When a specific tune or orchestra was the chart-topper-of-the-day it would have been played/performed regularly and dancers would have been familiar; maybe even had some 'choreography' they used and practiced. Now you have a DJ dredging up something which was, perhaps, never popular, but you have to dance because it's in that tanda. If unfamiliar, that's where some of the typical tango structure comes in, but it can fail.
Yes, but the point is not to have to remember while you're dancing. While you're dancing, you simply want to dance.
Well, even back then orchestras introduced new songs from time to time and may not have played the same things at every show, so the dancers may or may not have been able to anticipate all that much. As for DJs, one would hope that they don't dredge something all that unfamiliar. I'm guessing the stuff we dance to today was also popular back in its day.
I just remember a post on fb about a few, dropping them here so that I come back to that at some time:
That depends on your DJ - as has been discussed extensively already in other threads. You may be lucky and have good, knowledgeable DJs at great milongas. Suffice to say there's sometimes one who finds some scratchy recording of something, but because it's old, scratchy, 'authentic', traditional, less-well-known, etc, etc, they use it.
You listen frequently enough, or do some work on a piece, then it becomes 'embedded'. I may not remember the composer, orchestra or name, but it sounds familiar. Even recollection of parts of the 'tune'. That's sufficient. I'd guess that's what dancers were doing when they went for their night out.
Exactly! A good leader actually doesn't need theory and musical terms, he's just good at it and can interpret the music on the fly. Of course you can tactically drop some terms like síncopa or 332 next to the dance floor to show off verbally, too. But I think it's only important that the technical vocabulary matches the theoretical vocabulary. I mean that the dancer has paradas and poses ready for lyrical passages, that he can majestically caminar and walk to legato or marcato, and that by the end of the piece he knows when the molinetes, rulos and enrosques should come in. It's not more about musicality in the end, is it?
I can sign all of that. When it comes to dancing, it's important to have a talent for dancing, not for making music.
Musicality in tango isn't about musical theory though, it's about connecting patterns in a song to our movements on the floor. The critical part is learning to listen closely and syncing our movements to what we are hearing.
You can call the 'patterns' whatever you want, maybe even relate them to something like solid, liquid, gas, plasma (or if you prefer ancient elements : Earth, Water, Air and Fire, and however you interpret and portray their 'personality', or maybe just melody and harmony along with rhythm), or whatever does it for you and however many you need. If you know some musical theory you can hook it to that, or not.
That is one reason being a DJ has never appealed to me. Because it would require me to start learning a different skill for which I don't have motivation. If I were to be a Tango DJ, I will need to pay attention to which songs to include in a Tanda, how to organize the flow of music for the evening, how to change it depending on the energy of crowd. It is a thankless job to be a good DJ.
You are making my point. I was talking about a systemic way in which the latter can be introduced from beginner level. Without need for music theory the way teaching a musician.
You don't need music "theory" but it doesn't hurt to recognize patterns in the music--strong beats, weak beats, musical runs, musical silences, how it loops and flows. How one does that "systematically" without boring or scaring the students though is the mystery question. You can learn to identify beats in musical phrases in tango and how they repeat by listening, and you can even annotate them in a simple way. But applying that information when dancing is another matter. Personally, I think some of that helps but really paying attention to the music when you are dancing is more important.