[Tango-L] Dance What You Love To Hear WAS Re: Tango Music

[Carol Shepherd]

I really think all dance comes down to a deep pleasure from and affinity 
for the 'indigenous' music.

I never liked ballet music.  I love latin music, particularly afro-cuban 
music.  It makes me move.  Same with blues and jazz.  I am no big fan of 
canned ballroom music, it's cheesy and over-dancey.  It goes with the 
big moves in international smooth styles.  Ditto for newer versions of 
tango recorded in the style 'american' tango, which, to my ears, are 
military marches with smooth styling over the top.  I also can't handle 
reggae music or country music, to me it all sounds like the same song 
and it's boring.

I love tango music, so I dance tango.  I can't keep from moving to 
afro-cuban music, so I dance salsa. I love jazz and blues, so I dance 
lindy hop and swing and balboa and west coast and blues.  I know the 
other dances, but I only do them, if and when, for social politeness and 
joining in.  I dance what I feel about the music and in the music, in 
me.  It pleases me to do so within the dance forms that organically 
evolved alongside the music.  It also pleases me intellectually to 
experiment with mixing up the dances and the music, but that's not as 
authentic so it's an occasional thing.

I couldn't disagree more strongly with Jake, that one is better off 
learning argentine tango without previous dance experience.  Training in 
coordinated rhythmic body movement and experience in creating a frame 
and a connection with a partner, and in communicating lead and follow, 
put a new tango dancer light years ahead of someone who is inexperienced 
and has no comfort with coordinated body movement and/or social dancing. 
  It's true that dancers get ahead of themselves and perceive 
similarities between dances that aren't there, and it can be hard to 
undo ingrained habits.  An excellent dance teacher should know enough 
about the basic structure of all the popular social dances, to know 
about the differentials in frame, posture, lead and follow, style, and 
vocabulary of moves, and be able to help translate for these 
'cross-dancers'.

I say, if you dislike most or all of a genre of social dance music, 
listen to yourself!  Don't do that social dance.  While salsa is 
probably easiest and most commercially available, I steer new leads away 
from it all the time, if they are not tapping their feet.

I see (and unfortunately dance with) leads in argentine all the time, 
who obviously don't get or don't like the music.  I wonder whether they 
are spending their play time in the right place.  Then again, I hear the 
women in argentine tango are more stylish and pretty hot, and it's close 
embrace -- that would explain it ;)

The subculture -- well, that can be sublime or it can be stifling 
(tangofascismo).  And one person's sublime is another person's stifling, 
for sure.  But that's a chestnut for another list war.

Jake Spatz (TangoDC.com) wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> While I generally agree with Sergio on this one, there's a particular 
> point I'd like to counter-- namely:
> 
> Sergio Vandekier wrote:
>> Unless you spend time with somebody that knows the music and is able to teach you tango musicality it is obvious that you, by yourself will never discover the pleasure of listening and dancing to real tango music.
> I agree that there IS a particular musicality and therefore movement for 
> tango, largely due to the nature of the music itself (its articulation 
> and its content), and secondarily due to the embrace. BUT I do not 
> believe this necessarily needs to be passed down like a family recipe. 
> Someone with a keen ear and an intuitive sense of movement-- and a sense 
> of poetry (for the Argentines are a _literate_ people)-- can figure it 
> out with some effort.
> 
> I state this solely on behalf of the exceptions to the general rule, who 
> are better off on their own than seeking counsel from dancers who reduce 
> all musicality to rhythm and (inevitably) to _counting_, which is the 
> least part of it.
> 
> On the other hand, as an additional support for Sergio's argument, I 
> might point out that (in my experience) those with a wealth of other 
> dance experience-- whether in jazz, salsa, ballet, hip-hop, or 
> whatever-- tend to have more trouble Getting It. They often want the 
> dance to be something it isn't, and because of that they can't see what 
> it is...
> 
> A clear and present example of this latter type might be Mr. "meaning of 
> life." A lot of "movement" experience, and a wife who teaches some other 
> dance, doesn't really mean shit when it comes to tango. You don't need 
> prior dance experience, and I often think it's better if you don't have 
> any. What you need is a body that can move, a true taste for the music, 
> and a mind that can comprehend that tango isn't "dance," but a 
> subculture-- the dance being only one facet of it.
> 
> Jake
> DC
> .
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-- 
Carol Ruth Shepherd
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Ann Arbor MI USA
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