[Tango-L] Dancing socially to Piazzolla

[Carol Shepherd]

Piazzolla is socially danceable, but only by dancers with a deep 
knowledge of music and very high skill levels.  I've seen a couple of 
couples do it well.

You both have to have very high level lead and follow skills.  You have 
to be very familiar with the particular piece of music from listening to 
it a lot.  You have to have a lot of experience dancing with that 
partner.  And you have music experience at the level of someone who is a 
musician, and you need to be very improvisational.  I personally have 
met around a dozen dancers who have this.

As to whether or not Piazzolla wanted Piazzolla's music to be danced to: 
it's common now for composers and musicians to avoid making danceable 
music.  The development of jazz made the individual performers' 
improvisational explorations the raison d'etre of contemporary music.  A 
lot of musicians feel that accommodating dancers constrains their 
creativity and limits their own intellectual enjoyment of the live music 
experience.  It also takes the spotlight off them, the rest of the crowd 
always watches the dancers rather than the stage.

Not all musicians feel this way.  In 2003 the Roger Humphries Big Band 
stood up after their first set and put down their horns and gave a 
ballroom full of dancers a standing ovation.  The speaker for the band 
had been a young musician in the 40's in New York when the music was 
originally composed.  He said that he was overcome with nostalgia -- 
they had all forgotten what it was like to see the music of Ellington 
and Count Basie alive rather than dead.  His approximate words were "we 
want to thank you because without a roomful of dancers we forget how 
alive this music is.  You are listening to us and anticipating how we 
are going to play, and we are listening to you by watching you.  It's as 
if we are watching ourselves.  You are changing how we play and how we 
want to play in the next minute.  We are not playing to you, we are 
playing with you, and you are playing with us.  It's as if the music 
came out of our horns and got feet and a mind of its own and is moving 
around the dance floor teasing us to run after it."


Myk Dowling wrote:
> melvillefox at aol.com wrote:
>> Dancing to Piazzolla (never danced to socially in Buenos Aires) does 
>> not make it tango. Piazzolla himself said he did not compose music for 
>> dancing.
> 
> I'm always amused when people make definitive statements on mailing 
> lists. They are nearly invariably incorrect. Especially in cases like 
> this. All we need is one person to report a Piazzolla track played for 
> social dancing in Buenos Aires just the once, and the statement is made 
> absurd.
> 
> Given the number of Piazzolla pieces being re-used by other tango bands, 
> it seems rather unlikely to me that Piazzolla is "never danced to 
> socially in Buenos Aires".
> 
> Unless perhaps, Mel thinks that Nuevo Tango (You know, that type of 
> music that Piazzolla created) isn't "social dancing", which would be 
> taking the common dismissive attitude to Nuevo shown around here to 
> extremes.
> 
> When exactly did Piazzolla say that he "did not compose music for 
> dancing"? I'd love to see the actual quote, particularly in context.
> 

-- 
Carol Ruth Shepherd
Arborlaw PLC
Ann Arbor MI USA
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Arborlaw - a legal blog for entrepreneurs and small business
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