Tropical Zen

Their teaching style is wonderful. Really. Think Jaimes Freidgen’s level of teaching skill, coupled with a deep kindness and the ability to make it all so very clear you wonder why you hadn’t gotten it before. They will tell you that whatever it is you’re doing, it’s right for something; maybe not this lead, maybe not even tango, but it’s right for something. So the students are never wrong, and the sometimes crushing weight of the steep learning curve is suddenly not so crushing. Ahh, it’s nice.

Michael is a professional dance teacher first, and then also someone who likes tango. Many of the teachers are so wrapped up with tango that they can’t see it from the outside, and they can’t see that the different styles are created because someone did it wrong, and other people thought that was cool. He has a great sense of physical humor and has been known to treat his more advanced students to the “oranguatango” display, where he leads a dance from the orangutan pose. It’s really funny, and it makes fun of a weird pose, which some people do in less extreme ways.

The basic premise seems to be that a) you’re dancing with a person, not just doing steps and b) the leader is pretty much just changing the direction of the follower, but the follower is always trying to move in the direction they were sent, until they’re stopped or changed. This is very different from the “lead every move” style, but when I try to lead every move, I’m so busy trying to control my partner and negotiate the floor that I can’t have any fun or do anything interesting; it’s just work, and it’s only the leader that has to do it. Pththtbpt, I say; there’s no fun in it. Also, by waiting for the leader to lead every move, as a follower I prevent them from having any kind of flow; things get jerky, stopping and starting and waiting instead of dancing.

I’m starting to see it this way: the follower is like a solid, weighty ball that moves at a regular speed and direction, and the leader rolls it on the floor until he decides to change direction, speed, or rotation, which he does and the follower responds as best as they can; the leader then responds to that new direction, even if it was imperfectly followed. So if she misunderstands and steps back instead of to the side, he follows her as though that’s what he meant to do and they keep dancing. The leader anchors when he’s the center of a turn, and otherwise when they travel he offers a lead, waits a split second to make sure he knows where she’s going, then he follows her and they collect their balance.