[Tango-L] Tango without music?

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

Good points from all sides.  However, I think it's useful to differentiate between what someone teaches and what someone else learns.  Thus, I can try to teach musicality, but it could be that the person I'm trying to teach doesn't learn it right then and there.  All I can do is wait until his/her brain is able to accept it or his/her body memory translates it into musicality.

I find that with most people the most effective way for me to teach musicality is by building it into the timing of the vocabulary I'm teaching.  But I don't consider it teaching musicality.  Primarily they are learning a step.   Watching them learn, I see people add in the musicality themselves, but only after they're comfortable with the step.  That's when I might hear them say "I am having trouble with the musicality".  More experienced dancers may say that before they learn a sequence, but not newer dancers.

I also have people who change the timing to suit their ability to execute a step.  For example, I may be teaching a QQS timing, but they'll do it as SSS.  That tells me that the vocabulary comes before the musicality for them.  

In January, I experimented with a visiting instructor on teaching musicality using choreography to a set musical phrase.  The experience showed that people fluctuate back and forth between learning the step versus learning the music.  In the beginning, they used the choreography to hear things in the music that they were unaware of (or didn't know what to do with) - a case of the step coming first and the music second.  In another part of the phrase, they needed to understand the music before the vocabulary clicked with them (in this case, a decoration).

I think that underlying any of these learning processes for someone is the thought "why am I learning/doing this?"  That "why" can be answered differently at different times.  Dancing tango is a process, and people find their own path.


Trini de Pittsburgh