[TANGO-L] Complex rhythms (afterthought)

[Carlos Lima <amilsolrac @YAHOO.COM>]

An afterthought on the "stepping on the beat" issue.
In the private channel someone said ...

> (...) the (...) foot (...) being weighted exactly on the beat <

This is slightly less precise but far more intuitive, than what I have
proposed: weight dividing equally on the beat. It is not when the foot merely
TOUCHES the floor, we need a wee bit more; but it is generally well before
the change of weight completes. The latter would look hurried---or lagging,
if the lead is big enough to look like a lag. (I got this backwards before).

Until now this matter has NOT been one of practical consequence to me. Once
one steps with reasonably good form and gets a hold of one's body, syncing
the steps with the rhythmic background is intuitive. It need not be
explained, or thought about.

But it has become practical in an unexpected way. It forced me to look at
what Eero Olli has been saying from a different angle.

This happens a  lot as one tries to understand tango. One tries to figure
what is THE "right way", but there is really no right way. What appears to be
A right way, say, because it seems to capture a commonality among the great
masters (or those we like most), turns out to be just a sort of "canonical"
way. There is no such thing, for instance, as THE tango walk. One needs to
have, for one's own purposes, a paradigm, whereby one tries to capture the
character of the tango tradition as one sees it. Something to anchor at, and
practice, and deviate from. As always, we need some principles, some models,
and we need to break the rules and bend the models. Even discounting all the
variation according to personal style, one has the right (almost the
obligation ...) not to do anything always in one same way. The walk is not a
mechanical support for one's dance, it is an expressive device, the major
part of the dance itself.

A good paradigm is one that, while possessing a strong character, leaves room
for ... expressive rebellion ... in many different diretions. I happened to
have chosen, as paradigm for the forward walk, an arbitrarily slow, fully
reaching one, with very forward weight carriage, change of weight on straight
legs, etc., etc., for precisely such reasons. I probably never use the
paradigm exactly outside of practice.

The "weight the new foot on the beat" paradigm is a good one. I think I obey
it most of the time, but I deviate ... until now without being particularly
aware of it. Of course, timing the dance so that the beat falls at some other
point of the step cycle (before or after the point of weight division), is
just a different way of saying what Eero Olli has been saying all along. It
is just that I relate better to this other way.

So now I am in a better position to experiment. I tried the "end change of
weight on the beat" paradigm. A bit extreme. The first thing that happens is
I am led to take strongly driving steps (in essence, lunges), at which point
I am back to the "default" paradigm. If I succeed in staying with a neutral
(normal walk) or reaching dynamic, it is like syncopating (stepping against
the pulse, "off beat"). For anything but practice I need subtler adjustments.
Definitely worth working on, and I think it will also help explain some hard
to pin down personal touches in recognised dancers.

I might add that I did not really disagree with Eero Olli except possibly in
that this is not a matter for in-experienced dancers. Well, we probably do
not disagree on anything major then.

Cheers,


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