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Traditional tango is a unique music genre born of the diasporic musicians of many nations who made their way to Buenos Aires in the early 1900s. The city was without doubt a melting pot of world music flavoured with deeply resonant folklore melodies and stirred with ethnic rhythms and styles passed down through generations in the aural tradition.

Close your eyes and deliberately listen to this beautiful music:

Traditional Tango of the Golden Era:

"A la gran muñeca" by Carlos di Sarli

"Milonga Vieja Milonga" by Juan D'Arienzo

"Desde al Alma" by Francisco Canaro 

I play tango piano and bandoneón and have a huge respect for traditional tango music. The music of the golden age of tango at its best is as complex and rich as a symphony even though most pieces run their course in less than four minutes. It is a genre that is fiercely protected by its aficionados. But I also believe that in order to dance our best we need to know and understand the music that leads our dance.

Argentine tango: 

“...a melting pot of world music stirred with deeply resonant folklore melodies and styles passed down through generations in the aural tradition.”

Tango music has continually evolved and refined itself to engage and excite its audience and the dancing public. In the 1960s, bandoneón virtuoso and composer Astor Piazzolla broke away from the popular argentinian tango style to develop tango nuevo. As a result he received death threats from tango aficionados and ostracism from the country of his birth.

“Libertango” by Astor Piazzolla

Today, almost three decades after Piazzolla's death in 1992, worldwide acclaim of his music has endorsed the artistic brilliance of his tango nuevo music. Despite this, even to this day, many traditional tangueros still maintain " it is not tango - you can't dance to Piazzolla".

Well I am going to be the elephant in the room. You CAN dance tango to Libertango. You can dance tango to anything you like. But in expressing tango movements to non tango music, it becomes something else. It is not ‘tango’ per se. 

Musical needs will change with our moods and our passions.

In the last two decades, nuevo, neotango, electrotango and alternative tango music (collectively I will refer to these genres as non tango music, or NTM), have emerged as non-argentinian tango dancers sought to express themselves with music from their own culture.

“Santa Maria (del Buen Ayre)”  - The Gotan Project

NTM emulates the 2/4 rhythm of tango but was not specifically intended as a tango. In its lyrical sentiment, emotive quality, rhythm and pace it bridges the cultural divide between traditional tango  music and the music of our lifetime. NTM lends itself to interpretation by novice tango dancers as it is music that we know and understand and can move freely to.

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But traditional tango music has evolved around the dance moves it inspired. The form and function of the music and the dance is a symbiosis. I cannot think of any other dance /music genre that has enjoyed such an intense and explosively creative relationship over 100 years.

So if you dance tango to NTM it can be fun, exhilarating, spectacular and brilliant to watch - but it isn't really tango… That does not mean you should not dance to NVT. I have found incredible breakthroughs in my dance through exploring traditional movement to the soundtrack of NVT that I deeply understood and am emotionally connected to. 

So why play and dance to Non Tango Music (NTM)?

There are several reasons for doing this, and I state all of these affirming my greatest respect for traditional tango.

When I started to learn to dance tango I did not understand the golden age music that I have come to love and respect and my dance suffered as a result.

Traditional tango at its best is as complex and rich as a symphony. It demands a lot of attention to  hear the detail it offers. Would you enjoy listening to all of Beethoven's symphonies played back to back?

When I sense that the dynamics of a milonga are starting to drift, I will play some NTM to clear the musical palette between tandas of traditional tango. Dancers can then re-engage with the sentiment and sound of traditional tango with fresh energy and attention. However, I don’t do this if the event has been billed as 100% traditional tango music.

Over almost two decades of DJing I have had more people come to the DJ desk to ask me for details about a NTM track than about traditional tracks. This balance is now changing as more and more UK dancers are getting to know their tango music.

Dancers without a spanish speaking heritage are excluded from the intense emotional lyrics many tangos present. I play NTM music with english lyrics that resonate with the tango ethos. If tango is a ‘sad thought danced’ you first need to understand that it is a sad thought. Di Sarli’s “Verdemar” has a bright, soaring melody but the lyrics are incredibly sad.

“The Silver Dagger”  - Solas

If good dancing is all about a subjective understanding of music, good DJing is about an objective understanding of his audience. A good DJ needs to know his music, and must be able to 'give' himself or herself to the needs of the dancers rather than play personal favourites. A DJ is a service provider who must listen to the needs and wants of his audience.

In our own search for beauty in music and freedom in dance, I urge both supporters and detractors of NTM to think outside the box. 

To NTM addicts I say traditional tango is unique - there is nothing else like it in the world and it was made to dance tango to. Seek out the best in the genre and deliberately listen to and get to know the music. Just because you do not like or understand it now, does not mean that you cannot learn to like it. 

I once had to study Alban Berg as an exam piece, and the process of getting inside the music and understanding its structure showed me not only how to appreciate the music but also who to understand its strange and unfamiliar beauty.

