When a practica is held weekly, and it’s a direct train ride away, you wouldn’t imagine it would be too challenging to get there. Yet it’s taken me … a while, and tonight was actually my third attempt!

Mind you, my two previous attempts were remarkably successful as failures go …

Both previous Monday visits coincided with bank holidays, where the practica is replaced by a milonga. So while I didn’t actually make it to the practica either time, I instead got to enjoy bonus editions of my favourite milonga. But this time it was the actual class and practica!

I gather the practica can range from 10 to 30 participants, any of which is fine with me – more personal attention at the smaller end, more people to dance with at the higher end. I also love the fact that Irina puts as much effort into the atmosphere for the practica as for a milonga; I’m a sucker for mood lighting!

One of the attractions of the event is that everyone is encouraged to dance both roles, so there are a lot of dual-role dancers present. I was expecting to get the chance to do a bit of following, but as things turned out, I did almost nothing but!

I got there early, so once Irina had finished the setup, she gave me an impromptu mini following lesson. As a leader, I love nothing better than a big walk, but learning to take big steps while walking backwards is a whole other technique. So we worked on that, as well as some other advanced following techniques, like, uh, collecting and remaining still until the next move is led.

Dawn, one of the dual-role dancers then invited me for some intercambio practice in the open practica before the lesson, and we swapped a number of tips.

I always warn leaders that I can come somewhat close to following steps and rebounds, but they take their life in their hands if they try to lead me in any kind of pivot, including a cross. But Dawn did succeed in occasionally persuading me to follow both a classic cross and an ocho cortado!

Things got more intense when the lesson started. Another dual-role dancer, Jonathan, who had led me previously a couple of times, clearly decided that I would be his project for the evening.

While Irina taught the lesson, which started from switching between parallel and cross-system walking and gradually increased in complexity to something terrifying-looking, I spent the time with a rather less complex but equally challenging curriculum.

We started with just walking, but he then got me following walking back-ochos before bravely and foolishly imagining that I might manage to follow a giro. The closest I ever got to actually doing so was when he dialled his lead up to about 1,000% – and even then if you’d asked an independent observer to guess what I was attempting they would likely have hazarded ‘Squishing a bug’ or perhaps ‘Taking an introductory shot-putting lesson.’

But … I’ve fully accepted that learning to follow is a challenging and long-term project, and I did feel that with the generous help of my three leaders I made some small but worthwhile progress.

I’ve always considered following in tango an amazing skill, and viewed it as significantly more technically demanding than leading, but I didn’t fully appreciate how much of a workout it is! I did around two hours of following, and by the following morning felt like I’d run a marathon then engaged in a weightlifting competition.

This weekend I’m going to the Sheffield Tango Festival, where there are again likely to be quite a few dual-role dancers, and I shall hope to follow for a few tandas here and there. If I can actually move by then …