You dance your own musical part along with that orchestra, asynchronously with other instruments ( of course, otherwise it would be 1. Then comes an interaction with individual instruments and the orchestra as a whole. That is where the knowledge of micro-technique and asynchronous dancing with different parts, total "dissociation" comes into play. Have you noticed? I mean it includes an ability to break memorized figures! This is not as difficult as one might think.Īlso here comes the ability to emphasize small rhythmical variations, individual notes, including slightly off-beat ones. Music already curries a blueprint for that. It is only enough to be able to lead steps slower or faster, that is all. To follow the music, one does not have to invent new steps all the time. On the contrary! One can easy make any step be starting or final by putting an emphasis on that, slowing it down, making a pause. This is impossible to do in an improvised dance. The beginning is not necessarily has to be aligned with the very first step of a figure and end with the last one.
Then comes the ability to emphasize a musical phrase: divide the dance into little parts with the beginning, development, and the finale in accordance with similar patterns in music. Then to interpret rhythm changes in music which are abundant in tango and are the characteristic of the dance.Ģ. At first, musicality can be viewed as the ability to follow the rhythm very well. I understand musicality as a complex skill, but there is one thing it includes for sure: an ability to put current dancing pattern on top of the current musical phrase. So we have 2 source of rhythm: music and your dance. There are very specific rhythmical tango phrases. And figures have certain rhythm patterns on their own. It is not artificial, the parts of the sequence just fit together very nicely: it is natural. A stable stepping sequence is a figure of the dance. Dance is structured like everything in life. Well, even if any step is possible as the next one, there are patterns in the tango dance. Then what step is better? What moment is right? Is it dancing or mess? Somebody says: "it is improvisational - any step is possible next. Ah! They step outside of the right moment and call it rhythm improvisation! Ah-hm! I guess those who do not are better tango dancers - they do not follow outdated rhythmical patterns! They improvise! They stop in the middle of the musical rhythmical sequence and think what is the next step. I always wondered why some people have good sense of rhythm, some not.