Once again I had a conversation about the lack of musicality in Sydney. And even the musicality forum didn't even have a thread in it. To set the scene, I have two points of concern:
- First that people don't start with the music and Secondary people's dancing is so bland.
1. My friend who is new to tango, bravely got and danced only a few dances. He took up the embraced, listened carefully to the music, centred his follower for the first step, and then had to wait. After awhile he ended up apologising to his partner, to explain they were not moving with the music. I have seen the dance floor stationary until a minute and half into the song as some people want to have a chat. I have even hear people say it is a part of being a good dancer and a status thing to be able to wait and not start at the beginning of the song. It is funny for me, that everyone talks of the flow of the dance, and if you start with the flow at the beginning you won’t be able throughout the dance. If you want to have a chat with someone, then please go over to them and have a chat at one of the many tables. It is not a school dance where little boys and girls are on opposite sides of the room and can only interact in the middle which is the floor. (Yes that might happen in traditional BA, but also bringing a knife to a dance was BA tradition at one stage too)
2.A Before we get on to bland dancing, we need to define exactly what stage dancing is. For me – it is dancing to a set routine. It has nothing to do with neither type of the figure nor size of the figure. For social dancers if you have more room you can make bigger figures, if the floor is crowded you are more compact. Therefore in the following paragraph I am talking about how we do a single step, such as a side step.
2. The majority of dancers only dance to the cadence. Yes their foot hits the ground when there is a beat, but it is the most basic form of musicality.
Second comes the counters where they hit the 1 and 5 with a more dramatic step. Where you can really start making things complex very quickly by introducing 3,3,2 rhythm by Astor Piazzolla, or if your dancing Milonga
[1] 2 3 [4] [5] 6 [7] 8, sometimes also [1] [2] 3 [4] [5] 6 [7] 8 or 3 3 2 [1] 2 3 [4] 5 6 [7] 8
Third comes the phrases, where you combine different figures to match the nature of the music. Strong harsh syncopated beats for walking and soft melodic phrases.
Fourth you can separate the different lines of the music where the leader will dance to the bass line and the follower to the melody. This allows the follower to add adornments within the leaders figures.
Fifth you can dance to the pitch of the music. This includes the up-beats, down – beats and off beats. You can have sharp quick steps or the suspended steps. There is a huge different between long slow low planeo and a high Boleo.
Musicality for a dancer is to make the dance fit the music. This in turn means using movement to represent and emphasize the tempo, harmony, melody and vocals in a song. Adding musicality to your dance requires some understanding of the structure of the music itself. It also means you must be connected to the music.
The interpret of music is pretty much standard where almost everyone will have a similar experience to certain music and it can be explain in 5 dot points.
The real interesting point with music and dancing is the expression of music, which is a much more interesting and difficult topic.