[Tango-L] Musicality. What is it?

[Koos de Wit]

To Huck, Igor, Chris, Bruno, Andy and others,

I strongly underline Igor's "A musical piece has enough hints what is 
going on" and I love Andy's ideal milonga with only unknown music. I 
disagree completely with Huck's "We want to know precisely everything 
that is coming, so we can dance with as much musicality as possible".

I agree with Chris that musicality can not be taught in a class. 
However, teaching is feasible to improve the ability of dancing with 
musicality. I differentiate between musicality itself and dancing with 
musicality. I explicitly don't mean the money consuming group-clapping 
musicality classes or listening to some teacher droning on and on 
abstractly about various qualities of orchestras as already rejected by 
Huck.

For learning to dance with musicality one should be taught how to 
translate particular structures in the music into corresponding 
structures in our tango dancing movements. It is a technical thing, a 
toolkit. The more conspicuous the musical structure of the songs used 
is, the better this translation from music to movement can be displayed 
and taught. The final result on the dance floor depends on the not 
teachable musicality skill of the dancer. As Bruno stated, some take 5 
seconds, others take 10 years.

This knowledge about translating music to movements will not change a 
poor dancer into a rich dancer overnight, but it will be helpfull and 
inspiring.

Koos de Wit