Making someone comfortable

• Understanding and respecting someone’s abilities, desires
• Truly dancing for each other and no one else
• Going from learning a movement to learning to enjoy doing it

Dealing with different partners

• Height difference
• Weight, strength
• Different skill set, different styles, different opinions
• Finding out someone’s ‘defaults’, choose to work with or against them
• Adjusting the position of one’s core(from whence one leads) to fit each partner
• Find a way to highlight one another’s strengths and work around weaknesses

Embrace

• Open: Nuevo, …
• Close: Salon, Milonguero, Villa Urquiza, V-shaped
• Knowing when to loosen, when to tighten

Caminata

• Where the foot first touches the ground

Posture

• Head
• Torso, back
• Outer arm(leader: left, follower: right)
• Hips
• Legs, when to straighten and when to bend

Musicality

• Theory(Habanera, syncopation, measures, phrases, …)
• Listening
• Knowing different orquestas and their styles

Reaction

• Quick to react to sudden changes
• Being able to stop completely, without ‘reverb’, on the spot, anytime
• Changes of direction

Precision

• Know exactly how much weight to apply
• Know when to smooth one movement into another
• Know how much weight/force is required to counter another movement
• Know where every part of one’s own and the partner’s body is at any given moment, enabling precise Sacadas and avoiding stepping on toes

Smoothness

• Weight transfer
• Drawn-out, slow movements

Circularity

• Avoiding square movements, sharp ‘edges’
• Move around a shared axis, shift and tilt it
• Leaving the shared axis

Navigation

• Conservation of space
• Knowing where there is space, moving into gaps
• Respecting other dancers around oneself
• Keeping up the flow of the Ronda
• Shielding one’s partner from danger

Choreographies

• Making it ‘pop’, having a cohesive theme throughout a song
• Avoiding repetition(except maybe to accentuate it in the music)
• Telling a story, facial expressions, ‘selling the act’

Leading

• Providing clear guidance
• Knowing when to give space
• Also reacting to the partner
• Knowing when to take charge
• Knowing (and maybe being able to do oneself) the follower’s movements, and limitations

Following

• Anticipating movements without reacting prematurely
• Keeping up, staying alert(‘Active following’)
• Influencing the leader, slowing down or accelerating,

Codigos

• Mirada y cabaceo
• Floorcraft
• Being respectful of everyone
• Adjusting to the Argentine culture and way of life

Shaping the community

• Helping out others
• Enforcing standards
• Securing funding
• Organizing events

Outlook

(i.e. knowing how to keep improving)

• Shaping one’s path
• Being hungry for more
• Keeping up with what others are doing
• Knowing what is possible
• Have an opinion, but be receptive to other people’s
• Finding the right teachers, know one’s own strengths and weaknesses
• Being able to articulate one’s aims in taking a lesson

Finding one’s own style

• Creativity
• Deciding what one likes, dislikes
• Maybe: Gimmicks, own ‘moves’, identifying quirks(but also ‘Kill your darlings’, don’t repeat yourself too often)
• Important: It has to scale, i.e. be adaptable to different environments and partners, and fit with a wide range of music

Fitness

• Stability
• Reaction time
• Strength, core strength
• Flexibility
• Endurance
• Mental aptitude, being able to learn new information fast and retain it, being able to apply it to new uses
• Being in a state that teachers do not have to waste time trying to fix one’s coordination and stability issues, see Getting a body that moves well when dancing