Music and rhythm

Tempo

Unlike most other partner dances, Tango may not necessarily have a consistent or “strict tempo”. That means that the music may slow down or speed up and the dancers will reflect the tempo or speed of the music in their interpretation of the dance and their choice of figures, elements and combinations.

Tempo is conventionally counted in bars per minute. Generally, the normal range of traditional Tango is around 30–32 bars per minute or 120–128 beats per minute with a 4/4 time signature.

To establish the tempo in bars per minute, the number of bars will be counted cumulatively as follows:

1-2-3-4,  

2-2-3-4,  

3-2-3-4,  

4-2-3-4  =  4 bars

Rhythm

The rhythms given in this Technique are those which tend to be the standard or generally expected and accepted ones. Nonetheless, Tango is highly improvisational and the dancers are not required to dance the same move with the same rhythm if, for example, it would better reflect the nuance of the music to change the rhythm in that instance or would synchronise better with the cadencia.

Generally, dancing every step as a slow count is a poor option and denies the dance its rhythm and musicality.

Cadencia

Argentine Tangos can be written with a musical time signature of 2/4 or 4/4. Most find it easier to count in 4/4. With a 4/4 time signature, Tango generally follows a normal pattern of 16 bar phrases, divided into sub‑phrases of 4 bars.

Cadencia or musical phrasing is a very important feature of Tango. It is good style to start a move at the beginning of a musical phrase or sub‑phrase or to be sufficiently aware of the music to match the dance to the musical phrasing and, when ending, to synchronise the completion of the move with the completion of the musical phrase or sub‑phrase.

For much of basic Tango, this may simply be a case of dancing a Closing Finish (El Cierre) so that its standard QQS timing (1 bar) coincides with the last bar of the musical phrase.

Good Tango dancers are able to feel the music and cadencia and are sufficiently familiar with their repertoire of moves to improvise the synchronisation of moves to the cadencia. However, it is really helpful to less experienced students for the teacher to arrange the moves taught into groups of 4 bars or multiples of 4 bars. While, ultimately, Tango is about feeling and improvising a spontaneous response to the music, the availability of a few basic moves provides the necessary basic vocabulary.

To be clear though, cadencia does not mean limiting moves to four or eight bars or just making the end of a dance coincide with the end of the music. The choice of moves, their timing and their character should reflect and work with the music throughout so that the dance very much works with the music and the music adds to the dance. I like to think of this as getting the music on the side of the dancer. In this way, cadencia embraces not only phrasing but musicality and feeling.