What you are saying is perfectly appropriate. especially in a class context, but even in a milonga if the lead is truly unclear, but here is my puzzlement. Let me explain it again with a cute story. I am Italian and I tried to speak exclusively Italian with my son from the time he was born (in this country). Of course he was also learning English from his mom and everyone else. One way I kept him on track was to act like I did not understand him when he spoke English with me. Well, by the time he was three he picked up on tha fact that I seemed to understand English perfectly well when his mom and everyone else spoke it... so he called my bluff.... and he was only three.

Now I find myself in a similar situation as my son. I dance almost every night of the week and I can count at least 60 followers I dance with regularly, all of whom seem perfectly happy with my lead, or, at least, seem to read my intentiion with no problem. Then I ask one new person, and all of a sudden my lead is "unreadable". As my son noticed at three years of age ... there is something peculiar going on here.

I am not saying that this is what *you*, Qatana, are doing.... but here is what I think is happening. I am not the "teacher level" caliber she was hoping or expecting and she lets me know it ... by making me feel like I don't know what I am doing... thus making sure I will not ask her again to dance. Unfortunately the strategy works very well, because I certainly stay clear of them after that experience, but I also don't ask other dancers after I realize that I am not at their level, unless they really make eye contact with me and seem happy to be asked to dance.

What I am really getting at here is that it's OK to say no, and to choose to dance at whatever level you feel entitled to, but i't not OK to make someone feel like a complete fool so he won't ask you again. Fortunately I have only experienced this two or three times out of a full year of happy dancing, so I shouldn't complain, but I guess it has bothered me a lot.

Ivastar, are you saying that you have a catalog of step sequences on file in your head? Because followers are supposed to Follow, not do the steps on their own. The Best teachers only teach "step sequences" to leaders, its up to us to follow.
If there are specific leads that there are specific responses to, thats where technique class comes in handy, but it is not good for followers to memorise a list of combinations.For example, befoe I understood the lead for a boleo, I would do ochos, which might not be what my leader was looking for but at least I don't freeeze up in panic at not knowing what comes next, and all of a sudden one night I was doing boleos like nobody's business.

>> <snip> and I get this "I don't know what I want me to do" attitude. <snip>

> there's no "You" and that's the problem.

Interesting how I never noticed that I didn't put the "you" in the quote, which of course was meant to read "I don't know what *you* want me to do" . When I speak of "problems" here I am really referring to my curiosity, and to a desire to better understand what is going on with different followers, either technically or socially. I didn't make it clear in my post that my dancing is actually well accepted by most advanced followers as well. So my curiosity was triggered by the fact that with a couple of advanced followers everything came to a complete grinding halt as If I had started dancing yesterday.

There are also some intermediate dancers with whom I don't connect well, but there is no "puzzle" there. It's just iin the nature of dancing, and I have experienced that in years of ballroom dancing as well. It's intreaguing, but it's no mistery. I know that they are trying to connnect as much as I am, but something about our "energies", or whatever, doesn't seem to work out. Some are good friends, so we keep trying...

In all, any minor frustrations I have experienced in tango have simply encoraged me to work at it more.... and I have been having the fun of my life!!!