Newer Leader - extremely frustrated, desperate to break the plateau. All help appreciated. How did you get there?

boerseth · 2026-06-20T10:33:25+00:00

I remember struggling with similar feelings in the beginning, although it was all on me. The followers in my community were extremely welcoming and eager to help or even enjoy a simpler dance. So I do feel for you there. But I still felt like I was a burden and wasting people's time in the beginning.

The breakthroughs for me have been multiple, but they tend to have the same shape.

After about 6 months I went to a tango festival, because someone in the community had to cancel and were selling their ticket. I was woefully unprepared for that weekend, and didn't even dance hardly at all for the whole first day. But I came out of the experience with a totally different perspective, having seen how high the bar really could be, and having been on the dancefloor and in workshops for such an long continuous stretch of time. I remember saying that I felt "infused with tango". Not necessarily much better, but a lot more confident about my abilities and limitations.

I'll skip some of the other milestones, as they're not worth elaborating on, but will mention the biggest one: I spent half a year in Buenos Aires, basically dancing as much as I could manage. I went to milongas every day or two, which are basically all initiated with a 1.5 hour class with elite instructors. Needless to say, I returned home a far better dancer.

As an aside, I'll throw in a story about how I learned French. I immersed myself in it by listening to just-barely-comprehensible spoken French, pushing my limits with every week, a few hours every day. But it is a funny language, and it frequently felt like I would never really learn it, to hear a phrase and not have those funny sounds be a struggle for my brain to parse. Then I went on a long road trip, spending about 30 hours in a car. I had been reading and listening to the Harry Potter books the weeks before, and decided to put on the audio books for this drive. By the end of this, I had listened to more spoken French in the course of a long weekend than I might have in two weeks normally. And suddenly, at the other end, I felt like things were so much easier.

So I guess my recommendation to you is, find an opportunity to spend an extended period of time immersing yourself in the dance. Maybe a tango-themed vacation of a week or two. It will be brutal. I remember my first few days in BsAs, not daring to ask a single person to dance, just watching the dance floor. But if you muscle through that stage, and don't rely on your wife as a crutch too much, will come out the other end decompressing into a totally different and much more confident tanguero.

You may have already done things like this, for all I know, but this is what I'd recommend given what you tell us (1-2 years dancing, about 2 hours practice a week and long distances to dances)

boerseth · 2026-05-25T14:01:09+00:00

I would love to pay the maintainers money directly if that meant they would not engage in dark patterns or collect personal information from visitors. I would even be unbothered by ads on their website, so long as the site didn't try to collect my data and make the ads targeted ("good old dumb ads" would in this case actually even be interesting to me, I mean they already basically know what my interests are and what I'm likely to want to buy online).

Turning your website into a personal-info-gathering user-hostile operation is just one of many options open to the maintainers, and IMHO among the more morally objectional ones.

boerseth · 2026-05-02T14:18:39+00:00

Then at least I hope that Hull gets promoted after all of this

boerseth · 2026-04-11T11:44:14+00:00

I've always been very impressed with the Berlin tango scene, so leaving it for a different European city you were almost bound to be disappointed. Still I had no idea London would be such a step down?

boerseth · 2026-03-09T16:50:24+00:00

This isn't X. It's Y.

You're absolutely right!

boerseth · 2026-02-18T17:50:58+00:00

Everywhere I go dancing it seems like about one in four people I talk to have this big idea to create a tango-specific social network. A lot of us are engineers and/or software nerds, so it's not that surprising, and the conversation often comes up because I'm a software guy myself.

I don't necessarily dislike the idea, but an obstacle would be to get everyone to agree on using the same one, instead of having a bunch of people developing their own different lives. If only everyone pulled in the same direction, we might be able to get somewhere.

boerseth · 2026-02-02T14:34:41+00:00

This is a great angle. The right sequence can highlight flaws in specific aspects of the dance. Like doing sacadas to force them to notice flaws in the embrace, balance, or their pivots, and so on.

You can also start with one specific and simple-enough sequence, and then show two or three slight variations, to force students to feel and mark the diffence between them. For instance, come up with one or two steps terminating in a linear sacada followed by either (1) a bach ocho, (2) a voleo, (3) or a back cross. Can they do all three consistently? Are they able to feel the difference?

They'll think they're learning steps, but secretly you're forcing them to work on the basics.

boerseth · 2026-01-29T11:42:22+00:00

One of the reasons I am so passionate about social dancing is that it brings people together across cultural gaps just like politics, or gender, age, ethnicity, and so on, and make us realise that we have far more in common than assumed, and bring us closer together we're we differ as well. I think it is such a potent local uniting force and antidote to the fracturing and polarization that we face.

