Video 8 – Lead Embraces – Repositioning – 00:17:43 Video 9 – Enrosque Foundation – 00:12:20
The Ultimate Arbiter. The last word on this subject is not your teacher, it’s not this website, nor is it you. There’s really only one arbiter of good taste in this case, and it’s the Follower. If the class of follower that you’re used to dancing with approves of what you’re doing, you’re on to something. Truthfully they are the final word on whether or not you’re doing good things or less than desirable things. That assumes that a.) You have the fortitude to ask (at a practica) about how you look and feel to them. b.) That their response is honest. (Frequently they’re not for the reasons already stated above) and c.) There’s some kind of meaningful feedback that you can pull from the most basic of frequent replies “That was nice”. Which is the extent of what you’ll get most of the time, unless you ask a series of leading questions of what in specific was ‘nice’ about it.
You know you’re on to something when other people that you don’t dance with acknowledge the change in you and start to compliment you on the difference in you.
For most Followers the words “Follower Technique” boils down to 5 things (minus adornments and embellishments): 1.) Posture. 2.) Embrace. 3. ) Forward Steps. 4.) Side Steps. 5.) Back Steps. Sometimes this line of thinking may cover the concept of Body Position (where one is in relation to the Lead) and beyond that even, Body Placement (what one does with that Body Position – e.g. vocabulary) within the construct of the embrace (e.g. how to stay in front of and then with your Lead). The thinking usually stops right about there. Most Follower’s, and even Leads don’t even consider that Walking-in-Opposition, then Disassociation, and then finally, Applied Disassociation as a basis for Follower Technique, and why it’s an important piece of the equation in certain pieces of Tango Vocabulary (such as Traveling Ochos, or the Follower’s Molinete). Today’s Tango Topic deals with explaining this stuff and then going a little deeper with these things. It should be noted that just because the title is “Follower Technique” that the Lead should tune out because there’s nothing here for you. And that would be flat out wrong! This topic is not just for Followers looking for a hint, any hint, that could boost their understanding. It’s also for the Lead wanting to understand what the Follower has to do in order to stay with them. So without Further yapping, Tango Topics Presents: Follower Technique.
What is ‘Follower Technique’?In its simplest form, it is a series of skills that when put together create a ‘dancing platform’ for the Follower. This is a platform that the Follower builds into their body through painstaking, detailed, carefully crafted motions that consists of: How to walk forward, side, and/or back; What one’s stance or posture should be like and under what conditions it may change; How to embrace and where and why; What Close Embrace wants to be; What Open Embrace wants to be; Where and how the Follower has to be in relation to their Lead, within the different embrace types (‘Close Embrace, Open Embrace, Vee Embrace, Open Vee, Closed Vee, Berlin, etc) so that they’re always…always…always in ‘front of’ their Lead; How to land the foot; How to extend the leg; Where the knee bend occurs; Why one would ‘open’ one’s hip and under what conditions; How to generate a slight open ‘v’ with the feet, and when, where, and why one would want to do that….just to name a few. For most people when they hear the phrase “Follower Technique” they think ‘pretty’ feet or most people think of Follower technique as just the Follower’s Back Step or a Forward step in the Molinete, and everything else just sort of works.
That’s not true.
Follower Technique is an economical, efficient, movement platform that is based on decades-old work, that many Followers have passed down from one Follower to another, who have been out social dancing within the Milonga experience. And then taken that social dancing knowledge and refined it, honed it, made it their own.
Follower Technique can go a lot deeper…a lot deeper! In Deeper Follower Technique, the Follower studies all three of the three primary steps and then takes it to a whole other level. Truly, Deep Follower Technique is all about the detail, it is all about the precision. And lastly, but not the least of which is that it’s all about the execution! Yes it is learning about to use one’s feet in relationship to the structure that is Argentine Tango, but it is also about learning how to use one’s body in an efficient, economical, and elegant way that accentuates themselves as well as their L/lead and what’s being done, while at the same time keenly aware of one overriding principle: One Step At A Time! But contained within that step is a monster amount of kinesthetic awareness, body consciousness, physiological history, a corporeal locomotion, muscle memory, tendon memory, nervous system memory, that when executed altogether – creates that one singular step that brings into it all of the things mentioned before.
This is Follower Technique.
