Teaching Musicality

[Subliminal]

Yeah, I'm in agreement with you on what improvised vs choreographed means. I was just trying to figure out what JohnEm meant (and while I'm still not positive, it's very different from what you or I would say it is).

It's like when I'm leading a back ocho, I might decide next to do another ocho, a boleo, walk to the cross, start a giro, etc. My guess is he would consider it "choreography" if you think ahead two or three steps, and that it's only improvised when you only think about the next step. It had never even occurred to me that someone would think that, so I had no clue what he was talking about.

I think the standard definition of choreography jives with your definition. Choreography usually means planned out in advance. Improvisation is making it up as you go along.

As for improvising patterns vs step to step? I'd say it doesn't matter one fig as long as the follower doesn't notice. If you do the same sequence over and over, and you hear the faint sound of snoring over your shoulder, it's time to break it up. If you hear something big coming up in the music and plan a fancy giro combo thing, and your partner enjoys it, it's not invalidated because it was pre-planned.

 

[Peaches]

Well, if we are all now using John's definition of "choreography," as in thought about in even the merest hint of in advance, then I say BRING ON THE FLIPPIN CHOREOGRAPHY! I _want_ my partner to be thinking a step or two in advance. I _want_ my partner to hear trends in the music and build on them over the course of a phrase or sequence. I _want_ my partner to think about what step may or may not flow naturally from the current one, rather than just doing whatever was felt at that exact moment regardless of how "comfortable" it is for the follower or how well it doesn't fit the music.

Then again, I suppose it's been well established by the Worldwide Guardians of What Is and What Is Not REAL (TM) Tango that I don't actually dance Certified Tango (TM).

Oh...wait...I forgot to give a fig about that... I was too busy thinking about enjoying my fake tango, which I was duped into paying a teacher to learn.

 

[jantango]

JohnEm, you've mentioned a few times that your manner "eliminates the mental effort", of planning ahead, if I've got that correct.

Another way of seeing it is that my method actually reduces mental effort. I don't have to decide what to do next, after every step. If I decide to just walk for a while, I'm free from making decisions for as long as that takes, unless I change my mind. Once I've got a concept of what I want to do, I no longer have to think about it, unless it's interrupted, of course.

I danced over the course of four months at Lo de Celia and other milongas in BsAs with JohnEm. He has made an effort to not get programmed in tango by avoiding classes. I do know he dances freely without thinking about what to do next, etc. because you can't plan anything on a crowded floor. John dances in the outer lane and keeps up with the flow. Never once did we touch another couple while dancing together. That's quite an accomplishment for a first-timer in Buenos Aires, but John did it.

 

[AndaBien]

I danced over the course of four months at Lo de Celia and other milongas in BsAs with JohnEm. He has made an effort to not get programmed in tango by avoiding classes. I do know he dances freely without thinking about what to do next, etc. because you can't plan anything on a crowded floor. John dances in the outer lane and keeps up with the flow. Never once did we touch another couple while dancing together. That's quite an accomplishment for a first-timer in Buenos Aires, but John did it.

I have a strong suspicion that we are talking about the same thing, but he just defines it differently.

I don't think anyone has said anything, or suggested it, about the quality of his dance.

 

[jantango]

Yes, I know there was no discussion about his dancing. I wanted to comment because it's relative. He has no prescribed steps and yet he keeps up with traffic on a crowd floor without touching others.

 

[bastet]

Goodness- go away for a few weeks and get married and a monster thread develops!

Since it's already been said....this....(trust me it is true).

But surely, while you can't teach someone how to feel music, you can teach them to listen to it more fully? To hear the different layers, and how they relate...or to notice things like phrasing or things like staccato v. legato playing? And then to learn how those musical devices can contribute to different feelings? Furthermore, you can teach ways of moving in such a way as to capture or express those musical elements, yes?

While that's not musicality-as-feelings, it can function as something as a proxy. It provides the tools to express the emotion.

So...while the actual feeling can't be taught, you can reasonably teach something that will get you close and allow actual feelings to be expressed.

 

[bastet]

As for choreography, not particularly interested in chasing that hare. If I dance with someone and they dance something that they spent weeks rehearsing with themselves but tell me nothing of it, how am I to know if they choreographed it or not? Unless both of us know it, and rehearsed and practiced it, then is it really choreography? Just like if I can't tell what a lead is dancing on in the music, regardless of how fantastically he may think he understands it, was is musical?

