Is Tango More Difficult for Leaders? Specifically, Male Leaders?
Besides mastering the basic tango steps, it’s crucial to know that the moment you step on the dance floor, you have a role that’s directly connected to your partner’s role.
One of the first things you learn about tango is that there’s a leader and a follower.
And if you’re a male dancer, you might instantly feel the pressure every tango leader in history has experienced.
As a tango beginner, it’s difficult to fully understand a tango couple’s journey on the dance floor at first glance. You might simply observe that the male dancer holds the female dancer as she turns and sparkles around him, and that’s it. However,
when you learn the dance yourself, you can instantly feel that your role is more than executing the walk, ocho, or giro flawlessly. Suddenly, you’re responsible for having control over the floor and reading your partner’s movement and energy.
Male dancers are generally considered the leaders in tango. And while both the leader and follower have individual responsibilities, many tango dancers say that the leader has more. Some say there’s an additional element of responsibility for them, making tango more complex and generally more demanding for men. The big question is… Is that true?
The History of Leading and Following
Let’s start with tracing the beginning of leading and following in tango.
We’ve already established that typically, male dancers are leaders, and female dancers are followers.
Whenever you find yourself in a milonga, all male dancers are responsible for leading women dancers during the dance. However, in the 1870s, men dancers learned to tango as both a leader and a follower.
According to Quartz, there were more eligible young men than women, and the former lived together in tenement housing. One of the few places where they could hope to meet young women was at a social dance. And because the competition was fierce, men couldn’t go to a social dance without knowing how to dance.
“Men would practice together, perfecting their polka and waltz so that they could impress a woman when the time came. It seems the tango began in the tenements as the men’s fantasy dance.”
Eventually, the tradition of same-sex tango dancing gave way to male-female partnerships.
Male tango dancers focused on learning the dance as leaders, and female dancers on becoming followers.
Men were responsible for initiating the cabeceo, the way tango dancers invited each other to dance, and navigating the dancefloor with their followers.
Tango teacher Daniel Trenner said in the 18th paragraph of the above article, the tango’s modern revival where men lead women was a mistake. He said that one must understand and be able to dance as a leader and a follower to be truly good at tango. He added,
“In order to prepare for the ritual environment of tango, you have to learn how to lead and follow. You have to have embodied the experience of both parts to be good at either.”
There are still communities that practice same-sex and queer tango dancing. However, most milongas observe the “traditional” tango roles of male leading and female following. Now, many tango dancers feel the need to know which role is more challenging than the other.
The Responsibilities of a Tango Couple
Before diving into the unique responsibilities of a leader and a follower,
you must also know that you have a shared role as a tango couple. At the heart of tango is a deep connection that keeps you together on the dancefloor as one.
Here are five of the key responsibilities you have as a tango couple:
Build Trust
Regardless of your role, you must trust your partner.
The leader must trust the follower’s intuition and ability, while the follower must trust that their leader will take them in the right direction.
Without trust, neither of the roles will matter.
Have the Willingness To Learn
Both partners must have the willingness to learn from each other.
As you explore tango, there will be times when either of you will make mistakes, but you must accept them with patience and understanding to learn from the experience.
Understand Points of View
The leader and the follower must understand each other’s points of view.
It helps you to better navigate moves and transitions, as the leader will be more aware of the follower’s needs and vice versa.
Communicate
Communication on the dancefloor isn’t necessarily verbal.
As a couple, you must be able to communicate your intentions and emotions with each other through your movements.
Communication in tango can only truly happen when you have trust.
Be Consistent
Lastly, both partners must be consistent.
Consistency in learning, practicing, and dancing will help you and your partner understand each other better.
Characteristics Every Tango Dancer Should Have
Apart from fulfilling your responsibilities as a tango couple, you must also have specific characteristics beyond your dancefloor role. It doesn’t matter if you’re a leader or a follower. As a tango dancer, you must have the following:
Agility
Tango requires swift movements and quick reflexes.
You must be able to guide yourself and your partner through the steps with precision. Moreover, you must be able to respond quickly to signals from your partner.
Naturalness
Tango dancing should be as natural and effortless as possible.
You must move with confidence and fluidity to bring the couple’s connection to life.
Ownership
Both the leader and the follower must take ownership of the dance.
Own the decisions you make and the moves you execute!
Is It Tougher To Be a Leader?
When you add all the abovementioned responsibilities to your leadership responsibilities, the pressure starts to mount.
Do tango leaders have it tougher? The answer is no. It is challenging to be a leader, but there’s no inequality in tango difficulty.
The challenges that men dancers take on as tango leaders are valid. There’s the mental difficulty of taking ownership of the role and responsibility for the other person. Moreover, there’s the need to be manly and right, as required and expected by society. Lastly, there’s also the conflict of treating women as equals but leading or dominating them on the dance floor.
