One of my beginner students was telling me. "Tango is serious, salsa is all about messing around, but in tango you have to stay within limits". Those might not have been the exact words (I wasn't recording what she said) but definitely she was touching a subject that I think is very stereotypical and not truth to reality, that tango is all about seriousness.
Tango looks quite daunting. For a lay person, it's a very intricate dance, with apparently little space to put your feet on, and with lots complicated moves that seem just impossible for the common mortal to do. The music doesn't help that perception either. Dozens of instruments playing sometimes very melodramatic melodies with romantic voices and lyrics...
But tango is FUN! Even in those Pugliese or Di Sarli tracks, where the waves of music are as big as it can get, you can always dance with fun. It may be within limits, but it's all about fun. The day that I am not having fun while dancing, I'll stop.
Tango is only serious when you make it serious.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Tango is serious
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15 comments:
Consider that she may have been thinking of this as an advantage. You get a LOT more sleazed as a beginner salsera than is possible in tango. It depends on your personality, but I definitely see it as a good thing for me, as a naturally reserved person, that there are much narrower, clearer boundaries that the man is expected to respect.
On the contrary, my friend. You can never take tango too seriously ;-)
Fun is shallow - tango is deep.
(Of course, it can be fun, too)
It's huge fun :D
It's probably true that you have to be better at it before you can mess around. :D
Why would anyone put themselves through the drama of learning Tango if it wasn't so much fun. Right KR?
But yes, it takes a much greater commitment to learn Tango than almost any other social dance. So maybe that's what she means about serious...
Oh! I forgot to mention that she completed the phrase with "But I prefer tango", which made my day, really!
Hi Simba, I am not saying that you shouldn't take tango seriously, what I am just saying is that you can have fun, joy and satisfaction while dancing tango. Otherwise I see no point in dancing it.
That's true! I just feel that "fun" isn't really covering the typical tango experience.
It can enjoy a tango immensely, even if I do not laugh or even smile (=look serious), that's my point. Fun can be a part of it, but the experience is much richer than mere fun.
Of course she prefers tango, who wouldn't ;-)
We're in the same wavelenght. There are tracks that are more fun than other, especially Biagi or D'Arienzo where you can add quite a lot of playfulness to the rhythm... But it also depends on the partner!
Spot on KR, fun is definitely part of the experience.
If you look at the lyrics of many tangos, there is not just passion, love, drama and death. This is just a caricature of tango, right? There is also a sense of fun in tangos, there is joy if only to contrast against the heartwrenching parts. You also have tangos with a witty social criticism. These themes are mirrored in the playfulness of the rythm or melodies you mentioned.
I think it takes a while, and a certain amount of competence, and some immersion in the music to make tango fun.
I think it took me a solid year of dancing 4 nights a week to find it fun. Before that it was obsessive, riveting, stunning, addicting, aching and so many more things. But fun wasn't one of them.
Kind of in relation to Mtnhughmama and Johanna's comments:
In salsa, the atmosphere seems much more casual than it is in tango (this is from my limited experience in salsa). I think that salsa is much more approachable, accessible and less daunting than tango, certainly as a beginner. You see in salsa people grinning and laughing like maniacs throughout the night (myself included). There seems to be less of a politics as to who you can ask when how, for how long you have to dance with the person, etc, etc.
I believe that this is partly assisted by the vibes given off by the happy cheery fast-paced music. Tango music feels much more formal, sad, melancholic, and some of them are pretty serious. Many of the milongas, which are generally fast-paced music have a minor scale feel (to non-musicians: minor scales sound sadder than major scales) to them.
These musicalities are refelcted in the way the dancers move. There is a lot of "shaking and swirling" in salsa moving in various directions (if cuban), you can be close or very far apart from your partner, and it feels much easier to release your tension this way. In tango, you need to have much more control over your body's movements, keeping the equilibrium and connection between you and your partner is a skill that is acquired over a long period of time and practice, etc, etc and the result is... that... it kinda looks and feels 'serious'!!
Of course, I know and you know that plenty of fun is there but a lot of the time it's cuddled inside us mostly in the bubble of a pair rather than released like sunbeams.
I think that for most people, in tango, they need to jump over a lot of hurdles before they can relax and just enjoy themselves. In salsa, fun is already quite visible from the start. In tango, you do need to find it.
"In salsa, fun is already quite visible from the start. In tango, you do need to find it."
101%!
Yep, looking back to my first years I can see how tango was all about making sure that I could dance with the same lady the next milonga.
Of course tango can be fun.
But what I like about tango is that there's no pressure to be having constant fun, all the time. There's nobody with a fun "hammer" relentlessly smashing at your head, making sure your grinning.
Tango is alwais fun!
Fun to dance fun to learn fun to teach fun to ear.
Oh, I do like that about there being no pressure to have 'fun'!
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