Coffee Cake and Cadencia

[Bordertangoman]

Coffe Cake and cadencia

yesterday I attended a canyengue workshop. The first thing we did fwas to dance to Poema first as a tango then as a milonga, then Adrian the teacher showed the difference inhow one moved in the three different dances. It was
 so eloquently demonstrated that I realised that I know this intuitively but I think its one of the hardest concepts to teach or even impart. So what does cadencia mean and it is the word I am looking for to descirbe the different feelings in the music that generate different ways of moving with our bodies. Alex Krebs descibes it quite eloquently:

"Though hearing and executing are the two major components of musicality, most people recognize that there is a deeper and more intangible aspect of being a musical dancer. Alex recognizes this quality and believes it plays a major role in the dance. “Part of being musical is not just putting the music into your feet and your legs. There’s what the Argentines call cadencia, which is the twisting and lilting. It’s the way the whole body reacts to the music. The whole body is sort of a musical palette rather than just the feet or legs, which tend to be the major emphasis in tango.” If hearing and executing are the height and width of musicality, this quality of cadencia is the depth, the third dimension that makes a dancer truly musical. "
Alex Krebs

[captain jep]

How much "cadencia" is too much though?

I always put my whole body into milonga dancing but I am worried sometimes that I go off piste. How about you?

[Bordertangoman]

 are you referring to the dance milonga or the event; just for clarification.

my take is that all though Joaquin Amenabar descirbies the underlying rhythm of milonga 1 and-2/3 4 milongas vary so much in rhythm that it is pretty much all you have to work with;

until you get to tango milongas slower and more interesting like El Portenito where the words create the rhythm - but its nice and simple phrasing and not too fast.

Off piste is only when its too much for your follower.

i also like breaking and bending in milonga; make it very bajofondo lots of tango folk are too genteel!!! 

[captain jep]

milonga the dance

yes I prefer the slower ones - faster ones I find I need to dance with someone who can "get" my rhythm.Often the fast ones are also something that ex salsa/jive dancers excel in (even if they're not so good at "salon" tango)

By "off piste" I mean start to break the "rules" of tango - breaking/bending/shimmying all that stuff. It's a party dance after all 

(I sense you're of similar opinion!)

[Bordertangoman]

having done a conjengue workshop; yes milonga is meant to be down and dirty and fun

and I agree I know jivers and salseras who get milonga better than tango.

Rules?; what rules?

( to paraphrase a Supertramp album)

[elisedance]

I hope you don't mind if I drop in for some coffee cake?  Its my favorite..... You can teach me a couple of steps of AT while I'm here

[Bordertangoman]

I hope you don't mind if I drop in for some coffee cake?  Its my favorite..... You can teach me a couple of steps of AT while I'm here

bien sur, cake is important to tango well; adds much needed ballast and gravitas as well as sweetness and delight and fuel

[captain jep]

and is the perfect accompaniment to tango-as-spectator-sport 

[elisedance]

we need to revitalize the tango and dessert topic - seems to me a major drawing point...