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August 30, 2007

Musical Examples from Bob's Musicality Workshop

On August 25th, I gave a musicality workshop at Lois Donnay's home/studio for about 20 dancers. I've given a version of this workshop on tour before (called "Dancing in the Music), but this was the first time I taught it in the Twin Cities. We all sat down in Lois' living room and sipped red wine as we discussed tango. I brought my bandoneon and played musical examples for dancers who had never seen one up close before. I had a 90-minute presentation all mapped out, but there were so many questions and so much back-and-forth that I ended up talking about 2 1/2 hours! As readers of this blog may have guessed by now, I really do enjoy talking on and on about tango!

We hit the following points:

• Basic Tango beats ("en 2", "en 4", "syncopa", "milonga", "3+3+2", etc...), demonstrated demonstrated on the tango "Malena" performed live on bando.
• Tango structure (Antecedent and Consequent phrases, windows, fills, stops, etc...) demonstrated using "Malena".
• The differences between Concert Tango, Vocal Tango and Tango for Dance, illustrated by 5 different recordings of "Malena".
• The role of nostalgia in tango for dancing (or why there are only about 300 recording that DJs ever play)
• A danceable guided tour of tango history, featuring the tracks above. I gave a 30 second intro to each tune and folks go up to dance to experience the music kinesthetically.

Lois and I want to give this class again sometime, but with more emphasis on pairing dance moves with musical figures!

Download all examples as a single file | Open player in new window

Posted by bbarnes at August 30, 2007 12:50 PM