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CHAPTER 16 The Music.

Excerpt....."One thing that makes tango so different from any other dance is the way the different pieces of music change the way you dance. You would think that, as with waltz or samba, the beat would be all you would need and that, although you might prefer one song to another, the dance would be stay the same. This is not so. For a long while I simply couldn’t grasp why, at times, on the same night I could fly while at others I felt I danced like a brick. I was aware, because I had avidly read interviews, that some older tangueros would say “You can’t dance to Gardel” or “I love to dance to Pugliese”, or some such, but I never gave these stories much credit. To tell the truth, I thought it was snobbery and posing, and, I must admit with some sadness, there is a little bit of that in tango. I have, however, learned better as I found myself becoming sufficiently competent to stop thinking about technique and relax into the music. It just hits you after a while. The music is different and it makes you feel different things, so you try to dance to suit.

When you first start being moved by the music, certain tunes stand out as old friends. They appear to resonate with your particular mood, and maybe that of your partner. That one dance is bliss; not just fun, not just good enough, but sheer bliss. At the end of the dance you seem to take a breath and laugh as if you had been teetering over some giant chasm and reached the other side."

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