The idea of "sequences" and "choreographies" is a tricky one to me - i don't believe in them, and for myself i don't organize my dance with them, but they are a powerful tool to communicate essentially uncommunicably things about what will probably feel good for my partner, and how to fit accents into ones dance and so on.
I would compare them to some extent to katas in martial arts. I started to supplement boxing with wing chun dummy work, and doing something that massivly choreographed was very unpleasant to me, but over time i have come to appreciate the oppotunity that doing something choreographed gives to refine positional and tactical muscle memory that is not usually possible in even light sparring.
I started learnign tango in a purely nuevo framework - no sequences, almost no steps, no counting, only "the core of tango is stepping in 8 directions, with either foot, and that every step can follow every other step, and this is an example of what happens when you chain X with Z - go, try, discuss and play with this", and we didn't talk about the structure of the music beyond "do what you feel". And this framework served me very well to find my own tango, and the opportunities and puitfalls of different embraces, and dancing a lot, and listening to a lot of tango music over time let me feel the music so that the rhythms and patterns of tango were part of my dance.
But a lot of the people i started with are not there anymore, and i wonder if this process of having to become familiar with the music so that one embodies the structures intuitively can be shortened. The one thing i noticed when taking privates with teachers who insisted on counting everything was that i really didn't have to count the music, when i counted myself i got exactle the same thing - i danced the 4's, and the 8's and the 32's - i didn't know them as that, but i danced them because that was what i heard and felt in the music, and i heard and felt that in the music because that is what is in the music, the structure that the composers and orchestras have put in place.
I personally think this process of finding tango music in my dance on my own before learning/studying what and why i had found it was really good for me. It reassured me about my dance, and my musicality.
But i look at the dancefloor, and i remember what i used to do on the dancefloor the first few years, and i feel sorry for the followers. I am at the moment convinced that a leaders musicality is the key to facilitate a followers musicality and enjoyment of the dance - the leader does not make the follower musical, but he certainly can keep her from being musical, experienceing the music and expressing it in the dance.
My current position is that having and drilling basic "sequences" like "there is usually accent on the 8 - do something there" is a good way for leaders to at least "fake" musicality to the extent that it allows the follower to have a connection with the music and dance her dance. This is just like theaching a step, like "start a giro to the left from a sidestep to the left" or "start a giro to the right from a rockstep" - these are stupid rules, and just serve to "fake" really knowing how to lead and how a couple moves, and if it lead to leaders slavishly follow this, and never thing about starting a giro from an ocho, or a backstep, or the frontstep after a sandwich or whatever it would be a indeed a bad thing, but everything we talk about are things that more experienced dancers embody anyway - geometry and biology dictates what steps are comfortable to chain, and what chains are either opportunites to show off ones skill or how to make a follower unhappy. I feel that to the same extent the mechanical structure of the music dictates what is "conventionally" musical, and what is either the opportunity to have one of the magical dances, or loosing ones follower completely.
The question on my mind when talking about musicality is not "what do experienced dancers do" - they all dance, and know the music, no matter if they got there analytically or intutively, but "what does a beginning leader need to know to make dancing worthwhile for a follower" - for movement vocabulary we have some pretty good guidelines, and most of us stop trying a new move after we have stepped on somebody a few times in a row - we know and get good feedback what pushes the envelope of our physical skill. We don't know what pushes the envelope of our musical skill. And advice like "dance what you feel in the music" does not help. What i am trying to think about is if there are equivalent benchmarks one could offer for musicality that would be comparable to "if you fall down this step is probably not working yet".
I don't think anybody wants people on the dancfloor who count under their breath. But i think spending a few weeks listening to tango and counting out the 4s, and a few weeks counting out the 8s, and a few weeks counting out the 32s helps appreciation the music, and helps dancing intuitively and freely to the music, in the same way that going to a practica and playing the game of "dance without the cross" or "all the ways you can think of of getting out of a back ocho" or "lets have the line of dance move clockwise" helps getting the techical difficulties out of the way of dancing spontaneously.
Another exercise that really helped me to understand what is universal and what is ideosyncratic in onese understanding of the musik is something Homer did in one of his workshops: He played a song, and asked people instead of dancing to stand next to each other, not touching, and sing to each other. (well, i am a awful singer so it was more a humming to each other for me, but oh well) - really interesting and thoughprovoking, in how and when we were harmonious, and where we clashed, especially as in the dance the clashes would have mostly been squashed in my favour. Singing along with tango music is nice in general - i usually enjoy it when followers sing while dancing. Another thing that seems to be a good shortcut to phrasing, and less mechanical and intrusive than counting is talking the phrasing - several of my teachers tended to explain what kind of phrasing they wanted to work on by talking along to the music while my partner and i danced freely "barapapdapap barapadapap batatatata barapadap barapadap batatatata".
Over time the musical skill becomes inevitably better, and i think on this board everybody has danced enough to have the technical and musical freedom to express oneself, and we all see how over time we can express more and more of what we feel in our dance - sure sometimes our musical skill becomes worse, just like when we learn a new technique for moving sometimes everything else gets messed up till we integrate everything again. And it doesn't matter if we immersed ourselves in the music by listenign to it 24hrs a day, or by counting beats for hours.
I think like in most things the truth lies in the middle - beginners need to know about both of these toolkits to help getting access to the music, and they should have at least the base skill in the "counting" approach to see what it is about, just even though we know that anything is chainable we tell them which sequences are usually considered easiest, and which ones are will require more skills.
Gssh
). To some extent all we are talking about is approaches to learning/teaching, not actually what the dance is.