Jamie, The basic "tango walking beat," occurs when you step on the 1 & 3 beats, the strong beats of tango music which is in 4/4 time. This is frequently called "simple time" (slow, slow).
When you add a weak beat, as in stepping on 1, 2, and 3 (quick, quick, slow), you are dancing "double time." When you only step on the 1, you are dancing "half time." You can also dance "syncopated rhythms," but most social dancers do not do this. This is especially interesting when tango music contains syncopated 3,3,3 rhythms. A good example of this is Astor Piazzola's Libertango. To capture this on paper, you would divide each of the four beats of a tango in 4/4 time in half. This give you 8 beats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. To dance a syncopated 3,3,2 rhythm, you would step on the 1, 4, and 7 beats. The phrase "galloping, galloping apples" may help to feel this. Norm _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
