Tango Tips - Musicality 101 - keeping the BEAT

Dancing to the beat is fundamental in all dances. Tango is an improvised dance and keeping the beat is indispensable. The leader has to interpret the music, and improvise moves that fit the musical rythm. Basically, that means you’ve got to come up with a way to keep time with the music. You need to know the beat or pulse of the music.

Once you know the beat, you can move or step at every beat of the music or at every other beat (dancing slow) or at the half beat (dancing fast). Beginners' steps can be basic movements, i.e. forward, backward, side, in-place and pause.

Traditional Tangoes of a 1930’s-40’s “Golden Age” composers, such as Di Sarli, D’Arienzo, Canaro and Calo have very clear beats. It is easy to clap the beats of their music. Try it. Turn on some music and clap to the beat. Once you can clap these beats, the next thing to do is step to them. Do it in place – by yourself. You can start with either foot. Walk to the beat. Take steps to the left or right to the beat.

When you feel comfortable with this, grab your partner and move to the same beats with her. You lead, she follows. When that becomes easy, you can add a forward step now and then, or a side step, or a backward step – always returning to moving in place. Now try stepping at half and double beat. The goal of this timing exercise is to be able to move comfortably with your partner to all the beats of the music, using your entire basic vocabulary (forward, backward, side, in-place) for a whole song – without stopping.

Moving to all the beats in the music, and moving ONLY to beats, is one way to have “musicality” in your dance. It is this musicality that makes the dance beautiful. You can have an exquisite dance by just walking straight but stepping only on the beat.

Musicality is a complex and multilevel phenomenon. Here we examined its simplest form which is dancing to the beat. At the next level dancers can go beyond stepping to the beat. They can have their entire body move with the music, or they can move to different musical phrases or to the sounds of different instruments. And at the next level of musicality the dancers can dance as if they were one with the music, as if they were part of the Orchestra.