To traditionalists, consider the future of this dance to be dependent on the number of dancers it attracts. If NTM grows our numbers, embrace it, dance to it (occasionally), use your tradtional skills to help you find beauty in the beast. Be an advocat for traditional tango through dance.

In its infancy in Buenos Aires, tango was sentimentally a "lament for the lack of women' (there were 10 men for every woman in the early 1900s). Now we have different reasons for dancing tango and in our search, we may express ourselves using other music that resonates with the soul of tango. Times change, dance evolves.

NTM that resonates with the soul of tango

"Tango - composition" by Mgzavrebi

(I play an edited version starting around 36 seconds into the track).

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I once had to study Alban Berg as an exam piece, and the process of getting inside the music and understanding its structure showed me not only how to appreciate the music but also who to understand its strange and unfamiliar beauty.

To traditionalists, consider the future of this dance to be dependent on the number of dancers it attracts. If NTM grows our numbers, embrace it, dance to it (occasionally), use your tradtional skills to help you find beauty in the beast. Be an advocat for traditional tango through dance.

In its infancy in Buenos Aires, tango was sentimentally a "lament for the lack of women' (there were 10 men for every woman in the early 1900s). Now we have different reasons for dancing tango and in our search, we may express ourselves using other music that resonates with the soul of tango. Times change, dance evolves.

Steve Morrall, September 2018

In the art of dancing Argentine tango, the paradox of stillness in movement is connected to the paradox of silence in sound in the art of musical performance. To explore this paradox, we need to consider the way musicians use silence as they perform.

Silence in music

Listen to the tango "Bahia Blanca" by Carlos di Sarli which is also available on the free listening service spotify.com 

On first impression, the music of “Bahia Blanca” seems to start at 0' 0" and continues until 2' 53", as shown in diagram 1.

Diagram 1

But if you listen in more detail, you can hear that there is an ebb and flow to the sound of the music. A more realistic description of the music can be shown by a series of blocks of sound as illustrated in diagram 2.

Diagram 2

In between each block of sound, there is a moment of relative silence which varies from a mere hint to a definite pause. A musician refers to the block of sound described above as a 'phrase'.

The first phrase in Bahia Blanca finishes just before 0’ 8” where you can hear a pause.

Musical phrases normally have a temporal symmetry as they follow a similar number of musical beats, so we can expect the second phrase to finish around 0' 16".

To create moments of silence, musicians suspend the movement or breath they use to create sound in their instrument. If a dancer is describing the music they hear by the way they move through time and space, moments of silence are effectively described by stillness in dance.

To the casual observer, a moment of stillness in the dance can appear to be a complete lack of movement. However, inside the stillness, there is always imperceptible movement, a sort of vibrancy and engagement that holds the attention of both dancers. After all, when a human body is poised in stillness, it is literally 'alive' with the movement of breathing and heart beat.

The language of music informs the language of dance.

The sound of an ensemble of musicians playing music follows a dynamic curve. The volume and intensity of the music can grow and diminish with expressive, emotional effect on the listener. Musical phrases may have a temporal symmetry, but the volume, energy and nature of the sound can vary enormously. Diagram 3 further illustrates this.

Diagram 3

Listen again to the music. At 0’ 34”, we have already experienced four phrases but at the end of the fourth phrase, there is a change of energy preceded by a pause.

Moments of pausing, or relative silence in musical performance adds meaning to the work in the same way punctuation adds meaning to the written word.

A writer uses punctuation to organise thousands of words into sentences, paragraphs and chapters to aid meaning, context and flow.

A musician uses pauses as musical punctuation to organise thousands of notes into phrases (sentences) and themes (paragraphs) to aid meaning, context and flow.

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Diagram 4

In "Bahia Blanca", this syntax is represented musically as follows:

Note: 

The first sound we hear is an individual note

Phrase:

The end of the first organised collection of notes (initially described as a block) ends around 0'8"

Theme: 

A group of phrases, normally four phrases in tango, with a distinctive musical flavour. The first theme ends at 0' 34".

In this tango there are two melodic themes which can be heard alternating between each other and repeating as follows:

A (i): 0' 0" – 0' 33"

B (i): 0' 34" – 1' 06"

A (ii): 1' 07" – 1' 40" (repeated)

B (ii): 1' 41" – 2' 15" (repeated)

A (iii): 2' 16" – 2' 49" (repeated)

Musicians refer to this structure as A-B-A-B-A. Some tango music has a third C theme.

Stillness in movement

At Tango UK, we help novice dancers to identify five basic moves on which the whole dance is predicated. When we instruct the physical process and intellectual understanding of these five moves, we describe the process as being similar to learning a language.

In order to communicate effectively, language is executed with clarity and eloquence and is delivered in ‘blocks’ to allow conversation to have a call and response structure. For instance the question “How are you today?” is politely followed by a pause to allow a response.

