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.
