I agree that there is a small number of steps, but every step can be done with unlimited types of movements. I think you see the "step" as being the granular level of tango. I use to. My dancing took a big leap forward when I began to understand that there is a level of expression and creativity that goes deeper than a single step. My dance is composed of a very limited step vocabulary, but just as in speech, where a word can be spoken with great nuance, so can a single step be dances with great nuance. That is where I like to improvise.
Is there a good explanation of Naveira and Salas' tango analysis?
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I agree that there is a small number of steps, but every step can be done with unlimited types of movements. I think you see the "step" as being the granular level of tango. I use to. My dancing took a big leap forward when I began to understand that there is a level of expression and creativity that goes deeper than a single step. My dance is composed of a very limited step vocabulary, but just as in speech, where a word can be spoken with great nuance, so can a single step be dances with great nuance. That is where I like to improvise.
No, I don't think I do, but you have missed the thrust of my original objection to:
That can't be a workable definition for improvisation: you can't just keep going where you've never been before, and it would require a prodigious feat of memory even to make a serious attempt.
bordertangoman
Well-Known Member
I also like to use this approach, as well as experimenting. I learn more from playing my sax and listeneing to sax music than I've ever learnt from dance teachers.
But now and again, like a couple of weeks ago, I spontaneously do something that no-one has taught me. My partner at the time, gasped and said "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?" i replied "I dont know but it was nice."
Well, yes, that's what I mean.
Now I get what your complaint was. As always when talking about dance, words can be misleading. I was not suggesting that you should keep track of every thing you've ever done in tango and avoid any and all repetition. I wanted to be understood a little more poetically than that.
What I find lacking in these geometrical methodologies is that they rarely focus on movements in the vertical direction. I struggled a lot with the pattern-oriented, geometric-centric, mostly because the emphasis of the teachers I had at the beginning was on "OK, so let's explore what can we do after this step". They'd give us several options, and in my naive tango beginner mind, I would categorize these as different sequences, that my little bird brain could not grasp. Building a catalog of theoretical possibilities is an interesting goal, but I think a more direct and attainable goal is to focus on how to make a particular step/sequence easier for both the leader and the follower.
My dancing only really took off when I started focusing on getting my partner to move with me in harmony with the music. This led me directly to the importance of controlling the up and down movements (i.e. getting closer to the floor or further, depending on the desired effect). Now I think of my dancing in very small building blocks with the most emphasis being on the vertical dimension. When my students ask me what to do after a particular step that we've been working on in class (using the principle of movements of your entire body in all 3 dimensions), I just tell them to walk forward out of it.
My dancing only really took off when I started focusing on getting my partner to move with me in harmony with the music. This led me directly to the importance of controlling the up and down movements (i.e. getting closer to the floor or further, depending on the desired effect). Now I think of my dancing in very small building blocks with the most emphasis being on the vertical dimension. When my students ask me what to do after a particular step that we've been working on in class (using the principle of movements of your entire body in all 3 dimensions), I just tell them to walk forward out of it.
Maybe this will be more clear. A musician needs to know all the arpeggios and progressions in order to improvise, but just playing them on stage is not improvising. Something new has to be created, and if it seems new, even though it has been played before that's okay.
My assertion is that in tango the leader only needs to know a handful steps, not arpeggios in every key, in order to improvise.
My assertion is that in tango the leader only needs to know a handful steps, not arpeggios in every key, in order to improvise.
I'd like to understand this more Andabien, what type of things/movements are you thinking of? Like varying height, energy, quality, rotation, foot placement, embrace?
Yes, to all of the above. I'll try, but for me, the closer we get to discussing essential tango, the less able we are to express it verbally.
Comparing tango to painting
There are only three primary colors. Add to that the three secondary colors. Add to that all the intermediate qualities of hue. Add also the qualities of saturation and shade. Then include the blends from one color to another. Add also the qualities of stroke: strong to light, bold to timid, big to small, straight versus meandering, etcetera. But, painting has no temporal dimension, as dance does.
Comparing tango to music
There are only 12 notes in the western scale. Every note also has duration, attack, release, crescendo, decrescendo, loudness and softness, vibrato, phrasing, etcetera. No good musician would play music exactly as written, because the written music cannot describe the real music.
Dance
For me, it's similar in tango. If one only thinks in terms of the elemental steps, of which I define six for the followers (forward, backward, sideward, ocho in front, ocho in back, cruzada), plus combinations of those steps, I think you miss out on all the other qualities that cannot be described, but can be danced: strength or softness, boldness or uncertainty, size, tempo, repetition, contrast, emotion, etcetera and etcetera.
