Music and Musicality

I always have very good musicality even when I was a beginner, or so people told me. In the hindsight, I was just dancing to the beat. There was no difference to me between Piazolla and Di Sarli. I could dance them all. I even danced a nice tango to ballroom music with my former partner during the pre-performance rehearsal about one year ago, which prompted the teacher whom invited us nodded approvingly. What's the difference, music is music, step to music, easy! At the time the only orchestra that I couldn't handle was Pugliese. I went nuts while dancing the end of Pugliese pieces. I couldn't control myself. The music controlled me, I chased the music with steps.

It was not until I danced on the crowded milonga floors in BA, that I started feeling the music. The small space forced me to pay more attention to the music because there was no space to dance every beat. Most of the time I had to stretch the movement to a few beats. And later I found out that I could sometimes dance to the weak beats as well, even pause in the middle of the music. Then another door opened up: playing with the music.

I started collecting and listening tango music right before my first trip as a preparation. Brought back a suitcase of seventy some cds from my first trip and forty some the second one. Right now, I have close to 7000 tracks in my Itune library, all of them traditional tango music. The joy is endless just listening to the same song played by different orchestras.

It was when I started reading the lyrics that I found another dimension in the music: the feeling in the lyrics and the music. As in Una Emocion by Tanturi con Campos, the proud feeling makes me straighten my back and dance with stronger energy. When I danced Trenzas by Miguel Calo con Raul Iriarte one morning, I felt this feeling of missing a lost love. The girl who I danced with, the moment she was in my embrace, she felt it. And I felt the instant surrender in her and the little shivering from her body. At the end of the song, we kept our embrace for a few more seconds.

Then I realize that when I more and more appreciate the music, my dance gets better and better. Music is the catalyst and the inspiration. A man's style develops by the way he interprets the music, not by the way he dances. Observe. Most of the steps and movements are similar between different styles: Salon or Milonguero, Nuevo or Traditional. That's why I like to watch Chico dancing, even though I am traditional guy myself. Human bodies move in an organic way. How a man expresses the music with his body and leads makes the difference between the mediocre and the excellent.

It was not until I understood how to interpret the music and how to dance my feeling through the music that I knew I have good musicality.