[Tango-L] Why dancers should judge musicians in Tango not otherwise

[AJ Azure]

Igor,
That is the largest crock of hooey I have ever heard. It shows one very
important thing, you have very little understanding of music creation or
performance other than playing a record. While dancers can not play music ,
musicians can still move to music, even badly. You seem to believe that we
just regurgitate sheet music and arrangements? Even when we don't play ala
parilla, we constantly create. Don't forget that dance is in trouble with
out music but, music lives quite happily with out dancers. Therefore, if you
want to even remotely talk on a musical level and actually cooperate, you
should realize you don't know the music. Only the reaction to it. Now with
that said I do not believe it's abut one telling the other but, working
together. So the attitude has got to change and I'm not seeing an issue from
the musician point of view because, it seems we're asking for input whereas
statements like yours don't speak of input but, of "I'm going to tell you
just how it should be done". That's an attitude of arrogance and if you can
back that up with knowledge, then at least it carries weight but, if you
can't then it just does nothing for the progress of dancer/musician
cooperation.

As for learning music from old records, that's only a small snap shot and
not a total tuition of a musical style.


-A

> From: Igor Polk <ipolk at virtuar.com>
> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:12:34 -0800
> To: <tango-l at mit.edu>
> Subject: [Tango-L] Why dancers should judge musicians in Tango not otherwise
> 
> This is just my thought that dancers should be the ones to tell what music
> is good for tango dancing and what is not.
> 
> Why. Obviously, most of us can not play nor to conduct an orchestra.
> The difference is that I believe we feel the music much deeper than
> musicians.
> We feel the music with the whole of our body. Every part reverberates and
> goes with rhythmical lines. Legs follow one rhythm, body - another one. One
> step - is the whole fugure in tango. It means it has to be the whole musical
> figure every beat. A new one every beat! And it takes energy to move ! Our
> feeling is tailored to physical properties of our bodies and parts. Our
> brain waves are aligned to the music AND to our body parts, our heart beats
> in unison. We feel music with every cell.
> 
> And we do it tightly coupled together. We lead each other, and we play with
> each other - to music.
> 
> We know much better what music is good what is not: our body tells us that
> unmistakenly.
> 
> We know how to play along with music. We play music with our bodies. We do
> act sometimes as members of the orchestra. And we do know how to compensate
> for the bad music. But we do not want to. We want perfect creative unison
> with musicians. We want music which is driving us toward creative frontiers
> in our most complex dance.
> 
> I do not want to hurt any feeling, I only want musicians to consider what I
> say. And follow the examples.
> 
> Igor Polk
> PS
> I do not know how to highlight it more:
> IT HAS TO BE THE WHOLE MUSICAL FIGURE EVERY BEAT PERIOD, A NEW ONE !
> Because one step is a figure in tango.
> 
>