743 Which is harder, leading or following?
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 18:54:29 -0700
From: Evan Wallace <evanw@INGENIUX.COM>
Subject: Which is harder, leading or following?
On Sun, 8 Sep 2002, Georgia Littleton wrote in her post entitled "Stop
taking classes now!":
"The tango of the leader and the tango of the follower are two entirely
different dances with disparate challenges...The point is well-known:
leading is harder than following."
===
On the first point, I agree completely. The physical roles,
requirements, and responsibilities of the lead and follow in Tango are
almost entirely non-overlapping. The mental aspects are also vastly
different, and so too are many of the emotional aspects. Leading and
following in Tango are about as similar as, say, pole vaulting and
yodeling.
I could not disagree more strongly with the latter point, though. It is
often assumed that leading is more difficult than following (or its
corollary, that followers learn more quickly than leads) because of the
well-known phenomenon that an experienced lead can give a relatively
inexperienced follow a great experience on the floor, whereas the
converse is not generally true.
This, however, has nothing to do with the comparative difficulties of
the two roles. It is simply a consequence of the fact that it is the
lead who initiates movements for the couple--nothing more. To say that
this makes the role of the leader more difficult than that of the follow
would be like saying it is more difficult to be a driver than an
automobile. The statement is neither right nor wrong; it is simply a non
sequitur.
If anything, the role of the follower requires much finer and more
developed motor skills than that of the lead. Consider this: In a given
evening of social dancing, a lead basically leads the same five or ten
things over and over again with every follow he dances with. Follows, on
the other hand, experience a completely new set of five or ten things
with each new lead she dances with. The sensitivity and physical control
required to respond reliably and musically to thousands of subtly
different movements led by hundreds of different men of varying
abilities is daunting. Leads, try it sometime if you don't believe it.
Not for a song or two--but for a week or two.
(It is interesting to note that among Tango stage dancers, nearly all of
the men are first and foremost Tango dancers, trained in the milongas of
Buenos Aires, while many or most of the women had serious classical or
modern dance training before they began their Tango careers. This
attests to the difficulty of the physical skills required by the
follower's role, at least in the performance realm.)
Following is excruciatingly difficult to do well. The solution is not
for women to stop taking classes, but rather for instructors to
structure their classes to include equal amounts of work specifically
for the follows.
Evan Wallace
Seattle
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 11:03:05 -0700
From: Jai Jeffryes <doktordogg@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Which is harder, leading or following?
--- Evan Wallace <evanw@INGENIUX.COM> wrote:
> point, though. It is
> often assumed that leading is more difficult than
> following (or its
> corollary, that followers learn more quickly than
> leads)
I think it is gracious and appropriate to acknowledge
the contributions of followers. Yet, I think the
observation that leading is harder than following is
also well-known.
Susana Miller summed it up best in a recent workshop.
She asserted that, given a man and a woman of
equivalent talent and dedication, the level of social
dancing that a woman will achieve in two months will
take two years for a man to achieve.
Maybe she was overstating the case in order to make
her point, but the point is clear.
That is NOT to say that a follower can't invest
considerable effort in her dancing and consequently
become a SUPERIOR follower. The comparison is being
made between "adequate" levels of social dancing. Are
you able to go to a milonga and have nice dances.
A woman can put a lot into her dancing and be able to
dance very nicely with any leader after a few months.
The things that have to be learned by a follower in
order simply to have nice dances can be assimilated in
a short amount of time. To be sure, she can continue
to grow forever after, but I'm only talking about nice
social dances, not "the sky's the limit" professional
performances.
A man will not arrive at a similar level of mere nice
functioning after the same short interval of study.
One reason, also brought up by Miller, is that the
leader must know not only his own choreography, but
also the choreography of the follower. (Indeed, when
improvising it's more important for the leader to know
the follower's feet than his own; what he does with
his own feet is almost trivial as long as he
understands and accommodates the footwork and body
position that he has led his follower into.)
It's possible for a follower to be able to have nice
dances with just about anyone after a few months.
Leading requires much more to be assimilated before a
similar minimum level of niceness can be experienced.
