There are many exercises that one can do as a Lead to improve one’s abilities and executions. To clean them up, sharpen them, hone them. This site boasts a few that have developed over the years and that I teach the intensive student to use to strengthen their tendons and stretch their muscles, and mostly to retool their neurological awareness. However, there’s one exercise that I make every Lead student do in their private lessons. Truthfully it’s the first thing they do when they come into class. Moreover it is the single most important exercise that they can and will ever do for so many reasons. 11 actually, which you’ll see in just a moment (assuming you’re a subscriber). This exercise is, on one level, a precursor and set up for doing everything that the Lead will ever do in Tango. Secondly, it’s also set up for a very important technique that gets talked about but never enacted (disassociation). We’ll get to what those things are in just a bit. And lastly this exercise is seemingly really, insanely, simple. It is anything but that for a wide variety of reasons. Why ? Mostly, it requires exacting precision, control, and an attention to detail that more than likely will drive you batty. It does that with each and every Lead that does it for 2 reasons.
1.) The attention to detail is absolutely crucial to your awareness and your control.
2.) The Turn Out Factor (More on that later).
On the surface, just looking at the sample above, it looks like 4 steps, in the extreme, that you’d never…ever do on a social dance floor. So as far as you’re concerned you’re gonna say to yourself “That’s ridiculous! No one dances like that!“. And you’d be right. You’re never, ever going to dance like that. Ever. Except when you understand a few things about the exercise that a.) It’s set up for other things. b.) it’s doing things in the extreme so that doing them in the minimal, later on, is a piece of cake. c.) it’s creating a level of precision and control that as a Lead you more than likely may not possess today. And d.) It’s one long isolation technique (more on this later). That said, let’s dive into the video that I call: The Lead Exercise > One Exercise To Rule Them All!
A Few Things…
1.) This exercise can be done by seasoned dancers, and should be actually, but won’t be for a variety of reasons, as well as the absolute beginner. a.) The seasoned dancer doesn’t read this stuff, they feel it’s beneath them (mostly). b.) The seasoned dancer will take one look at the video above, or just screenshot image and completely disregard what’s here because I’m barefoot.
Truth be told, the sooner that you start doing this exercise, the easier things will get in more ways than can imagine.
2.) The simplicity of the exercise itself is beguiling on multiple levels, and also exceptionally frustrating IF and ONLY IF you are honest with yourself. If you’re not honest, then the exercise is exceptionally easy and a complete waste of your time.
So what are you being honest about ? Where you’re landing your foot and more importantly HOW you’re landing your foot (supination), where you’re sending your leg (the extension), how much opposition you’re actually engaging (extreme opposition), what’s going on with your arms, hands, and your head (where’s your head pointed)! This exercise, done properly, should challenge you in every way possible. The tolerances involved should push you to your extremes, it should push you beyond your comfort zone. And that’s what we want, we want you outside of your comfort zone. Why ? It is only through pushing beyond that zone, that change and awareness begins to happen. Further the exercise is the embodiment of a simple but overriding principle of Tango Topics: Overshooting to Under do! Why is that relevant here ? Because if you can do this stuff in the extreme, then doing it in the minimal, will be a piece of cake for you, because you’ve already done that and more! That’s why. So you being honest with yourself and what your body is doing is kinda important.
3.) Seemingly you’re never going to apply any of this stuff. Not true. You’re going to apply it everywhere. Here’s just 2 benefits. a.) You’re extensions. Sometimes called ‘Projections’. Cleaning those up will visually create the lines that you’re looking for. Do yourself a favor, video your walk going forwards from your hips down, from the side. Do it in skin tights or stalkings please, not pants. You need to see your legs. You’ll be surprised at a few things, most notably how much you bend your knees (more on this later), and more importantly how unattractive and inconsistent your extensions are. b.) You should start to notice how unstable you are. How much you wobble when you walk, and the fact that you more than likely can not follow a straight line going forwards! And all done without holding onto someone or using someone else’s walk to keep you from falling forward. If you’re wobbling that much by yourself, imagine what’s happening in the embrace with someone else!! For those of you that will argue, “that’s what the Follower is for”…No, it’s not. No one likes to be used to hold someone else up. No one. If the roles were reversed (and I have done this with Female students), more than likely you wouldn’t like it either. So what on god’s green earth makes you believe that a Female Follower would like it ? Answer ? They don’t. So…not so much with that. This exercise will help you with your stability, with your control, with your executions of everything that you can imagine and more that you can’t.
4.) Socks or Bare feet. In the video above I’m not wearing any shoes. That immediately and completely discredits the validity of what I’m saying in the video. To those people I say this: The barefoot thing is all about feeling your foot in contact with the floor. The shoes, whether you know it or not, are compensating for you in more ways than you’re currently aware of. So we want to remove any and all compensation! We want you to feel the floor with your foot and not the shoe impacting the floor. And remember this is an exercise.
Further still on this topic, at some point later on, we do engage what we call ‘shoe work’ for the Lead. Where we engage all of the work above, and then some to apply it in a pair of shoes, only because you’ve done it with precision, control, containment, and you’ve built up the necessary strength in your tendons, it’s not so much of a bother to be in a pair of shoes. The only difference now is that you have control over them. Versus wobbling all over the damned place.
Put another way, a pair of shoes literally hides things from you. It compensates for your lack of balance with the edges of the shoe. Working in a pair of socks doesn’t allow for that. So therefore once that is mastered, then putting on a pair of shoes should be second nature at that point.
This article contains the following topics:
1.) The Turn Out Factor!
2.) Leg Extensions (Part 1)
3.) The Straight Line on the Floor!
4.) The Pigeon Toed Feeling.
5.) The Weight Transfer.
6.) Opposition Explained.
7.) Extreme Opposition Used.
8.) Homo-Lateral Movement.
9.) The Long Extension (Part 2)
10.) The Knee Bend (Compression).
11.) The Little Lean We Don’t Want.
12.) Your Body Wavers.
13.) The Isolation Technique/Ballet Rises
14.) The Eleven Reminders.
15.) The Actual Exercise (seen above).
16.) The Leg/Foot Reminders.
17.) The Checklist.
These are the 17 topics that are covered in this extensive article that goes over every aspect of this very important exercise and then some. It’s a full treatise on how to extend one’s leg…as a Lead. Everywhere!