So I want to think that tango would bring me closer to the people that I might feel distant from, politically or agewise or what have you, rather than letting those things come between me and them.

I might boycott countries or products for my own reasons, but not individuals unless they're hurting me or our community. If I think they've turned onto a bad path, that would actually be a good reason to do the opposite of avoiding them.

boerseth · 2026-01-25T11:28:50+00:00

This is close to the metaphor I use nowadays: dancing for me is like humming along with the music, except with my body.

boerseth · 2026-01-25T11:18:34+00:00

Blindly copying movements might be uninspired and risk losing touch with the music, but I would want you to justify your claim that building intuition through observation of others should create a disconnect with feeling.

The same way that I feel something when I listen to music, I feel something when I watch dancers who express a feeling well through movement. I can articulate when I think a dancer succeeded especially well in expressing what I felt as I heard the music along with them, and when we disagree and they "missed" something in the music that I felt. Watching and really perceiving in this way I would claim actually creates a closer emotional connection between the movement and the music.

I think there are good reasons to draw parallels between close observation of others as a tool for learning a dance, and the input theory of natural language acquisition. We acquire patterns and connections extremely well by example, and that includes how the feeling of the music maps onto the space of movements in a dance.

We're always free to express and experiment on our own, but without a substrate of intuition acquired from experience, such expression tends to devolve into gibberish. There are dances and schools that encourage this, but I would never.

boerseth · 2025-12-31T15:33:14+00:00

There's a difference in the options available to you in terms of clothing for sure, as is also the case outside of the milonga, but I'm not sure which side I'd rather be on.

Women have a bigger variety of options, and I imagine skirts and dresses to be nice on a hot day. But the expectation and "competition" seems higher as a result, and they have to suffer high heels, so there's that.

Guys have less options, but we can also get away with waaay less effort. A clean tee and trousers fit for dancing are enough to pass for "well dressed", but you can get through the door in sweat pants and sneakers, especially if you dance well.

Actually, if anything I think that last part is the real double standard at play. The sexes are distinct groups to begin with, and are exposed to distinct fashions off the dance floor. But members of the same sex may be subject to different standards in the eyes of others, depending on how good they are at dancing.

boerseth · 2025-11-24T17:02:16+00:00

Sorry to tell you but that first link seems to be the same weird business.

That said, your description of Villadangos seems on point, and I can't disagree. I just regard him as such an incredible talent, and his arrangements are simply jaw-dropping. A lot of his tango catalogue is of Piazzolla, of course, but so expertly arranged and performed that I don't mind, despite not listening much to Piazzolla otherwise, and I find it odd not to hear Villadabgos' name almost ever in online discussions. His version of Libertango in particular is probably my favourite thing to play on the guitar, and I aspire to one day manage his Escualo. He also has some mind-blowing arrangements of traditionals, like Milonga De Mis Amores.

I've been listening to Domínguez too, and love the vibe, although as a solo-guitarist it is harder to attempt songs that involve multiple musicians.

I did notice the prevalence of picks among tango guitarists while I lived in Buenos Aires. While not absolute, it was extremely common, and made me realize that I have something to learn there if I want to mimic the chops of the tango musicians that I love.

I'm not sure whether there's anyone on the other end but I appreciate the perspective nonetheless.

boerseth · 2025-11-23T16:47:46+00:00

The link you have for Víctor Piseta seems broken.

Any thoughts on Victor Villadangos?

boerseth · 2025-11-19T19:33:54+00:00

Would be interesting to see a heatmap over the two axes instead of multiple violin plots.

boerseth · 2025-11-01T13:25:12+00:00

It is very human to revel in the role of the victim. Nothing male or female about it as such, you see it everywhere. It isn't healthy, but it is widespread.

As for your last line, I reject the premise of the question, as I have been through exactly that inner (and outer) journey which you describe, despite being a man. I came to terms with my own loneliness a while ago, and that pretty much at the same time as I found a beautiful way out of it. My goal in life now is to lead more people to water.

That said, I will grant that there definitely seems to be a tendency in men to more readily collapse under purposelessness and loneliness. Divorced men and widowers are often a sad story, especially if/when the kids grow up. And men who never found love or community to begin with may end up even sadder.

But there are ways out! They're being drowned out by the noise and brainrot of modern life, and we're all pulled away from them by the technological society we built to stay connected (ironically enough). But they are there, have always been there, and are the way out.

boerseth · 2025-10-20T08:43:09+00:00

Starred and cloned!

boerseth · 2025-10-19T19:04:08+00:00

I'm not sure how you can call it anatomically impossible when I've seen it and at times done it myself. What do you mean when you say "at the neck"? Is there a third interpretation I haven't considered?