For me, tango goes way beyond paint by numbers. It goes way beyond merely playing the notes as written. It goes to a realm that can be expressed and experienced, but cannot be described or enumerated. If you can talk about it, it's not the real dance.
Feeble as it is, I hope that helps.
AndaBien, that's anything but feeble.
AndaBien, I think that's a poetic, beautiful description and one I'll save. It does help. I agree that there is a feeling in tango that is hard to describe, the connection and joining of each other, the expression of music.
But... and there is a slight but for me... I also think that it should be possible to describe all the steps leading there. In an orchestra a conductor has to be able to 'teach' an orchestra his interpretation of a piece of music, even if the audience just benefit from the emotional experience. What he teaches or describes to them is more than the notes which they know already. Or a DJ can choose different music at different times in an evening to affect the emotions in the dancers. In the same way I believe a teacher should be able to teach or describe all the facets of how to improvise (Steps and all the nuances you describe) with exercises just like teaching anything else. It's then up to the student to practice, incorporate into their dance and experience it for themselves.
But... and there is a slight but for me... I also think that it should be possible to describe all the steps leading there. In an orchestra a conductor has to be able to 'teach' an orchestra his interpretation of a piece of music, even if the audience just benefit from the emotional experience. What he teaches or describes to them is more than the notes which they know already. Or a DJ can choose different music at different times in an evening to affect the emotions in the dancers. In the same way I believe a teacher should be able to teach or describe all the facets of how to improvise (Steps and all the nuances you describe) with exercises just like teaching anything else. It's then up to the student to practice, incorporate into their dance and experience it for themselves.
If you get a chance, would you be willing to elaborate on this? It's not something that I emphasize, but maybe I'm missing out on something, so I'd like to understand your philosophy better (assuming it can be explained on an internet forum).
borisvian13
Member
Yes, it seems to me that you're missing an important point here and you do make things unnecessary complicated. Basically what you're trying to do is to take a very simple, intrinsic (that is, describing relative position of bodies only) system (the one from Castro's book) and translate it into a bunch of statements using coordinates in actual space (that is, describing the movements from an observer's point of view).
And here's why it's not a good idea to use coordinates. If you want to use coordinates you have two options. 1. You use a fixed coordinate system which means that you need a reference point outside of the dancing couple and I think it's self-explanatory why this is silly. 2. You use a moving coordinate system determined by the dancing couple. That might look like a better idea but it's not. It actually creates a lot of mess, mostly because you can arrive at a given fixed position in many different ways, so you'll end up describing that same one and only position using many different coordinate systems, something which, to put it mildly, is not very efficient.
I think most people intuitively feel that all these coordinate-based approaches are messy and futile and that's why they refuse to study seriously the structure of the dance. What they don't realize though is that there is a coordinate-free approach, namely the Naveira-Salas-Castro system
For me, I have a "system" that works for me (somewhat similar to your #2 moving co-ordinate system). What I then try to do is to learn other systems, and then try to "translate/transform" aspects of them into my "native" system.Yes, it seems to me that you're missing an important point here and you do make things unnecessary complicated. Basically what you're trying to do is to take a very simple, intrinsic (that is, describing relative position of bodies only) system (the one from Castro's book) and translate it into a bunch of statements using coordinates in actual space (that is, describing the movements from an observer's point of view).
And here's why it's not a good idea to use coordinates. If you want to use coordinates you have two options. 1. You use a fixed coordinate system which means that you need a reference point outside of the dancing couple and I think it's self-explanatory why this is silly. 2. You use a moving coordinate system determined by the dancing couple. That might look like a better idea but it's not. It actually creates a lot of mess, mostly because you can arrive at a given fixed position in many different ways, so you'll end up describing that same one and only position using many different coordinate systems, something which, to put it mildly, is not very efficient.
I think most people intuitively feel that all these coordinate-based approaches are messy and futile and that's why they refuse to study seriously the structure of the dance. What they don't realize though is that there is a coordinate-free approach, namely the Naveira-Salas-Castro system
The reason I suspect why so many of these systems don't work for lots of people is because we all have out own "internal" way of viewing things, and many of these systems (while very useful and logical to some people), don't directly translate into our own internal view of things.
It's just my opinion though.
Yes, it seems to me that you're missing an important point here and you do make things unnecessary complicated. Basically what you're trying to do is to take a very simple, intrinsic (that is, describing relative position of bodies only) system (the one from Castro's book) and translate it into a bunch of statements using coordinates in actual space (that is, describing the movements from an observer's point of view).
...
What they don't realize though is that there is a coordinate-free approach, namely the Naveira-Salas-Castro system
Thanks Borisvian, I'm going to have to think a bit about this. I'm not sure what makes the Castros system coordinate-free and mine not?