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CHAPTER 15 Vals and Milonga.

Excerpt....."To begin with, most of us will manage to enjoy vals in social dancing by listening to the music and using all the usual tango elements that fit into the character of the tune. Some things fit in better than others. I find that the more ‘spiky’ things we do in tango don’t work for me; nor do those elements that tend to be essentially static, such as manoeuvres that involve the sandwich or paradas. I think this is because the tendency is for the music to power us forward in a flowing style. If most couples feel they want to go with the flow, other couples coming to a halt for some play somehow doesn’t seem to work too well, unless they are in one corner of the room. It seems to me that when a vals such as ‘Desde el Alma’ is played the flow around the dance floor becomes easier. It is as if the music moves us all so similarly that, as a room full of moving people, we gel as a group, much as a shoal of fish or a flock of birds do. As we dance, it is not as if we are marching to the same tune. Perhaps it is that the music is freer? Or could it be that the insistence of the rhythm obliges us all to dance similarly? Whichever it is, it seems to me that, in tango vals, we all allow each other more freedom. More than in tango, for me, I feel that the music ‘plays us’ as much as we play the music. It is true that many milonga tracks played can be faster than dances we are used to. How can we cope with that? The answer is to take smaller steps. When I see people coming unstuck when dancing milonga it is because they have plainly failed to grasp the different way of moving from tango, and find themselves running around the dance floor like bulls in a china shop. No wonder they find it stressful and abandon it altogether. It looks to me as if some people view milonga as a form of aerobics. I once watched an English couple flailing about in a tango bar in the Café de Las Artes, Barcelona. They were a menace to shipping; feet and elbows everywhere. The music sang “miloooon-ga” and they danced “bullfight!”...."

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