Is Follower Technique easy work ? No! Although to listen to some Leads spouting their idea of what the Follower should or shouldn’t do, you’d think it was a cake walk! Ummm in a word, “NOT!”. Is Follower Technique, as a whole, something you can learn in an afternoon ? Possibly, depending on the teacher. But really Follower Technique takes more than a few sessions to work out the bugs (as it were). This isn’t about balance and stability, yes those things are there but there are other things to consider. In the end Follower Technique wants to become rote behavior, second nature, a naturally built-in response, or default but controlled, contained, and conscious behavior in the person that is dancing the role of the Follower. So a better answer to that second question is “NO”. Follower Technique is going to take a while. And anyone that tells you different either hasn’t studied the role of the Follower for very long or is lying through their teeth. The fact is that Follower Technique takes years to get, then to adjust and finally to perfect. And going further down the rabbit hole what works for some people may not work for everyone! In case you were unclear on this part, some people’s bodies are built differently, and that means their anatomical areas may not necessarily line up with what some Amazing Follower Teacher has said and/or shown. So, no, sometimes other ways of moving have to be employed. Follower Technique is not a one size fits all! Some of it is, and some of it isn’t. The part that is confusing about it, is figuring out which one is which! 😉
What To Focus On ? The Follower wants to pay attention to these things in sequence:
1.) Posture, Posture, Posture. Learning what it means, from a Tango Perspective, to stand upright without creating rigidity in one’s body or stance. Learning how to elongate one’s spinal column without injury and/or pain. Learning how to lengthen one’s body, how to stand, how and why a slight compression (a micro-bend) of the knee is incredibly important…everywhere! That’s a hint by the way…the rest of this type of information is in the Foundations Video Series. However, one’s posture will affect the next 8 points. Hunch over, and nothing looks desirable. Ramrod straight, and you end up looking like a Robot. We want something in between that is comfortable and maintainable.
2.) The Weight Change, and later on the weight transfer. A weight change is done from a standing or collection position. A weight transfer is done from passing through collection position!
3.) The Leg Extension Begins Where? The leg extension comes from a very specific place, and understanding what that place is and under what conditions, and why is insanely important. As a.) The conditions are not always the same. and b.) The Extension is not always the same under certain conditions.
4.) Extending The Leg. This is actually extending the leg from a static position and working that extension over and over and over again. But more importantly focusing on what that looks like from multiple angles, using video from the side and from the front and back, and not just a mirror. Mirrors can and do ‘lie’ quite frequently. “Lie” isn’t the right word there. More like when you’re looking in the mirror, you only see a moment of time, not the entire thing. And you want the entire movement over time. It is for this reason that the Follower wants to use VIDEO from the side, and front, and back…constantly IN ADDITION to the mirror!
5.) The Shape of the Leg over that same period of time – where the knee must bend, and why, and under what conditions because they’re not always the same!
6.) Landing the Foot, where, and what part of the foot one lands on, and under what conditions. Because again, it’s not always the same. Which may come as a surprise to some of you reading this and wondering what those conditions might be. Here’s a helpful hint: SUBSCRIBE!
7.) The Shape of the Foot in the landing on part 6 above. The reality is that the shape of the foot creates the end point of the step and if that shape looks shoddy, then the extension that created it will look shoddy. 🙁 Shape ? It’s very important!
8.) The Weight Transfer. Now the weight transfer comes into play because more than likely you’re in motion after the first step….and now you need to understand where that weight transfer comes into play and why steps 3 – 7 are insanely important! Because now you’re in motion and while the static positions of an extension are nice to look at, that’s not where the problems come up once you’ve got the extensions down (or so you think), it’s the transition from one element to the next!
Now without going into a lot of detail, that’s what the video series is for, you really do need constant reminders, constant practice, and constant visuals to guide you towards a better way to doing these things. This is, unfortunately not something you can do on your own. You do actually require someone else to, at the very least show you what you need to focus on. Those 8 points above are all fine and good in text, but seeing it is very important…hence the video thing. This is an hour long video series that goes into great depth.
Class/Seminar Work vs. Video. Work. There really isn’t an either – or. The reality is that the whomever is studying the role of the Follower needs as many reminders, and valid examples of what should happen within the construct of the 3 primary steps as well as the inner workings of Traveling Ochos, the Follower’s Molinete, the Argentine Cross, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Class/Seminar work is great for in person, time spent, corrective work. Video work is great for seeing the same work that was done in a classroom setting and giving you a chance to see it again, and again, and again so that you can get every last piece of information you can from what was said and shown.
In this video series, which is ongoing by the by, there are (at the time of this writing) 13 sections that cover mostly what one does with one’s legs, and how we want our legs to appear, as well as how to move them, what to practice, how to land your foot, how NOT to land your foot (Lazy Follower’s Foot), how handle the most troubling aspect in all of Argentine Tango: The Follower’s Molinete, and to make it functional instead of an exercise in pain! However, understand that this video series is also spread out over a wide range of videos that integrate Follower’s Technique into the Movements/Topics on this site.
