Dancing the Vals
Just noticed that Royce has commented on some thoughts I had about the music in Tango Vals.
I think I am doing some of the things mentioned in her explanations intuitively (and somewhat disorganizingly…) at present. However, my current understanding – including my understanding in music or lack of, period – is not sufficient for me to articulate it so clearly. In fact, in general, I tend to dance on the <1> and <1><2> beats of the Vals for most of Valses, but occasionally <1><2><3> on the faster Valses – crazy, isn’t it!? 
At the moment at least, I hardly ever dance on <1><3> because it seems the “heavy”, i.e. the <1>, step will always feel rushed, no?? Having said that, may be worth trying out at the practica.
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Music taking the lead?
A recent visiting teacher Chan Park raised an interesting point while fielding questions on his opinions of the development of Tango music.
According to Park, danceable Tango music stopped evolving by the mid-80′s, as evidenced by the fact that most of the modern and major milongas worldwide plays predominantly music from the 40′s, the so-called Golden Age music. Why?
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Varieties in Vals
Traditional Tango music is generally categorised as either Tango, Tango Vals (or Vals for short) and Tango milonga (milonga for short). There are sometimes even finer divisions, which I won’t go into here.
Just as in the more commonly-known Waltz, Vals has the familiar ’1-2-3′ rhythm, with ’1′ being the heavy beat. However, that is where the similarity ends. In Vals, unlike Waltz, the timing between the beats is not universal, and can be faster or slower from one song to the next. I am not sufficiently trained musically to offer any satisfactory explanation for this, but I can assure you that this can be felt very intuitively.
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Firstly, the music
Attended a workshop by Gladys Fernandez and Ricardo Gallo tonight. Hard to believe it, but this year actually marks their fifth in Singapore! How time flies…
The content of the course can be summed up in a few words: feel the rhythm of the music and express it. The dynamics in Tango were expressed using the simple framework of slow-slow-quick-quick-quick, to some songs from Biagi and D’Arienzo in particular. But how they danced with so much feelings and expression using very simple steps! As they kept saying, the Tango is danced with the whole body, not just with the feet, and not just with the brain.
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