[Tango-L] Musicality. What is it?

[Chris, UK]

> when the Michigan Tango Club plays a tanda of popular music with a
> rhythm conducive to tango steps, the beginner leaders all of a sudden
> get major amounts of musicality.

> So, it's a great exercise in learning tango.

No. It is a great exercise in learning non-tango. And a deception to any 
student who's told otherwise.

> I enthusiastically support the tangoing-to-non-tango

The fallacy that there is such a thing as "tangoing-to-non-tango" lies at 
the heart of much misunderstanding of this issue of musicality.

In places where people can really dance, the word "tango" means the music. 
The dancing they do to it is not "tangoing" it is just "dancing". Why? 
Because the foundation of the dance is the music. The dance is nothing 
more (or less) that what comes from the right mixture of guy, girl and 
music. This is key to the dancer's expression of their own musicality.

At the opposite end of the tango earth you find people to whom "tango" is 
a dance and the music they (sometimes) do this to they call "tango music". 
Why? Because their dance has no foundation other than a paltry vocabulary 
of prescribed moves rote-learned from instructors. As Huck said, as soon 
as there's no instructor to ape, it falls apart. A million musicality 
workshops cannot turn this perversion into the real thing - even when 
danced to "tango music" - because it does not come FROM tango music.

Beginners, your journey /begins/ with the music. Only from that starting 
point will any steps take you nearer to being a dancer.

--
Chris

PS Anna wrote:

> Knowing the music by heart does not mean you repeat patterns or do a 
> choreography. It liberates you, it inspires you, the heart does not 
> follow patterns. The heart is intuitive, surprising, unpredictable. The 
> music is never the same when you know it by heart...

I have never seen this better put into words. Thank you, Anna.