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 …

That proved really helpful, and Filippo also suggested it would be easier to see exactly what was happening by switching to open embrace. I’d so far found that really hard to follow, as there was a lot less signal, but with Filippo’s lead it was working. I’d been trying last time to get the right degree of presence in my frame – not so rigid that I was resisting the lead, not so soft that I was absorbing it – and this became much clearer in open embrace.

One of the other things that became clearer was my lack of dissociation in the pivot. Because I wasn’t generating internal torsion for the turn, then I had to generate momentum by pushing and pulling. In addition to being poor technique in general, this also blocked my ability to feel the degree of pivot that was being led, so I was often over-pivoting.

Once again, I had to remember that it’s not about the amount of dissociation – a small amount is enough – but rather about consistency in applying it. Filippo also had me doing an exaggerated knee bend to generate the sensation of pushing into the floor, rather than against the leader. The result was a night-and-day difference!

Filippo also said that, at this stage, it would probably be helpful for me to more or less ignore what I was feeling in my right arm, and get all the information through my left arm, from the leader’s shoulder. This too helped enormously.

Having made slow progress in my practice, and had to ask for slow pivots to give me time to focus on all the different elements in them, Filippo then switched gears, and things got fast. Very fast!

He started leading lots of rapid changes in direction, including deliberately making movements which would feel unfamiliar or appear to be one thing and then turn into another. If you’d asked me to predict the result of this, it would probably have involved medical attention and possibly studio repair work. Yet, instead, it actually worked incredibly well!

Indeed, I found myself asking for more of the same. This was, I learned, Filippo’s secret weapon for the other great problem of beginner followers: anticipating the lead. At these speeds, I simply had no time to think about what might be being led, only to follow the direction of his torso.

And because he was deliberately ‘fooling’ me with some movements – like the clear beginning of an ocho cortado, but then doing something different instead of the cross – I found that even the tiny remnant of my tango brain’s attempt to make sense of it was silenced. I knew that, with a good leader, a follower can follow things they’ve never done before, and here I was actually experiencing it. It was a real rush!

My homework is the same as last time, plus practice forward ocho pivots and:

• Keep my back foot where it is
• Dissociate (the back foot staying back prevents hip movement)
• Check that my hips remain back throughout
• Bend my new standing leg
• Push into the floor for the pivot
• Again, checking that my hips remain back throughout

Same thing with the side-step entry into the ocho: keep my other foot where it is while I dissociate, to prevent hip turn.

(Plus practicing the cross, lifting my heel so that there is space for my toes to be in line, though that’s a slightly lower priority right now.)

Coupled with my newly-resumed Spanish learning – a topic for another blog post – my pre-work mornings are about to get rather busy!