Leading & Following in the Tango - Veronica Toumanova

Tango artist Veronica Toumanova shares her insights from 20+ years of learning, dancing, and teaching tango in both roles, how tango social dance communities are evolving in Paris, Europe, and beyond, and what tango has to teach about leading and following possibilities in life and work. 

Veronica has been dancing tango since 2000 and actively teaching and performing since 2007. She has Russian origins, but started dancing tango while living in The Netherlands. She has worked with different partners, performing and teaching in France, Sweden, Norway, UK, Italy, The Netherlands, Cyprus, Greece, Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Switzerland, Canada and USA. Veronica is an elegant dancer with a strong personality and a refined sense of music. She has extensive knowledge of both the follower and the leader’s role and is especially known for her in-depth technique classes. She is also a popular tango blogger, her essays on tango are translated in eighteen languages and she has recently published the second volume of her “Why Tango” essay collection.

• “Tango puts you into a context where you have to revise this understanding [of lead and follow] and realize that it is not about command and obey but it is more about having a conversation.” 
• “In tango, you learn that true leadership is way more about listening and understanding the other person… and following is way more about taking a deliberate decision to collaborate with your leader.” 
• “The real question is ‘how can we remove the violent component of what we now understand as leadership?’” 
• “I think we as a humanity have misunderstood following, because following for me is flowing. I flow intuitively with whatever the situation is creating in me as a response.”

 Episode References

Tango Connects Conference
http://tango.connects.berlin/ 

Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555

Connect with Veronica

Website - https://verotango.com
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@verotango
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/veronica.toumanova