Milonga-In-Single-Time. Milonga for a lot of people is a very challenging musical genre, and a challenging dance. Which is putting it mildly. Don’t believe that statement is true ? Just watch a Milonga tanda at your next Milonga. Watch how 80% of the floor clears. Mostly people fall into two categories: 1.) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Milonga. or 2.) RUN, RUN, RUN from Milonga. And there is no middle ground. Those people that fall into the 1st category are usually Followers first who’ve danced more than a Milonga or two with a good Lead that understands HOW to fuse the music with linear compilations of the dance of Milonga. 😉 Those people that fall into the 2nd category are usually split into two subcategories. a.) Leads that have a distinct fear of Milonga because they’ve realized that the music is faster than they think they can dance, and/or they don’t know what to do to it or with it, and then leading that stuff at that ‘speed’. They just freak right the frak out! b.) The Follower who has learned the hard way that they’d rather sit than dance a Milonga with someone who races them around the floor jerking them this way and that. Today’s Tango Topic deals with the second category of dancer and applies to the first category of Follower only in the minimal. That said, let’s dive right into Milonga-In-Single-Time.
Let’s get something out of the way, Milonga-In-Single-Time is not a step or a pattern, this is not going to change what you do to Milonga, well not immediately but it can and will change how you can access Milonga on multiple of multiple of levels.
What is Milonga-In-Single-Time ? This is a construct to help you access Milonga which is more for the Lead and less for the Follower. It’s a tool that can change how the 2nd category of dancer hears Milonga so that they can actually dance it and not freak out to it. In short, it’s a way to slow down Milonga in real time without actually doing anything crazy really. In it’s simplest form it is dropping a beat really.
A little clarity: Milonga from a timing perspective is 2/4 time. Meaning that there are 2 beats per measure. By contrast Tango music is typically 4/4 time, meaning that there are 4 beats per measure.
We typically step on the 1st and 3rd beat of a Tango, and the 1st beat of Milonga. The first note in both cases is the strong beat of the music. The 3rd note is a weaker ‘strong’ beat. While the contrasting 2 and 4 are softer weaker notes. There’s a reason why we’re talking about this stuff of notation and timing and beats and which note we typically step on, and that’s because it’s important that you understand what normally happens.
Try tapping/clapping out the beat here, just a hint, you’re going to want to tap/clap on the 1 and the 3, that’s what your normal walking beat would be. Now here comes the fun part, believe it or not, this is actually Milonga-In-Single-Time even though it’s a Tango. 😉 And that’s the key to this tool right there.
Milonga-In-Single-Time would take a normal Milonga which is 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, and instead turn it into 1-2-3-4, where the 3,4 is the next 1,2 in the sequence! Now we add one more thing, remember we’re only stepping on the 1, not the 3 in this case. So a Milonga like the one used in the video is Francisco Canaro’s ‘Milonga Sentimental’ (see below) would go from 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, to 1-2-3-4 where the 1 is what we walk on, thereby effectively ‘slowing down’ the Milonga! As a result the typical ‘rush’ or freak out that happens for that second class of dancer above never happens because there’s ‘time’, lots and lots and lots of time. 🙂