tangophilia blog

So, here’s an idea that can help guide your thinking about the role of the follower. Followers are not empty vessels to be filled up with whatever ideas you think are so important for them to know to be able to follow your leading. Followers are not tabula rasa. Followers can instead be thought of as a medium, and as any artist knows, the final product will be strongly influenced by and dependent on the medium.

Plaster behaves differently than clay, steel or marble. Pastels are great for certain effects, but oils or watercolors will provide different results. The good artist will either choose the medium to match the expression or find a different expression that complements and is served by the medium.

Let’s say a modern sculptor is working to build a model out of silly putty. He’s manipulating it, flexing it, reshaping it, then at some point he pulls too fast and a chunk breaks off in his hand. Now, the sculptor knew that silly putty must be formed slowly in order to stretch, and instead he yanked hard and caused it to separate.

The frustrated artist will then begin blaming the silly putty as the source of the problem. Why can’t silly putty stretch faster? Why can’t silly putty hold it’s shape when stretched? Why can’t I make my silly putty bounce when it’s a square? Silly putty should be more like modeling clay! These problems are all the fault of the silly putty!

The experienced artist will have a different thought process. Silly putty is a non-Newtonian fluid.. If moved slowly, it stretches, if moved too quickly, it breaks. I can try this again more slowly, I can work the putty longer so it’s warmer and more fluid. I can make sure that I have more putty or keep the shape shorter to make sure it doesn’t lose shape over a span. I can make sure that the blob is actually spherical to get a better bounce. If I want to keep using silly putty, perhaps I should rethink my vision about what I want to build, and save the other ideas for another type of material.

At some point in the dance, leaders will find that a step or technique isn’t working and that the communication or following is “breaking” at some point. The first and best solution is to rework the lead to take advantage of the situation, or to avoid it, by being clearer, smoother, gentler, more in unison, whatever the follower needs to understand the lead better. However, what happens all too frequently, is that “the artist will blame the medium", and spend time trying to “teach” the follower how to be like another type of follower, or worse yet, to compensate for the poor lead by giving the leader what he wanted instead of what he asked for. This type of response can cause discomfort, annoyance, frustration, and even injury in followers, and even though it might satisfy your short-term needs, it’s quite possible that you have now made it difficult for any other leader to dance with this follower thanks to your “special modifications.”

As a leader, you have the decision-making responsibility in tango, but you are going to be limited by the capabilities and inclinations of your follower. If your follower is slower, then you must lead more slowly. If your follower is prone to burst ahead of the lead, then you must either follow her or work more slowly to avoid inducing a burst. If your follower doesn’t pivot, then don’t lead pivots. If your follower can’t hold a strong frame, don’t use one. If your follower is wincing in pain at your leads, then change your leads.

The expressive skill in tango and other arts, comes from working with what you have. If you don’t like your medium, find another one, but once you’ve made the choice to work with a medium, you have to accept the limitations, capabilities, and inclinations of that medium. You may be pleasantly surprised at how much better the final results are, and how you were still able to achieve your vision (or a better one) by working with the follower rather than forcing the follower to be someone else to compensate for you.