#follower's technique

Today's #Tango Truism 83: An unfortunate side effect of the dance, Followers apologize for Leader mistakes.  This shouldn't happen, but does!

e.g.: if the leader led it, why are you apologizing for it?

Today's #Tango Truism 83rd Clarity:  Every follower has done this more times than they can shake a stick at. It happens at least once or twice a dance depending on the technical abilities of the leader and more over the follower.  What is this thing ?  The 'Apology'.   It goes something like this:

Said amazing (god's gift) leader who thinks he walks on water ;-), leads some rather amazing piece of vocabulary, and he actually pulls it off! Yea for the Leader Team!  Unfortunately he misses the exit move back to WALKING (you remember that, right ? The thing that the dance is based on ?).  As a result, the follower ends up stumbling over the leader's foot.  And here we have the aforementioned Apology - "I'm Sorry!".

 And just why is the follower apologizing ?  Because said follower thinks that they've done something wrong.  The fact is that's not what's occurred.  What has happened is the leader was sloppy on the exit (95%) of the time, and the follower got tripped up on the exit, literally.  So what does the follower do ? Apologizes for the leader's error!

Let me be clear here, I am not talking about a follower who's technique is less than stellar, that follower has issues that need to be addressed!  No. I am talking about the occasional misread, where the direct result of said slip-up is "I'm Sorry!".

Follower's why are you apologizing for what you clearly felt being led ?  You went with what you felt, yes ?  You didn't anticipate the leader's request, right ? You felt where the leaders was going and you went there, right ?  In short, you read it as X, and the leader clearly meant it as Q and you misread it (because it wasn't clear in the first place), and then you jumped in and apologized for it.  Remember that the whole role of the follower is to ... wait for it... FOLLOW.  However if something is in your way, you can't rightfully follow, right ?  So why on earth are you apologizing for an error that was put in your way ?

I have to make a genderization here and note that most (not all) dancers in the follower's role are women, and as such there is another force at work here.  The force ?  Abdication!  In tango it means to literally give over one's power, in favor of someone else's, or in this case the leader's judgement.  This happens in society as well, Women do this all the time WHEN speaking to men in general, because men tend to overtalk, and interrupt women, always!  Men on the other hand, just jump into to whatever they're doing without thinking about it.  Men tend to over talk one another all the time, they just expect women to do the same and argue for vocal dominance.  Unfortunately, in tango, that dominance is not vocal, its usually physical (the use of arms or hands to 'direct' the follower where they need to go instead of 'asking' them). 

This practice is only endemic of women as a whole.  Men rarely apologize for their screw ups, except the very young (tango age).  They would rather have the follower believe that they meant to do X, Y, and Z.  It does create an air of confidence which is an essential component to dancing well, which is another post all together.  However, the simple fact is that 95% of the time it was the leaders fault to begin with!