He was a favorite of yours but you hadn’t danced in several years so you raise your eyebrows and nod when he looks your way. With a bow of his head he politely acknowledges the couple that will dance behind you, and together you join the outermost ring of dancers. You take the embrace and close your eyes; you're remembering a poem you wrote about a long hug you once shared with him in which passed an entire love story in the span of twenty seconds.
The thing about Alex, and why he had gained favorite status with you, is because he is a very graceful dancer and takes long dramatic steps and does a lot of fun pivots and turns. It feels like you’re flying when it’s in a sparsely populated room but it’s a completely different experience when you're on the dance floor at the most popular time (11 pm) during the most popular milonga (Saturday night) at the most popular festival among the Southeast tango community this time of year.
After you twice feel your elbow gently bump a person dancing near you, and your ribs are brushed by other elbows, you realize you can’t stay inside that hug at the top of the stairs in that beach house in 2012; you have to come back to this embrace, in this moment. It’s going to have to be an eyes-open tanda. There are too many people nearby to sleep-dance. He is taking enormous steps. They are way too big for the amount of people on the floor.
As a follower, typically they say your energy should match that of the person leading, so if, for example, their movements are springy, yours should be too; if their steps are large you should take matching steps. But what you don’t remember them saying, probably because it’s something you hopefully learn with enough experience social dancing, is that sometimes there isn’t enough room for you to take matching steps. Sometimes you will dance with people who either don’t notice or don’t care that their steps are too big for the floor. Sometimes, a follower has to step in and redirect some of that oncoming energy. This is where the heel comes in.
Another thing you don’t remember ever being taught is how to use your heel when you’re dancing. As a follower, most likely you’ll be wearing heels, and they’ll probably be stilettos, somewhere between two and a half and four inches high. And as a follower, most of the time you will be going backwards. The temptation will be to stay on the balls of your feet always, but eventually you’ll learn through experience that you can use your heel as a brake. You can also use it as a way to punctuate both the end of one step and the beginning of another. As you learn to use your heel this way, your dance will begin to feel a lot more steady, and your confidence in your own movements will grow.
Once your eyes are open and you're fully awake to the crowded dance floor, you take in a deep breath and open up your chest. Because he’s giving you much more energy than would be safe for you to match on this floor, you become heavier, taking another big breath to round out your chest and arms, slightly bending your knees so you can fully receive what he is giving you and withstand the redirection of momentum. If he is sending energy horizontally, you are taking all that energy into the space you've created with your chest and arms, using some of it to take your step, and then redirecting most of it. You brace against his first step like this and your sole slides a short ways along the line of dance. You shift onto your other foot and brace against his next step, this time making contact between your heel and the floor, staying there a few extra milliseconds while the energy that did not go into the people behind you if you were to have tried to match his step, passes through you into the ground instead. Suddenly your legs have support, something to stand on; you are grounded. It’s like the extra energy passes through your heel down into the ground and at the same time you have access to an entire ancient root system, the kernel of what constitutes correct behavior. The feedback is dynamic and only a few strong steps like this makes it clear that you're taking safe-sized steps now.
Now that you are with him and you have made it clear that you are with him through this unspoken dialogue, the energy between you balances out, and it’s like you see each other. It becomes safer to take risks so your dance becomes relaxed and playful, thanks to the constraints the tight space has provided.
But using your heel to connect to the ground like a lightning rod, to “be grounded,” has opened up a whole world, where you get to receive what is led and decide what to do with it. Instead of simply following instructions, consuming whatever is given and fulfilling an inherited role, you become an active participant in the conversation. You rise up from the world of object and become subject.