1181 Complex rhythms (afterthought)
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 02:10:43 -0700
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Complex rhythms (afterthought)
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,
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 18:55:04 -0700
From: Trini or Sean - PATangoS <patangos@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Complex rhythms (afterthought)
Carlos Lima wrote:
> 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.
>
I've found that being able to explain such "intuitive" musicality is
actually quite useful. I have often been told that I "feel the
music" when I dance, but I couldn't explain how I was doing it until
studying last year with Robert Hauk (Hi, Robert!). It often came
down to which instrument I was dancing (the piano maintaining the
rhythm or the violin/bandoneon/piano playing the melody). Knowing
that gave me more opportunities, and improved both my vals and
traspie.
Since tangos do not have drums to keep the beat, it's easy to
understand beginners' inability to step to the beat when dancing to a
5-13+ piece orchestra (where's the beat coming from? typically from
the piano or double-bass). This became clearer to me upon listening
more closely to valses. Valses will typically have one piano
maintaining the "oom-pa-pa" rhythm plus violins playing the melody on
top of the basic rhythm. A vals can sound faster or slower than
another one based on the overlaying melodies, even though the
"oom-pa-pa" timing is the same for both (one with more notes sounds
faster).
I've begun to conclude that natural or intuitive skills can be
successfully taught to others if one can just find a language to
express these things. Once one understands the language, then one
can explore other possibilities.
Springtime weather to all!
Trina de Pittsburgh
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