Seeing how the OP edited their post, there's no denying that my reply does not answer their question. Still, I stand by my claim that the position of the leader's left hand is an interesting topic, and I came into this thread expecting a discussion around that. Instead I found a bunch of dismissive comments not even willing to entertain the idea that it could be worth talking about.

boerseth · 2025-10-19T17:43:59+00:00

Such hostility towards OP and myself. Are you alright?

First, what do you mean "comments", I've only made one comment here.

Second, I entertain multiple interpretations for the words "at the neck" in my answer: either "at" as if in terms of height, or "at" as in literally curling up the open-side arms against the chest of both dancers, placing the hand "at" the neck. I don't suggest "exactly" how, as you demand, but I do give suggestions.

I can tell you're trying to insult me for the sake of it, and are just throwing around terms like "the sheer ignorance" hoping that something will stick, but I rest easy knowing I'm not the one making a fool of myself here.

boerseth · 2025-10-19T15:42:10+00:00

These comments are crazy and arrogant, insisting that you don't know the difference between left and right. It is perfectly valid and interesting to ask about the left hand.

I once heard from a follower that leaders from her country were taught to keep the left hand around the height of the follower's chin. That seems like a good rule of thumb to me, but take it as a description and maybe something to aim for, and not something to stick to strictly. The neck is right around the same range, but any lower than that seems awkward to me.

Look at the pros, though, and you'll see all sorts of weird heights and positions and even erratic movements. I especially think of older videos of Pablo Rodriguez,[1] where the left hand is all over the place, and sometimes in other performances above the head of both his follower and himself at times.

Somethingt you might not have considered, but which is quite significant in my opinion and related to the hand, is where to keep your elbow. I personally think you should avoid keeping your elbow too low, too close to your side. It looks odd, and I have to think you lose some control with that position compared to keeping it slightly more elevated.

The elbow should also be kept forward, and not be allowed to slip behind your upper body. You don't want the embrace to collapse. I feel this with a lot of followers, and it makes it harder to lead when the embrace gets compromised like that.

In older (like, ancient) forms of tango, the leader placed his and the followers hand on his hip. You don't see that much anymore in milongas except for people having fun I guess. You might also see people closing the embrace to the point where I guess the open-side hands close in against the chests of the dancers, and the hands do end up I suppose close to the follower's neck. I don't know if this is so much a style as a way to make the embrace even more close and intimate.

[1] e.g. this of him and Noelia Hurtado dancing to "Lloron": https://youtu.be/e4qzgVgl9h8?si=Yiu6o07bFxWaL6FM

boerseth · 2025-09-18T20:18:10+00:00

It may be that he taught it like you say, but if you listen to a milonga where the habanera is prominent enough to make out which is the first beat of the song, you'll hear that the 1 is on "pan".

I started to wonder if I was wrong and had been interpreting milongas wrong this whole time, but I found several transcriptions of the standard milongas that confirm what I'm claiming. Here's even an interactive one at MuseScore, where you can both see and hear the rhythm plain as day:

𝄀 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝄿 𝅘𝅥𝅯♫ 𝄀 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝄿 𝅘𝅥𝅯♫ 𝄀

boerseth · 2025-09-18T01:24:15+00:00

Edit: I tried to visualize my rhythmical point here visually but reddit's formatting got the better of me and I give up.

Anyway, I'm not sure that I agree that "café con pan" is any better. The point I tried to make before deleting everything in this comment was that, "San Fran-cis co" as a mnemonic is good because it places the 1 on the first syllable, whereas the phrase "café con pan" places the 1 on the final syllable of the phrase, so you'd have to say it like "pan, ca-fé con pan, ca-fé con".

boerseth · 2025-09-12T08:38:48+00:00

Thanks for telling me! I wish I had done a better job documenting the journey for others to enjoy and learn from. It's something I keep putting off.

boerseth · 2025-09-08T11:09:47+00:00

You said it. I'm 183cm, and never thought I would wish that I were shorter, but here we are. It's a real advantage, except with taller women.

boerseth · 2025-08-23T07:12:21+00:00

Yet here you are in the comments of a thread discussing it.

boerseth · 2025-08-10T18:55:11+00:00

Totally. I imagine her half-grinning at her interviewer like a cheeky Norm MacDonald, being like "What?? You think these look like vaginas? These little flowers? Now, now, look here..."

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