 

[JohnEm]

Yeah, I'm in agreement with you on what improvised vs choreographed means. I was just trying to figure out what JohnEm meant (and while I'm still not positive, it's very different from what you or I would say it is).

While you're all discussing what I might mean by "choreography" you miss
what I've already said about it. I suspect you all really know but to spell it
out: I use the word loosely to cover what some of you have indicated you
actually do - select a pattern that you think will fit the music which
because you are doing it during the dance you say is improvisation and
not choreography.

It's like when I'm leading a back ocho, I might decide next to do another ocho, a boleo, walk to the cross, start a giro, etc. My guess is he would consider it "choreography" if you think ahead two or three steps, and that it's only improvised when you only think about the next step. It had never even occurred to me that someone would think that, so I had no clue what he was talking about.

It doesn't matter if I call it choreography or not - I'm calling it that mainly
to make a point. The fact is usually I don't think two, three or more steps
ahead even if I might lead a series of ochos, forward or back or turning.
It's in the moment step by step - it's the dance evolved by milongueros
to be able to dance in extremely crowded conditions over which there can
be no control, only mutual co-operation amongst the dancers.

 

[JohnEm]

JohnEm, you've mentioned a few times that your manner "eliminates the mental effort", of planning ahead, if I've got that correct.

Yes, conscious mental effort especially.

Another way of seeing it is that my method actually reduces mental effort. I don't have to decide what to do next, after every step. If I decide to just walk for a while, I'm free from making decisions for as long as that takes, unless I change my mind. Once I've got a concept of what I want to do, I no longer have to think about it, unless it's interrupted, of course.

You are still thinking.

Mine is a different mindset of being only in the moment - it did not happen
immediately, you have to create the conditions to allow it.
Your dance thinking pattern is unlikely to allow you to achieve it, if that
was what you wanted to do. It's consciously too complicated.

 

[JohnEm]

Well, if we are all now using John's definition of "choreography," as in thought about in even the merest hint of in advance, then I say BRING ON THE FLIPPIN CHOREOGRAPHY! I _want_ my partner to be thinking a step or two in advance. I _want_ my partner to hear trends in the music and build on them over the course of a phrase or sequence. I _want_ my partner to think about what step may or may not flow naturally from the current one, rather than just doing whatever was felt at that exact moment regardless of how "comfortable" it is for the follower or how well it doesn't fit the music.

Then again, I suppose it's been well established by the Worldwide Guardians of What Is and What Is Not REAL (TM) Tango that I don't actually dance Certified Tango (TM).

Oh...wait...I forgot to give a fig about that... I was too busy thinking about enjoying my fake tango, which I was duped into paying a teacher to learn.

What a petulant petty rant!
You seem to be accusing me of dictating what is and what is not tango
and you will find no such claim here, only an expression of my dance and
how it achieves musicality in the moment.

 

[gyb]

Building up musical interpretation does not equate building up sequences of steps.

Besides other reasons tango music is great for dancing because it provides an excellent mix of the predictable and the unforeseen. This mixture allows us to get carried away with the flow without getting bored by repetitiveness. My approach to dancing have been to mimic this mixture by being somewhat predictable in building up the musical interpretation (over the course of several steps) while keeping the way how I implement this musical interpretation via steps variable and unrepetitive. Providing a consistent and somewhat predictable musical interpretation, I believe, is the key to allow followers to exploit their own musical freedom in the dance. Trying to carefully avoid that the recurring elements of the musical interpretation get implemented in the same steps is the key to keep followers from getting bored (not to mention that acquiring the confidence of putting the steps together on the spot also allows us to adapt to the floor conditions).

This mixture can be achieved. Equating "not planning steps ahead" with "not planning musical interpretation ahead" is a fallacy.

 

[JohnEm]

Building up musical interpretation does not equate building up sequences of steps.

Yes.