Heelwork. Working in Flats is all fine and good but at some point, someone or something is going to drive you to want to put on a pair of heels. And that’s where the Follower’s whole world is going to go topsy-turvy all over again. Balance will need to be redone. Stability will be an issue, again. And the embrace will change (slightly) due to the fact that the Follower is now in a pair of 3 in heels!
Heelwork is not easy, it’s elegant, yes….but it is not easy work. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and a lot of trial and error, lots and lots and lots of errors, to get this stuff just right so that it doesn’t look ungainly, so that all that Follower Technique doesn’t go out the window, while at the same time it isn’t too much a stretch of your physiological capabilities. Truthfully, Heelwork is refining the Follower’s skillset, while at the same time taking it to a whole other level and then adding ‘gracefulness’ to it.
Understand something – Heelwork plays hell with one’s anatomy and in specific the Plantar Nerve! So it stands to reason that we want to ease into heelwork by building up the muscles around the Plantar Nerve in flats and then start working on refining our skills, not being thrown into the deep end of the pool right from the start (learning in heels immediately). And then going one step further (no pun intended), adding style and detail to that heelwork! This is one reason why the Follower works in flats to start off with building up slowly to working towards the ultimate goal of being in a pair of heels.
Who to work with ? The question comes up, can you learn proper technique in person ? Yes. Can you learn less than desirable technique in person ? YUP! And the same is true of video work. What matters is the source of the information and goes right back to picking a good teacher or a knowledgeable source of the skill set. Which brings up another question, does that source have to be a woman ? Answer…No, it does not. It can be anyone that has spent a good amount of time studying the form of either role, gender doesn’t matter. What matters most is how deeply involved that person has immersed themselves in the form. Quite frankly, most men that invest in being a ‘good’ Follower want to be better than the women around them because they’ve recognized that they don’t want to be that ‘girl’ that sits. Further still they want to get it ‘right’, so they’ll invest hours…weeks…months in learning the intricate in’s-and-out’s of Following. Their goal is not to perform, nor is it necessarily to teach, it’s to understand the form as a whole. Truth be told there are more than a few really amazing male Followers in the world and to be quite honest with you, they blow the doors off your run-of-the-mill Followers and more than a few ‘performing’ teacher Followers IMHO.
About The Video. This video is 2hr:37m:14s in length in 25 sections. Follower technique is the bulk of this video.
Collection – (00:01:19) {Also See “Social Collection”} Forward Steps – Footwork (00:03:03) Forward Steps – Extension (00:02:21) Side Steps – Footwork (00:01:21) Side Steps – Linear (00:04:02) Side Steps – Circular (00:03:30) Back Steps – Extension (00:06:23) Back Steps – Circular (00:04:26) Back Steps – Footwork (00:05:48) “Opening” The Hip (00:04:00) Posture – Send/Counter-Send (00:05:53) Molinete – Level 1 (00:13:33) Backstep Pre-Launch Technique (00:05:50) Molinete Pre-Launch Example (00:00:39) Lazy Follower Foot (00:05:46) Leg Shape (00:08:23) Weight Change (00:01:23) Weight Transfer (00:01:34) Weight Transfer – Weight Change (00:01:34) Landing The Foot (00:09:09) Traveling Ocho Technique/Exercise (00:15:32) Milonguero Ocho Exercise (00:09:38) The Follower’s Molinete – All the Details (00:21:58) The Milonguero Turn – Body Details (00:04:43) The Milonguero Turn – Footwork (00:10:20) Errors #1 (00:05:06)
As Leads, there are many issues that we need to address and then redress, and then revisit several million times over and the reason is that while we may believe (operative word in the sentence) that we’re leading X, Y, or Z, the reality is far from that. Usually. It’s only when someone shows us video of what we’re doing that we actually begin to believe it. Watching ourselves in a mirror, or getting verbal feedback from a Follower that is keenly aware of these things, assuming that we’re open for feedback in the first place that we even begin to suspect that there may be an issue. In Today’s Tango Topic we visit one of those issues.
Today’s issue deals with a near constant malady for Leads. It’s one that in typical leading fashion they may not realize that they’re generating at all. This problem comes up regardless of whether or not the Lead is an intention based dancer, or a resistance based dancer. Either one, in either way of Leading will generate the problem.
Assuming for the moment that the Lead has placed their Follower on their left foot to start the dance. The typical opening first step, known as a Salida step, and then engaged in Forward Intention which in turn asks the Follower to extend their free right leg backward. This is, by the by, a huge assumption, and the problem child, because this is where the problem stated above (assuming that we’re doing X) begins. What happens on the next step is The 2nd Step Problem!