I don't detect that anyone is denigrating the skills
and dedication of followers by observing the relative
difficulty of leading.
Jai
=====
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9-11: A tribute to the more than 3,000 lives lost
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 15:00:37 -0500
From: "Frank G. Williams" <frankw@MAIL.AHC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Which is harder, leading or following?
Friends,
> --- Evan Wallace <evanw@INGENIUX.COM> wrote:
> > It is
> > often assumed that leading is more difficult than
> > following (or its
> > corollary, that followers learn more quickly than
> > leads)
...and Jai responded
> A woman can put a lot into her dancing and be able to
> dance very nicely with any leader after a few months.
...snip...
> To be sure, she can continue
> to grow forever after, but I'm only talking about nice
> social dances, not "the sky's the limit" professional
> performances.
Evan and Jai are talking about different things.
In my experience, the "nice" social dancing of the
relatively new follower Jai describes will be really
nothing like the following of the "sky's the limit"
professional even in the simplest social tango. There will
be really no similarity at all. A woman who has really
developed in tango - one whose every studied movement is
expressive, one whose understanding of 'tango culture'
has depth, one whose reasons for dancing extend far
beyond starry-eyed acceptance into a seemingly exotic
or exclusive social scene - THAT woman has paid some
dues that the average gringo workshop student can't
imagine. There is really no comparison between leading
the able (relative) neophyte and the seasoned tanguera.
A follower with something to show, a message to communicate,
or a deep understanding to be affirmed - THAT woman does
*everything* better. ...not just show figures...
It takes an exceptional leader to appreciate her.
An experienced leader can often take a follower to
another level, and she may have a great time and be
appreciative. For that leader the experience is not
the same as dancing from a foundation of total trust
and focus on musicality.
...not the same at all.
Busily,
Frank in Minneapolis
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 16:44:05 -0700
From: Huck Kennedy <huck@ENSMTP1.EAS.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Which is harder, leading or following?
Evan Wallace writes:
> I could not disagree more strongly with the latter point,
> though. It is often assumed that leading is more difficult
> than following [...]
>
> This, however, has nothing to do with the comparative
> difficulties of the two roles. It is simply a consequence
> of the fact that it is the lead who initiates movements for
> the couple--nothing more.
"Nothing more?" Huh?
> To say that this makes the role of the leader more difficult
> than that of the follow would be like saying it is more
> difficult to be a driver than an automobile. The statement
> is neither right nor wrong; it is simply a non sequitur.
In my humble opinion, the only non-sequitur is your
entire automobile analogy, my friend.
The leader has to worry about his or her own moves, the
follower's moves, interpreting the music (okay, shared, but
the leader has more responsibility here), navigation through
the crowd to protect both the follower and the other dancers.
Look at it it this way -- if even a modest follower can
dance with his or her eyes closed, how can it possibly be as
hard as leading?
Following is a different skill, is difficult, but...please,
let's get real.
To quote Brian Dunn from Colorado in a posting here last
October:
As a first response on this interesting discussion,
I'll offer this - in Miami this past June Carlos
Gavito and Marcela Duran were asked how long it takes
a leader or a follower to get "good".
"A pause...Gavito then said, "A follower, if she works
hard, can become good within, oh, five months." Another
pause, while the audience digested this. Then Marcela
said, "For a leader, there is so much...learning the
music, how to express,...to become good, ten years."
That's good enough testimony for me.
Huck
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 23:57:03 -0800
From: Dan Boccia <redfox@ALASKA.NET>
Subject: Re: Which is harder, leading or following?
Friends -
For me, this argument is quite clear. It's 50-50 all the way. The dance is
a shared experience. The followers who really work at their skills and
baseline fundamentals and have danced for years are noticeably better
dancers than the followers who have only been at it for a few months. I can
feel the difference almost immediately. To say that their set of skills,
sensitivities, etc. are any less or more difficult than the leaders' role is
pretty difficult for me to agree with.
We need to learn to fully respect each others' roles and find ways to make
the other person's role easier to accomplish. Arguing about how one role is
easier or harder than the other isn't going to get us there. I think
there's equal potential for improvement in either role.
Dan
