Saturday, February 23, 2013

WATCH GAYLE and TIOMA on YOUTUBE

This was a cut and paste endeavor- first by Mike and then by me.
I didn't ask Tioma's permission to post it, but I need to study and think about this excerpt about MUSICALITY from his thoroughly researched tango site.
From Tioma Maloratsky  -El Ruso
tangoprinciples.org
Tango dancing has a unique freedom of musical interpretation. Unlike all other partner dances, tango does not have a set basic rhythmical pattern.

To begin with, it is best to keep one’s musicality as simple as possible. The most fundamental way to dance tango is to step on the 1 and the 3 in the four-count measure of the music.

The next degree of freedom to explore is syncopation. For example, one can put an extra step in between the “walking” beats - the 1’s and the 3’s - making either a 1-2-3 or a 3-4-1 pattern.

In addition to speeding up with such syncopation, one can also slow down the basic rhythm. The basic way of doing that is stopping to skip one or more of the slow beats (the 1’s and the 3’s). This is the most basic form of the pause, which is very important for advanced tango dancing.

One can see dancers who make one slow step over several counts of the music, or step slightly before, or slightly after the beat. That is when, in my opinion, the dance becomes truly worthy of the best of tango music. A tango dancer then becomes akin to a jazz musician, who syncopates and phrases his lines in ever more spontaneous and sophisticated ways. But an immediate problem with opening up such musical freedom is that it becomes difficult to maintain criteria of good musicality. It can sometimes be hard to tell someone who hears the music in a very advanced way from someone who does not hear it at all.

It demands a high degree of balance and stillness. It also requires a sense of rhythmical phrasing.  But in spite of these difficulties, to me the rhythmical freedom constitutes probably the most profound expressive aspect of tango dancing. Once I began touching it, there was no going back. It feels like the ultimate boon of all the work that I put into it – when suddenly unprecedented but perfectly sensible rhythmical patterns are coming out spontaneously, as though on their own accord, through my body, in harmony with my partner and the music at once. Such perfect moments are still rare, but more frequent than before. In my experience, choreographic freedom of this dance is nothing compared to its freedom of musicality.

The main doorway to musical freedom in this dance is the pause.

It means creating a pause in the midst of movement, as often as possible.

But ultimately, the whole dance can proceed in the state of balanced stillness, so that there is a pause or a near-pause in every step. This may be hard to imagine, but I attest that it is possible, and that it opens up unprecedented levels of freedom in all aspects of the dance, particularly musicality. This way, nothing is ever preprogrammed, nothing is contrived intellectually.

 When I started to find some stillness in every step, simple in-line walking suddenly became very exciting. That was also when I started stepping slightly off the beat in ways which somehow made sense to both myself and my partners. By waiting, both partners can enter into a freer musical dialogue, in which the timing of each step is never predetermined.

For a larger part of a tango song, both partners should try to pause and wait inside each step, whether in the process of a weight shift, at the beginning, or at the end of it. This way, unprecedented sequences and rhythmical patterns keep emerging.

It probably takes anyone years of dancing before the pause begins to make sense. I have been at it for 12 years and only in the last year or two began to experience its power with any regularity. In the first several years, I believe it is best to stick with the three fundamental rhythmical patterns which I described above. When trying to pause, an inexperienced male dancer is likely to lose connection with the partner, or rob her of her balance. It is better to first get into some rhythmical pattern, and feel an unbroken connection – both with the partner and with the music - through it. At the same time, it is good to be aware of the possibility of a freer musicality, so that when one is ready, one can begin taking advantage of it.

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