Musicality of Milongueros and Musicality Exercises

Here is another piece about the Milongueros written by Royce, a friend of mine living in Buenos Aires at the moment.  The original post is here:

 

http://www.loksze.com/thoughts/2008/02/25/musicality-of-milongueros/

 

My comments are to follow.

 

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Musicality of Milongueros

 

Marité Lujan, a tango teacher here in Bs.As., said to my friend during a private lesson, “When you dance with the milongueros, you’re not there to enjoy their technique, but to enjoy their music!” What she said is so true! The greatest value of milongueros and milongueras is their musicality, sentimental and personality. For them, that’s what tango is about.

 

For me, dancing with milongueros is like taking tango music lesson. When I know the music very well, they give me inspiration and new approach to listen and to dance. For the music that I don’t like very much, they show me how to appreciate it. And when I don’t know the music, they make me discover new jewelry in tango. Many milongueros know by heart what they dance in the milonga, they can always give me the information when I ask.

 

Generally speaking, in terms of instrumental music, they like to dance on the rhythm and melody. Marking the phrases and highlighting particular instruments or climax in the music are import!ant. And for vocal music, they dance on the melody and the singer’s voice. When the singer starts singing, they use their body to sing together with the singer. It doesn’t have much to do with the meaning of the lyrics, it is more about connecting to the emotion of the singer and the intensity of the voice. Usually when the DJ plays Angel Vargas with Angel D’Agostino or Orlando Medina with Ricardo Malerba, many of the milongueros and milongueras jump to the dance floor. Because they love these music very much, and they are always moved by the singer.

 

-- By Royce 2/25/2008

 

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it is very nice to be able to find out about the milongueros through Royce.  She wrote another piece called "Old Milongueros" earlier:

 

Original post: http://www.loksze.com/thoughts/2008/01/20/old-milongueros

With Korean translation: http://blog.daum.net/walkingone/2109047 

 

These observations remind me of a few exercises on musicality that I learned from Javier Rodriguez:

 

1. Practice one sequence, say the ocho cortado, but using onLY the single beat.  Whatever you do, step only on the single beat for both leader and follower.  You can also try free dancing (instead of a particular sequence) but using only the single beat for the entire song.

 

2. Practice one sequence, but doing it with 3 different speeds or energy.

 

3. Practice dancing an entire song using only the ocho cortado.  Try to use the ocho cortado to express all the intricacies in the song by varying its speed and energy.

 

The idea of musicality behind these exercises is obviously very similar to that of the milongueros as described by Royce - it is about "how" you dance the steps, not "what" steps you do.

 

Exercise #1 is the starting point of being able to dance the same step with different energy and speed.  Doing everything on the single beat is like the base - if you can do that then you can start doing it faster or slower, with more energy or less.  Exercise #2 and #3 are pretty self-explanatory.  I think Javier actually learned #3 from a milonguero.

 

Here is a clip of Jarvier & Geraldine doing a sequence 3 times.  The change of speed and energy is very subtle but it's there (especially for the boleo and Javier's subsequence side step):