What Is The Second Step Problem ? In it’s simplest form, as a Lead gets to the end of their first forward step, they’ll tend towards standing upright, or becoming vertical. And then thinking or believing that the Follower is following them, they’ll continue forwards without engaging Forward Intention on the next step. So in effect, they’re moving forward without sending the signal for the Follower to extend their leg. As a result, they’ll slide their foot (really their leg) ‘under‘ and into their Follower’s free space on the second step.
The problem is two-fold, not just one. First and foremost, there’s a lack of Forward Intention going on. Secondly the Follower is giving the Lead a walking extension without actually being led to do so!
In it’s complex form, this problem can come up anywhere. In the video above it’s show just from a walking step. In reality it can and will come up nearly anywhere at all. This problem/issue/concern is far more widespread than you think it is. The belief is that it’s just beginner dancers that exhibit this assumption. The reality is closer to almost anyone, almost 90% of dancers generate this issue.
Fixing it ? The solution to this problem is actually not as simple as you might imagine, and it has everything to do with ingrained habits for both roles not just the Lead…
However, since this is just a teaser post..you don’t get to see how to fix this problem…you should really subscribe!
Realistically there are a few sources of information about this stuff, but honestly most of them are done in a performance OR are missing the requisite detail of the HOW you set up a Follower Back Sacada or more importantly the underlaying technique that is frequently not discussed at all.
With that in mind, let’s briefly talk about the Follower’s Back Sacada.
The reality is that for a lot of people this move is a flashy piece of vocabulary that mostly takes up way too much space on Social Dance floor even when done under the best conditions by trained professionals. However, there are some benefits to learning how to do them economically and for you to occasionally dropping ONE into your dance.
Let’s get some facts out of the way first and foremost.
a.) The Follower will NOT engage in a Back Sacada simply because you set one up. That dog is NOT going to hunt. b.) The Follower will more than likely not ‘hit’ the Sacada for a few reasons, most notably because their own underlaying technique is missing or underdeveloped. and c.) It’s not their fault!
That out of the way > In order to be an efficacious dancing partner for a Lead that engages with these things, there are 3 things you, as a Follower absolutely must be able to do without hanging, pulling, or pushing on your Lead:
The simple fact is that good tango, from the Follower’s side of things via a Lead perspective, comes from a Follower who has mastered these things in lurid detail, you practice and practice and practice this stuff religiously so that you don’t have to think about it at all when you’re dancing…instead you ‘react’ and that reaction is born of the technique that you clearly have built into you over and over and over again.
But let’s be clear about something this ‘technique’ is not just about repetition. That’s a mistake. This is MINDFUL repetition. Meaning that you consciously build or weed out errors from a movement and a motion, slowly, carefully building it to the point where it becomes reactionary. However, again, this is not necessarily all about reaction but a good portion of the time – very controlled!
You want to be able to control every facet of your movements from toes to feet, to heel, to ankle, knees, hips, torso, shoulders, head, arms, and fingers. Every aspect of those body parts in exacting precision. Failure to do that, and you have not mastered your tool. Your body is an instrument and it must be learned, toned, tooled, and retooled, constantly. You are never a finished product, never.
What specifically are you focusing on then ?
Your forward step, your side step, and in this case, your back step. Your embrace within the construct of the movement of those steps. Your disassociation. Your applied disassociation. And you would think that this is just easy work…like hell it is! It’s a ton of work that must be controlled, tamed, tooled and re-tooled….hours, weeks, months of time just to weed out your issues so that better technique can creep in.
Ok, so let’s get to the nitty gritty of what it is that you, as the Follower are trying to do >
1.) Disassociate, then apply that Disassociation to the point where you are over-rotated. 2.) Your feet are facing opposite of where they were, 180 degrees in fact. Anything less than that and you’re going to have problems. The aforementioned not ‘hitting’ the Sacada. 3.) Not pushing, pulling, or hanging with your embrace.
To be fair, most Leads engage in resistance mindset when it comes to this stuff. “You have to push into me”, they will say. Or “You have to resist me”…OY!!! This isn’t your fault, and it’s not the Lead’s either. It’s what you were both taught, and it doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is that in order for you to push into your Lead, you are essentially creating a wall of pressure against the Lead, right? That means that the Lead has to meet that, match it and then…OVER COME IT! The Lead literally has to OVERPOWER YOU in order for the Lead to then ‘PUSH’ you.
