I’ve always been in awe of following as a skill, but never more so than after my last couple of privates. If I combine the technique input from Mabel and Filippo, I now have 11 bullet points on which to focus!

This is problematic given that my tango brain struggles to cope with three things at a time, but there are four pieces of good news – including what both Filippo and I felt was a night-and-day difference in the sensitivity of my following …

My following adventure had some rather large gaps, caused by a mix of general life stuff, and two of my teachers fleeing the country. But a third one hadn’t yet reached that level of despair, so the fun had recommenced.

In my last lesson with Filippo, I’d managed to follow him surprisingly well when he stuck to steps and rebounds and upped the speed, and Irina subsequently led me in a milonga song at Tango Secrets, also with remarkable success (all in relative terms, you understand!). It was now time to see what magic Mabel could muster …

I did religiously do my solo practice work on the technique bullets I listed last time, but my progress had been at worst undetectable, and at best slow. That saw us start by working on the same things as last time: a posture check to start, another halfway through a step, another at the end of it.

It was still more common for me to correct my posture after losing it than it was for me to maintain it throughout, and I was still struggling with pivots. I asked Filippo if he could slow these right down, taking four beats to lead a 90-degree pivot, so that I had time to be clear on the direction and degree of pivot, and could then actively focus on my posture throughout …