Monday, April 23, 2012

Tango Vals, Javier Diaz & Daria Nikolaeva



Tango vals, danced by Javier Diaz & Daria Nikolaeva in St.Petersburg, Russia, 21.04.12.

Dance Conmigo is teaching Tango vals this spring session 2012

When we dance regular tango, there is a lot of room for interpretation of the music, the leaders constantly switch from the tempo to the melody, make long pauses, do contretemps steps or simply dance to the music inside of their head, and somehow, it all seem to work out.

When we dance Tango vals, we have to be more aware of the music and the tempo.  Tango vals is danced to 3/4 time and the tempo could change from slow to very fast within the same song.

Although most of the steps are taken from traditional tango, dancers tend to choose more turning steps, and also choose not to pause as they frequently do in Tango.

So how do we dance Tango vals?

Generally the music is too fast to step in each one of the 3 beats of every measure, to do so would be exhausting. The most common solution is to accentuate the beat 1 of the 3 beats.

Once that we have gotten used to the rhythm stepping on "1", the next step would be to do some syncopations and step twice per 2 beats of music instead of the more traditional tango walk of one step per 2 beats of music. Dancer would generally step on "1" and then either on "2" or on "3".

Although not a regular tempo, in class, I prefer to teach in series of "slows" and "quick-quick". I find it easier to explain to students and for myself as well. That would be 1 step of the 1-2-3 tempo, or two steps within the 1-2-3 tempo.

In the dance floor you might find dancers who never syncopate and who would only make steps on the "1" and this would be perfectly fine, but I have never seen a dancer who syncopates on every beat. Here comes the liberty of interpretation, where a leader can switch from stepping on every "1" and occasionally switch to the quick-quick syncopation.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...