Joy in Motion

Lead & Follow: Balancing Energies in the Partnership

Lately I have been actively learning how to lead in tango. I have done some leading over the years in a couple of different dances, mostly through teaching, but never to this extent in terms of focus and time investment. Not only are my reflections deeper, but I am receiving a variety of responses – both verbal and energetic – from my local tango community. The women admire, enjoy, and express curiosity about my venture, and I learn a lot from their unique energies as followers as I explore the leading role. But it’s the men that I am perhaps learning from the most.

The benefits of a small dance community include incredible sincerity and acceptance, and the men are demonstrating an unbelievable openness to my leading. Several of them - one in particular I would never have expected! – have even asked me to lead them. What encourages me is that they are not only interested in exploring the body mechanics of lead and follow through this exchange; they seem to be subconsciously absorbing some of the energetic dimensions as well. Just the act of switching roles – even if temporarily – necessarily changes our energies towards each other, which opens up both new strengths and new vulnerabilities. It also forces us to experience our own presence in the dance in different ways.

Over the past year my dad and I have played weekly chess games. It’s truly amazing how intricate and variable the game is, even playing the same person every time. Every game has its own flavor, and subtle changes in approach and even mood can drastically alter the energy of the entire game. Last month my father and I marveled to each other at how much of a difference it makes when one of us starts the game versus the other. It’s almost like an entirely different game and yet it maintains its essence in the midst of such a strong change in energy. I feel this same tension between same and opposite when it comes to the leading and following roles, and the similarities and differences both enhance the experience of the whole.

This has been a major point of meditation for me, so I was even more pleased than usual to discover that Sharna Fabiano has written another article in which she directly addresses this very thing. The entire article is very much worth a read, but I did want to tease out a few paragraphs in which she talks about the balance of seemingly opposing energies in the dance partnership. Read her wonderful reflections below, then click on the link to access the full article as well as her previous ones, all of which are excellent and highly recommended. Enjoy!

From Tango: A Deeper Look, by Sharna Fabiano:

I like to remember that the words lead and follow are a translation of one single Spanish word: improvise, and merely serve as our modern descriptions of what were traditionally male and female roles. With lead and follow come other opposites that we can learn from, such as assertive and receptive, speak and listen, and even masculine and feminine - not only in the sense of social stereotyping, but in reference to the inner qualities of our right and left brain processes.

But no healthy individual, in life, expresses only one of these opposite qualities. We all have access to both all the time as we improvise our lives from moment to moment. Still, managing the opposing energies within us is a valuable life skill. It’s nice to know when to work hard and when to rest, when to speak up and when to wait and see. And so, a word of caution to those who would interpret the tango as a chance to simply slide to one extreme or the other: we can’t always work hard, and we can’t always rest. The deep lesson of tango is not found in the opposing energies themselves, but in their balance.

This does not mean that we all need to dance both roles, although I do believe that is an extremely useful practice. The greater task, and the way I believe we reach for more profound depth and richness both in dance and in life, is to balance both assertive and receptive energies within the individual dancer. In fact, the balancing of opposing energies within us may even be necessary to attain great skill in social tango. Whether we name them speak and listen, masculine and feminine, or lead and follow is not so important.

As the tango unfolds, it becomes clear that neither partner can be only assertive or only receptive and dance well; one cannot be only part, one must be whole. In other words, the leader is also following, and the follower also leading… [W]hen each partner embodies both energies in the dance, regardless of gender role, not only do we dance better, but we also have a marvelous opportunity to become consciously aware of our innate wholeness as human beings.

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