4.) You’re trying to step backwards THRU the Lead’s open step, and closer to their unweighted step or what is sometimes referred to as the ‘Free Leg’. A problem happens where you don’t want to hit the Lead’s leg. And that’s precisely what you want to have happen. Your Achilles’ Tendon wants to strike or brush very close to their ankle. In other words, ‘hit them’. You don’t want to but that’s what you’re aiming for. 5.) Keep your heels ON THE GROUND. I can’t say this enough. Remember, you’re in 3 inch heels. Do you want to impale your Lead WHILE you are dancing with them ? Probably not. Well not unless the Lead is not acting in a safe or emulating ‘gentlemanly’ qualities. Other than that > “No we do not want to impale them!”. Which is to say, keep your heels on the ground as you step thru the Lead’s open step.
The Sacada is probably one of Tango’s more interesting pieces of Tango vocabulary. Mostly because it looks really cool and complicated. And yet it’s complexity can be explained in one simple sentence – It’s an illusion! The illusion is an intersection of walking techniques. The Lead’s walk intersecting the Follower’s. It’s walking, nothing more than that. It’s just never explained that way. And yet, that’s exactly what it is. However, there’s a cute little trick that happens for every sacada, every single sacada no matter how complex, no matter how difficult it may appear. It’s an observation that I don’t own, but rather compsve fro a very reliable argentine source. So what’s the cute little trick ? The Triangle Methodology!
What is a Sacada ? First, a Sacada consists of a walking step that just so happens to intersect with your partner’s walking step at the same time that they’re stepping forward, side, or back. Secondly and this part you have to keep in the back of your mind: It’s an illusion. An illusion of walking, an illusion of technique, and an illusion of execution. To put it simply the Sacada is really just a walking illusion that intersects with someone else’s walk. And that’s the part that most people are confused by. What they see is the illusion, and try to re-create the illusion instead of focusing on the part that will actually help them to get to the root of the Sacada, the walking part! Which is to say that people focus on the flash and not the substance! It’s just a step forward and side (and sometimes back, but not in Today’s Tango Topic), which is going cut through, and step very close to someone else’s step which results in a displacement of someone’s leg. The hard part for most people is the timing of that displacement, not to mention where that displacement goes. Speaking of ‘displacements’ the Sacada is in the family of Tango vocabulary that are called ‘displacements‘, and that’s because of two factors that occur: 1.) Because whoever is initiating the Sacada will take the place of the one who is receiving the Sacada. You are displacing, and sometimes being displaced. And 2.) The one who is receiving the Sacada will displace their free leg as a result of the intersection of the walk. Further down the rabbit hole, the Sacada is one of the 4 common Displacements that Tango Topics talks about which are: 1.) The Sacada. 2.) Ganchos. 3.) Boleos. 4.) Enganches or what is commonly known as an Argentine Wrap!
And just for your further edification because some people ask the question “How many types of Sacadas are there ?”. Answer: There are 22 Types of Sacadas, and a total of 501 variations of those 22 Types. And yes we have done the math, and it comes out to 501. The types, just in case you hadn’t thought about it, but we have, are as follows:
1.) Forward Sacadas (from Linear, Circular, or Over-Rotated Ochos) in Parallel & Cross System. 2.) Side Sacadas (from a Curved Side Step) in Parallel & Cross System. 3.) Back Sacadas (from Back step, or Circular or Over-Rotated Ochos) in Parallel & Cross System. 4.) Linear Sacadas (from a Linear Side Step, or Linear Forward Step) in Parallel & Cross System. 5.) Chained Sacadas (Think: Cadenas) In Parallel & Cross System. 6.) Walking Displacement Sacadas in Parallel & Cross System. 7.) Multiple Forward/Side/Back Sacadas in Parallel & Cross System. 8.) Multiple Alternate A (same foot) Sacadas (You’ll see an example of this in the Forward Sacadas section). 9.) Molinete Sacadas (from the Follower’s Molinete, The Lead’s Molinete, and/or the Anti-Molinete). 10.) Orientation Change Sacadas (See the Anti-Molinete, and/or the American Embrace). 11.) Two Footed Sacadas (jump into the sacada).
That’s 11 Types of Sacadas, and each role can perform these, so we end up with 22 Types of Sacadas. Now there are even further variations on a theme of these ideas where you can theoretically mix and match any one of these ideas with another on the list and create a hybrid of the two. However, it was late and we’d already gone through 1002 possibilities and then someone mentioned the concept of Tango Topology and that just blew everything out of the water by halving everything and so we stopped counting there … so 501, and 22 types is enough for one lifetime. 🙂
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