Biomechanical analysis and metric interpretation of ‘walking’ in tango dance

• Autor(a) principal: Laguna, Alejandro
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/36682
• topic: Tango dance; Musical meter; Gait cycle; Biomechanic analysis; Kinesthesia

During the 20th century, tango dancers affirmedthat theirchoreographic figures were an extension ofthe “spontaneous street walk”further adding that it was important to "walk with cadence” andknow how to “keep the beat of the music”. In this paper we try to address the material meaning of these valuable popular assertions that, to this date, have notmerited sufficient substantiated research. We comparatively analyze the cycle of human walking and tango walking from a biomechanical and kinesthetic perspective. Preliminary results show that (i) the tango step has a particular internal rhythm and micro timing that can be characterized by the periodic alternation of a series of dichotomous categories; (ii) there is a biomechanical foundation for a strong-weak hierarchy in the structure of the gait and its relation to the isochronous marking of its music. These findings have implications in the teaching and learning of tango, in that they contribute to improve the way in which we observe, analyze and metrically situate details of the tango walk. Finally, evidence is presented that reveals that walking structure was an antecedent of the isochronous marking of tango music.