Last night, a few songs into a very nice tanda, the man I was dancing with said, “I’m so sorry I keep making mistakes.”
“What mistakes?” I asked… “I haven’t noticed anything.”
“Really?”
”Really. Your leading feels awesome tonight!”
“Well thanks! Wow, Tango can be such a mental game…”
Isn’t it funny how we do that to ourselves? And I know we all do. This guy’s a great dancer too. The things is, he may have wanted to lead one thing, and wound up leading another thing and therefore was embarrassed - while on MY end, it wasn’t like that at all. Since I can’t read his thoughts, the only thing I was aware of is what I was being led to do in that very moment. And it felt great.
Related Articles
6 users responded in this post
Voxy Classes, French Tango and Mind Games
I’ve been waiting for some tango to surface on Vox, a blogging service I love, and, at last, it’s happened. Smoke is blogging about tango classes in great detail:I started going to an Argentine Tango group class at Starlite. At
Tina You bring up a good subject here. If a lead does not mean to lead something, but it is still musical, and I follow it, then why should anyone feel apologetic? Maybe his body is responding outside of his logic.
For follows too:
I used to say, first off, that I was nervous or would sort of apologize upfront about some aspect of myself or my dance. No More!
Guess what..all of the sudden I feel better about it, and the dance benefits. Sometimes it seems the less talk the better!
Elizabeth - I know what you mean - I used to apologize so much, and what for? Once in a while I catch myself saying ’sorry’” still… but for the most part I try to remember that it’s just a dance.
I think I saw you last night at the milonga on the eastside…sitting at a table? I opened one eye at one point while I was dancing to see if it was you, but didn’t get a chance to go over and say hi and ask if it was you.
I still apologize for freezing up a bit everytime a guy spins me 360 degrees on my axis. Been too used to having that happen disastrously with shorter men that even if a guy my height tries that, I freeze. Last time I apologized for that, the guy said he didn’t notice anything. Maybe i only froze in my head? i think it’s going to take a while to learn to relax for that move - last piece of the mind game I need to get off the board.
Ha, that’s funny… so true that perceptions can be so different for the two people leaving the dance, particularly when they have different levels, I think. Maybe because of it people have very different expectations and fears… and so the stories told at the end of the tanda diverge so much…
Hi Tina,
Yes, it was me, and we had to leave early or I would have said hello. You looked like you were having a nice time. E
Leave A Reply