Hi Jackie, That's something we've been trying to encourage here. One barrier to expressiveness is not knowing the music. I've noticed around here that generally, women do not tend to study the music as much as the men. Around here, at least, it's the men who work harder at knowing the music. Part of this, I think, is that they become more aware of it as they are try to load their laptops with tango music.
So I'm experimenting to get my students more discerning about the music. I gave my more experienced students an assignment of creating tandas to be played at our weekly practica. I became much more aware of musical differences when I had to choose music for my classes or began to deejay. So I am hoping that the same process I went through will help them develop an ear, too. If one can't hear the differences, then how can one dance them or be more expressive? This is one area in which I think alternative music can help. At least the music that people are already used to hearing. Some of the alternative pieces are not good at all for this. But I think that having them dance to pieces that they may associate with an emotion (happy high school days or whatever) can encourage them to dance more expressively. Trini de Pittsburgh --- jackie ling wong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > as most people on this list know, i lead and i follow. i > have been > told that one of my best qualities as a dancer is my > ability to > express myself musically. to quote someone... "you dance > the music". > this is not through only embellishments. > > now, i have led many followers... and there are followers > who just > follow which is nice and then there are followers who > dance with > you.... who dance melodically... and hear the notes that > are > emphasized and can translate that to their dance. it > feels like they > are reading my mind because my expression in the dance > becomes so > easy. her/his boleo considers not only the time of the > movement but > the energy, how the beat is used (emphasized at the beg. > of the > beat...etc)... it feels like painting. > > i probably am not expressing this correctly and please > don't give me > grief for that. in fact, if someone can express it > better, i would > love to hear it. > > my question... how do you teach this? is there an > exercise that can > help people understand what i am saying? > > thanks > jackie > _______________________________________________ > Tango-L mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l > PATangoS - Pittsburgh Argentine Tango Society Our Mission: To make Argentine Tango Pittsburghs most popular social dance! http://patangos.home.comcast.net/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