In the dance, communication of each of the five moves is invited by the man and responded to by the woman using non-vocal, physically eloquent signals transmitted though the conduit of the dance embrace. A man who invites a move can give his partner time to execute a response in a way that reflects her interpretation of the music. A parallel situation in spoken language would be asking the question “Would you like to step in this direction......?” There are situations on a dance floor which may demand the man to make a more urgent request, so his invite in this instance would be a more insistent “We must move in this direction now!” before returning to a more inclusive invite/response collaboration.

This process of dancing one step at a time also creates the opportunity of emphasising a moment of stillness at the end of every step if required. Moments of flow in the dance, where the dancers collaborate in the execution of a number of subsequent steps may appear to blur the moments of axis or stillness, but accomplished dancers are aware of each axis as a moment of choice.

Examples of the circumstances that can benefit from the use of stillness are:

Navigation

There is no where to go on a busy dance floor.

We need to create a moment of body stillness.

Expression

The music is emphasising a musical pause, like an end of phrase or theme, a climax at the end of a progressive build of energy or an irregular and unexpected dynamic emphasis. (Note: The orchestra of Rudolfo Biagi is renowned for this feature). We need to create a moment of stillness of the mind, body and spirit.

Pacing

Creating a pause before or after a complicated step to facilitate connection. We need to create a moment of mind and body stillness.

Focus

The conduit for communication through the embrace has been compromised and needs a moment of reconnection. We need to create a moment of stillness of the mind, body and spirit.

Clarity

When both dancers are in a state of relative stillness the start of the next move is very easy to sense and respond to.

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How does a dancer achieve stillness in dance?

Axis:

Imagine the physical process of crossing a deep, fast river on stepping stones just big enough for the ball of one foot. Each step needs to be planned to both reach the stone and then stand in balance on one leg on the stone. Walking does not require such precise skills. Stillness in dance is achieved by standing in balance on one leg at the end of a process of movement that can be very powerful.

Balance:

A lack of balance can affect the quality of stillness. As we stand on the virtual stepping stone, our body can be wobbling to try and recover balance. Wobbling is caused by untrained motor skills and out of condition muscles. It can also be affected by imprecise position in relation to our partner and poor posture resulting in a lack of alignment in the body.

Understanding:

Dancers use moments of stillness to describe the ebb and flow of the music, its phrases and themes and dynamics. To dance well, you need to be very familiar with a piece of music.

Empathy:

Dancers who are absolutely focussed on the partnership of the dance through the embrace use stillness in support of empathy and understanding of a partner's needs to achieve balance and connection.

Management:

In preparation of more complex movements that have been refined through deliberate practice, an accomplished dancer will manage the circumstances in which a complex move is made. Stillness before or after a demanding move will considerably improve the execution of the move.

Expression:

Stillness can be as powerful as dynamic movement to express emotion and dynamics in the dance. In tango music, dynamic emphasis is normally found at the beginning or end of a phrase, so for a dancer, the moments of stillness in movement which describe musical pauses are immediately preceded or followed by powerful movement which describe dynamic bursts of powerful music.

The image of taking a huge step on to a stepping stone and then stopping in perfect balance describes the challenge of this process.

How STILL is stillness in a dance?

Dance is an art based on expressive movement of a body through time and space. A dance with no movement would be no dance at all. So how do we use stillness as part of a movement based art?

In Argentine tango there can be many levels of subtlety that describe 'movement in stillness' and 'stillness in movement'. English language lacks a succinct way of describing this in a single word.

Referring back to the musical example of “Bahia Blanca”, the moments of silence that can be heard at the end of phrases are not absolutely silent. The musicians may have stopped generating a sound on their instruments but the instruments continue to reverberate from the last notes. There is a relative silence.

In tango, a moment of stillness carries a sense of the remnants of the last movement and an anticipation of the movement to come. 

The dancers' bodies have a sense of vibrancy. Inside the embrace, both partners can feel minuscule gestures or vibrations that are imperceptible to the onlooker. 

There is a relative stillness, and the degree of stillness and length of pause is crafted around the need to express the ebb and flow of the music.

Absolute stillness in the dance can create anxiety in the same way pregnant pauses in conversation can encourage people to speak to dispel an anxious silence.

For a novice dancer, standing in stillness can be very intimidating. In these moments the internal voice of our conditioned-self and ego starts to whisper: “Move! Or they will think you don’t know what you are doing”.

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Breath and breathing in the embrace can have a profound effect. Visualise the way you embrace a deeply upset close friend or relative. You hold them close, take a deep breath and gently expel it as a sigh to comfort them. The movement of our torso during the sigh is minuscule and probably imperceptible to an onlooker, yet its communication and reciprocation in the embrace is very powerful.

As a dancer it is possible to use breath and breathing for dynamic and expressive effect. It is also possible to train the muscles in our torso to replicate the action of inhalation or exhalation without actually breathing, thus avoiding hyper-ventilating or distracting our partner by breathing heavily in their ear.

By using a dynamic range in dance that ranges from relative stillness to powerful movement, both dancers can follow the only leader in the room – the music – to fully explore the art of movement though time and space as a reflection of music which is an expression of sound through time.

Steve Morrall, Tango UK © 2015