By “intellectual” I meant inner, spiritual, not necessarily “thinking” (which definitely gets in the way of listening and following).

I tend to keep classifications simple (as in either/or) to facilitate clarification. This need to “soften” or expand, or “grey-ify” each role is, in my eyes, partly the result of the “follower’s empowerment” movement. But for the discussion of lead and follow,they simply fall into opposite categories.

Of course, NOTHING in life is actually black and white – everything is shades of gray

(I’m in a good mood ‘cos it’s sunny in England!!)

Johanna, I’m not sure if you can simply (:P) conclude, “leading is mechanical, following is intellectual”. Because I have started learning how to lead recently and I re-realise that it requires a lot of quick-and-deep-thinking. On the other hand, I tell my partner, who is a leader but has started learning to follow recently (it is a very good way to see what happens on the other side of the table!!), to stop thinking. As soon as he starts thinking he guesses what I am going to do. Once he stopped thinking and just started ‘feeling’ then he became much better. Acute and sensitive perceptivity is perhaps what’s required in a good follower, with intelligence, of course.

‘Mechanical’ sounds like the leader is being robbotic…?

Mr Limerick, yes, ‘structures’ sounds good. Thanks!

I have another question for you, folks. Somebody in the past mentioned that they weren’t happy about the fact that followers weren’t given enough instruction in classes (this isn’t just one place, I think this tends to happen in many tango schools in UK) and that most instruction is given to leaders, and the followers are always expected to just ‘follow’.

What do you think?

Sometimes it’s hard to express these thoughts – I agree that less is more. It is a very simple process (exchange of information) which is NOT “easy” to do well. Which is why so many seek to change it (read: make it easier).

To wit: a lot of folks eschew “walking” because it is too “hard”. The reason it’s hard is because the simplicity of it isn’t masked with a frenzy of embellishments to cover up bad form.

I once made the joke that Women follow because Men are no good at reading minds, unfortunately I was dancing with a member of the “followers empowerment” movement at the time and she didn’t get the humour of it at all.