Saying that it isn’t tougher to be a leader doesn’t invalidate the efforts of male dancers taking on the role.
It’s a call to find the beauty of leading in the support and connection between you and your partner.
As said in “Why leading is not more difficult than following,” leaders must learn more initiation skills. However, followers must also have to do more of the following:
Vocabulary
Movement, balance, and timing demands
Skills of inhibition and interpretation
When it comes to tango vocabulary, both the leader and follower must know their steps. However, the difference in the responsibilities lies in the execution.
Leaders must decide which vocabulary to use. They also decide when to use them.
Their decision-making responsibility allows them to only select vocabulary, leaving the task of preparing to follow various vocabularies to the follower.
“Followers, on the other hand, have to be prepared to follow a wide variety of vocabulary, a sum of the vocabulary of all of the leaders they dance with, including vocabulary they may be completely unfamiliar with.”
The follower also does more turns, spins, and pivots, and they execute them while fulfilling the leader’s vocabulary.
These simultaneous responsibilities put their movement, balance, and timing skills to the test. Lastly, followers must master the two opposing skills:
“…the ability to actively move themselves through space to the music and the ability to inhibit many of their own movement and musical preferences, tendencies, and desires. We often translate this for followers as “Don’t think,” but leaders who take up following quickly learn that this requires highly active listening and very concrete skills. Followers must seamlessly interpret and execute another person’s ideas in time and space as if they were their own.”
All these challenges that tango followers face prove that neither of the two roles is easier or more difficult.
Tango dancers will be able to feel this equality if they learn the dance as both a leader and a follower.
Moreover, the difficulty one faces with tango depends on the dancer’s skill and mastery of the respective roles!
Responsibilities of Tango Leader
Now that we have learned the challenges of being a tango follower, let’s equate the leader’s responsibilities. As a beginner, your teachers and co-learners will tell you that you’re responsible for leading your follower throughout the dance.
You must understand that leading involves more than just the physical aspect.
Here are two principal responsibilities of a tango leader:
Provide Direction
As a leader, you are the captain of your journey. You must be able to direct your partner and signal your ideas.
As explained in our article, “Smart Leadership Is About Knowing How To Make Your Team Align With Your Goals. Sounds Like Tango? Well — It Is!”
“When dancing the Argentine Tango, leaders provide direction to their followers.
They are responsible for encouraging their partners to move in a specific direction to ensure that the two of them can perform on the dance floor flawlessly.
Without this, couples won’t be able to execute the techniques as effectively and might end up hurting their partners or even bumping into other couples on the dance floor.”
This responsibility may sound easy, but it’s quite complex.
You must be able to express your ideas to your partner, even without verbal communication.
Your follower must also clearly understand where you’re directing her and the dance to go.
“Choreograph”
Some tango dancers liken a leader to a choreographer and a follower to a dancer.
As a leader, you must envision the entire dance before performing it. And once you’re on the dancefloor, you guide your follower to “fulfill your choreography.”
This makes it difficult for the follower to shine without the leader’s guidance. You set your follower up for success by choreographing opportunities for her to excel. In the same article, we explained,
“Tango leaders are responsible for setting the foundation of the dance and ensuring that the follower knows how and when to execute common tango steps, like the boleos (kicks) or ochos (serpentine steps). The leader should set the follower up for success so the two can easily execute the Argentine Tango together.”
Why Leading Seem Tougher Than Following
Tango is never more difficult for the leader, and it’s not less complicated, either. But why do many people think that leading is harder?
The primary reason is that society has deemed dancing to be for women.
Men dancers have to often give up experience in dancing because many don’t see it as “masculine.” Consequently, men are expected to take the lead role.
The conflict between society’s expectations and the real-life tango experience can make leading seem more difficult. It’s not true for everyone, but many male dancers experience this.
Cultural attitude also accounts for the belief that leading is more challenging. In some places, tango is mainly seen as entertainment and fun.
The stereotypes often overlook the dance’s technical aspects, making leading seem more difficult. Moreover, leaders get more focus in class than followers.
This imbalance leads to the idea that leading is more crucial than following, and followers must settle with the “Don’t think” mentality.
The misconceptions start in the classroom and can reach the milongas. Tango classes must challenge both roles and change the cultural attitude toward tango.
Both roles require practice to become competent, and dancers must value each other’s responsibilities equally if they plan to dance like a genuine tango couple.
Tango for All Tango Dancers
The truth is, in tango, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a leader or follower.
What makes a difference is how much effort you’re putting into your craft. Yes, how you interpret tango music through physical movement is integral. Still, none of the steps will make sense without a deep understanding of the dance.
Tango is for everyone, and each one brings something to the dancefloor. Leaders, followers, and all dancers must strive to understand their roles and responsibilities by accepting the challenge of their craft.
So, the next time you are taken aback by the idea that leading is more difficult, remember your immense potential as a tango dancer, not a leader or a follower!