[Tango-L] Classic alternative

[lgmoseley@aol.com]

My impression is that people who can hear and dance to the steady rhythms of the classic tangos (up to and including Pugliese and those who adopted the same musical principles) can also dance to more modern pieces. That applies whether the more modern pieces are promoted as Tango or whether they are just popular music to which some people attempt to dance Tango.

However, the reverse is not true. People who regularly dance to the more modern pieces cannot always dance to the classics (although obviously some can).

I think that the difference lies in two realms. The first is that with the classics one has to dance to the rhythm that the orchestra is using. For the alternative pieces, one has, as it were, a rhythm in one's head and one imposes that rhythm on the dance. If one relies on that internal rhythm, it is difficult to transfer the skill to a rhythm which is imposed externally.

The other difference is in the walk - whether one walks on the ball of the foot first or on the heel first. The ball-first dancers (male or female) have rather more time then do the heel-first ones. That? means that the men have a little more time to change direction, swivel, pause or whatever, and ladies have a little more time to react to such changes.

With both classic and alternative music the ball-first dancers have no problems. However, the heel-first dancers have a slight time delay. Rather than their weight transfer taking place on the beat, it arrives slightly late. That, as far as I can see, is because their heel lands on the beat, but the weight has not been fully transferred. There is then a slight delay for the weight to be transferred to the ball. That is what appears to account for the fact that they always seem to be slightly out of time with the music. As usual, irrespective of the direction in which you are moving, the heel acts as a brake.

Of course, you can only be out of time with the music when the music actually has a time! When there is no obvious time, one can continue to move as one wishes - it's just that one is not dancing to the music. Once one has mastered the ball-first, weight-forward way of moving, one can then dance to any? music - old or new.

This phenomenon, of the heel-first dancers being slightly behind the music, first hit me when watching people dancing milonga.

Brazos

Laurie (Laurence)

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