[TANGO-L] Dancing Tango within the music

[Bruno <romerob @telusplanet.net>]

Rather than presenting my personal methodology on the subject of dancing
Tango within the music I will use information from several sources including
those from the generous contributors to this list, as well as from my own
sources. 

I will quote Maria del Carmen Silingo from one of her books series "Tango
Danza Traditional Metodo".

"A good way to dance tango is by way of building our dance with phrases. The
phrases must have a recognized form. Overall the phrase has an ascending and
descending beginning and end, and with differences of duration to obtain
variety."

The phrase must not be monotone since dancing tango belongs to the realm of
human feelings, and therefore it does not follow a horizontal line. 

There are an infinite variety of phrases, but for practical purposes these
can be broken down as follows:
a) The culmination or climax point at the beginning
b) The culmination or climax point towards the end
c) The culmination or climax towards or at the middle.
 
The culmination does not mean the highest point in space. The culmination
can be achieved with very strong dynamics, a faster tempo, or another
element of movement. Each human movement including those in the animal
kingdom has a design in space, a burst of energy that is called dynamics and
rhythm. Movements are performed for a variety of reasons voluntary,
involuntary."

A bit on tango music:

Tango is usually composed of 3 sections less frequently of 2, and rarely of
4 sections. Most commonly the extension of a section is of 16 compasses.
Each section is composed by one or two clauses. A clause with one section is
of a suspending character, and if the section has two clauses the second
clause is of a conclusive character, which is either a reiteration or
variation of the preceding clause. Furthermore, each clause like a
grammatical sentence is composed of phrase(s), and capable of expressing a
thought, i.e. a musical thought. Each phrase is composed of a motive (cause)
and a consequent (effect), and most often the motive has an extension of 2
compasses.

To drive to the point right away I will use an example of a tango, which its
first section has a double clause containing 2 phrases, where 1 phrase has
an extension of 2 compasses. One compass has 4 times, and therefore one
phrase has 8 times.

Example: Juan D'Arienzo's El Flete (1935-1936)
Listen to the first 15 seconds of this tango. Here you will find a section
with two phrases (4 compasses = 16 times). In this section with 2 phrases,
each phrase moves in an ascending and descending pattern. The ending of each
phrase has a suspending character.

How do we use this information?

By now we may already have a repertoire of steps and figures, but we need to
group them so that we can estimate the duration in terms of compasses (1
compass = 4 times). 

To summarize each tango most often has 3 sections, and each section has
about 16 compasses. 

With the information we have on phrases from a dancers point of view, and
secondly from a bit of tango musical structure, we could use the following
to map our choreography of dance:

How many compasses = (?)

(?) Figure + (?)Base + (?)Pause + (?)Turn(s) + (?)Final figure = # number of
times or compasses we ought to observe or follow in our dance. 

>From MiguelAngel Pla on dancing Tango, "Is easier to do something as to
perform an ebbing pattern, but is harder to do nothing and remain silent".
"After a long day of practicing and trying out figures in class or a
workshop, and afterwards you find yourself on the dance floor in a Milonga
the best thing do is to do nothing".

Thanks to everybody who replied my first post.

Best regards,

Bruno