Talking about musicality is something that could take hours, days, or even longer.
It’s not something that can be explained in one word or in a concise manner, but one thing is certain—it’s not something you acquire overnight. First, you have to learn to listen, then you must learn to dance. Then, depending on your sensitivity, personality, and emotional character, you will translate all of this into movement, and that will become your musicality.
If I wanted to simplify and give a definition, I’d say: having musicality in dance means being one more instrument in the orchestra you’re listening to. But… in tango, we are two. Therefore, the dancing couple becomes one instrument, where one represents the left hand, and the other the right hand, just like when playing the piano or the bandoneon—sometimes they play in unison, and at other times, they complement each other and are part of the whole music.
Tango music is incredibly rich, and if you want to dive into its technical aspects from a musical point of view, you have Ignacio Varchausky’s masterclasses.
Here, I’d like to give you another perspective on musicality, one that will help you understand and feel musicality in dance.
There is tempo, pulse, melody, rhythm, accents, phrasing, syncopations, counterpoints, staccatos, accelerandos, instrumental solos—there are countless details to listen to when dancing. But all of this will “enter” your body naturally as you listen to tango. It’s something that can happen almost intuitively. Of course, you must listen a lot—10, 20, 30 years... a whole lifetime—so that each day, the tango sounds better to you, just like they say about Gardel: “he sings better every day.” It’s not him, it’s you and your growing ability, your sensitivity to pick up nuances in the music you didn’t hear before.
The musician, the orchestra conductor, and the arranger take care of the technical aspects so that you can later enjoy the music in its entirety, that unique sound that defines each orchestra.
Sure, studying and attentive listening guided by a teacher will help you clearly and quickly identify these musical parts, name them, and logically understand them so that you can later “dance” them. But even if you don’t do all of this, your emotional side will already have felt, as if through the skin, and absorbed all that musical richness. Perhaps, if you don’t clearly identify or name these elements, you won’t be able to bring them into your dance, into your steps, movements, and embellishments, and you’ll let them pass. But at the same time, you’ll be enjoying them through your bodily sensations. Does that make sense?
All the musical richness of each tango will reach your body and emotions, but you will unconsciously choose to dance with the pulse if you are more rhythmic or to incorporate more phrasing into your dance if you are more “melodic,” so to speak, and intuitively prefer the melodic aspect of the music. Incorporating phrasing, pauses, and accents that highlight syncopations and counterpoints goes beyond what naturally happens while dancing. It’s something that only comes after listening and dancing for decades, being a musician, a professional dancer, or someone who loves to deepen their learning. And let’s not even talk about emphasizing and marking instrumental solos in your dance—that’s even more challenging and is achieved after years of training, whether conscious or unconscious, and excellent body control.
Your dance teacher can show you their way of listening, interpreting, and feeling the music. They will guide you to develop musicality in your dance by demonstrating how they place a step into the music, how they interpret it, how they change their “form” when dancing to different orchestras. But that’s their way… and with time, you’ll develop yours. And suddenly, you’ll go through periods, days, or even years where you’ll prefer to dance to one orchestra or with certain people more than others.
But can we dance without being in time—or better yet, without the pulse? As we say in tango: can we dance without stepping to the beat? I think that’s the limit. You can do anything you want with the music, except dance out of time. To stop “stepping” to the beat, to stop marking the pulse constantly because you’re phrasing, following a melody, or simply pausing—this is wonderful. But if, when it’s time to use the pulse and step to the beat, you don’t know how to do it, that’s a problem! 😂
Here, it’s important to clarify some terms: pulse, tempo, and rhythm!
Pulse: It’s the constant and regular heartbeat of the music. It serves as the rhythmic foundation and marks time uniformly, like a “tick-tock.” It’s the heartbeat of tango, what we usually refer to as the “beat.”
Tempo: It’s the speed of the pulse, measured in beats per minute (BPM). It indicates whether the music is slow, moderate, or fast.
Rhythm: It’s the pattern of sounds and silences in music. It organizes how accents and durations are distributed within the time. This is where all the rhythmic systems of tango come into play: accents, syncopations, counterpoints, etc.
For example, someone with more advanced musicality might phrase steps in many ways because they can hear parts of the music that guide them to do so.
When, for instance, you make a movement and let beats pass, using more beats to connect a step more slowly than you would with other orchestras—this is already phrasing. And during this time, when you phrase and stop marking the pulse, there’s a sensation of “savoring the tango,” as Oscar would say. At the end of the phrase, you return to the pulse. What I’ve just described is a beauty from both a movement and emotional perspective.
Phrasing and dancing the melody are possibilities of great musical sensitivity that can take time to develop and become part of your dance. But stepping out of the pulse or time is another matter entirely… The pulse is always there, like the heartbeat, and it must always be present in your dance.
All the components of an orchestra couldn’t play harmoniously together unless they all followed the same tempo and had a clear understanding of the pulse and rhythm. The same goes for the two members of a couple and the tango they’re dancing: if the tempo and pulse aren’t clear in their dance, they won’t be in harmony with the music.
First things first… With time and practice, everything else will come. There is immense musical richness that will reveal itself over the years through practice and listening.
How important is musicality in dance? Tremendously.
We can perform simple steps, but if there’s a good ear behind each movement, that will be more than enough to fill the heart!
When dancing, you’ll feel the joy of dancing with that person, and when watching a couple, you’ll perceive the beauty in their dance. This happens, in large part, because you’ll have connected with their way of interpreting the music. If their musicality aligns with yours, with how you perceive the rhythmic and melodic patterns of the music, then you’ll connect and enjoy it!
Musicality is something very “philosophical.” We could spend hours discussing what it is and what it isn’t. Some say that dancing in time doesn’t necessarily mean being musical. But I believe that while it’s not everything, it’s absolutely essential to know how to dance in time before you can begin to understand and feel all the universe that music has to offer. So listen to the pulse, because it’s what gives life to everything and what makes us get up from our chairs to dance. Later, all the nuances will come, and with them, you’ll see all the stars in the universe.
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