Besides other reasons tango music is great for dancing because it provides an excellent mix of the predictable and the unforeseen. This mixture allows us to get carried away with the flow without getting bored by repetitiveness. My approach to dancing have been to mimic this mixture by being somewhat predictable in building up the musical interpretation (over the course of several steps) while keeping the way how I implement this musical interpretation via steps variable and unrepetitive. Providing a consistent and somewhat predictable musical interpretation, I believe, is the key to allow followers to exploit their own musical freedom in the dance. Trying to carefully avoid that the recurring elements of the musical interpretation get implemented in the same steps is the key to keep followers from getting bored (not to mention that acquiring the confidence of putting the steps together on the spot also allows us to adapt to the floor conditions).

Not sure about about all of this.
The consistency for the woman is stepping or marking the rhythm in some
way, that doesn't necessarily mean the man - it means the woman feels
the man is marking the music by means of what she is being asked to do.

The musical interpretation for the lady is how she feels the man is
responding and the responses in her. It comes from changes in intensity
of movement, extent and type of movement, the way you use your body
to communicate what you feel or the melody or tone of the music to her.
The better dancer you are, the quality of the connection/embrace, the
better the dancer your partner is, the range and choice of movement you
both have all influence the dance. Do you for instance dance in three
dimensions, do you you use your entire body, your entire being even,
when you dance? As Ricardo Vidort is reputed to have said do you:
"Put All the Meat on the Fire", a very Argentine way of saying it.

None of which has anything to do with sequences.

This mixture can be achieved. Equating "not planning steps ahead" with "not planning musical interpretation ahead" is a fallacy.

I would modify that:
Equating "not planning steps ahead" with "no musical interpretation"
is a fallacy.

 

[gyb]

Not sure about about all of this.

Not sure what you are disagreeing about.

Building up the musical interpretation in my view also has to do with, as you write, "changes in intensity of movement, extent and type of movement, the way you use your body to communicate what you feel or the melody or tone of the music to her". I'd only subtract from this description the "type of movement", ie whether it is an ocho cortado, a sidestep, a rock-step etc. For me that directionality is spontaneous and fitted to the floor condition, while the manner it is executed - or more precisely, the manner of how a shorter or longer sequence of these steps is executed -, including response to the melody through the embrace and the rhytmical pattern it follows, leads to the musical interpretation. But this musical interpretation can be, according to my intention, somewhat foreseen.

Maybe using the word "planning" was misfortune as it connotes with consciousness of decisions too much.

 

[JohnEm]

Building up the musical interpretation in my view also has to do with, as you write, "changes in intensity of movement, extent and type of movement, the way you use your body to communicate what you feel or the melody or tone of the music to her". I'd only subtract from this description the "type of movement", ie whether it is an ocho cortado, a sidestep, a rock-step etc. For me that directionality is spontaneous and fitted to the floor condition, while the manner it is executed - or more precisely, the manner of how a shorter or longer sequence of these steps is executed -, including response to the melody through the embrace and the rhytmical pattern it follows, leads to the musical interpretation. But this musical interpretation can be, according to my intention, somewhat foreseen.

We are much closer now although I do not think of sequences; even if an
observer sees sequences.

For me "type of movement" didn't imply particular movements but how
they were used to express the movements. Types of movement as you are
describing, meaning say flowing or repeating or rebounding, even pausing
while conveying the rhythm in some way, come about from the floor
conditions, the partner and even the movement before, spontaneously.
It takes time and much practise to get there.

Maybe using the word "planning" was misfortune as it connotes with consciousness of decisions too much.

Exactly.

 

[dchester]

While you're all discussing what I might mean by "choreography" you miss
what I've already said about it. I suspect you all really know but to spell it
out: I use the word loosely to cover what some of you have indicated you
actually do - select a pattern that you think will fit the music which
because you are doing it during the dance you say is improvisation and
not choreography.

This sort of illustrates why it's difficult to communicate with you. You use words that we use, but your meanings of the words are so different from ours, that we really don't know what each other is saying. Thus you draw some strange conclusions that sometimes have little to do with what we've actually said.


Also, your usage of the word "think" and putting it in italics they way you did, would appear to imply that some of us don't know how to fit steps to the music. You can legitimately claim that you don't know how to do something, if that's your opinion of yourself. However, criticizing people/things you don't know anything about like that, makes you come across as both rude and foolish (it makes it difficult to take what you say as serious and thoughtful). Like I've said before, your posts are difficult to understand, so it's possible that wasn't your intent, but that's the message you sent.

If nothing else, when you detect that we don't understand you, also consider that you also don't understand us.