- Artist Name:
- Mandragora Tango
- Song Title:
- Tempranillo
- Album Title:
- Let's Have Dinner And Go Dancing
- Artist Website:
- http://www.mandragoratango.com/
From artist's website: Mandrágora Tango is a tango band headed by bandoneonist Bob Barnes and guitarist Scott Mateo Davies, 2 Minneapolis-based musicians who are wildly passionate about tango. We have been playing tango for dancing and listening since 2001 and we are still going strong. We've played in over 40 cities all over the United States.
- 00:05
- So we had a video series "Take 3", which talked about each basic move
- 00:12
- and tried to boil it down to what is, for us, the absolute essence of that move.
- 00:18
- We want to do a "Take 4" as well.
- 00:20
- And I sort of think "Take 4" is an indulgence, because it talks about what is dearest to our hearts,
- 00:25
- which is that there are very basic, most basic core concepts that are would make movement most beautiful
- 00:33
- And then our theory is that you can take these core concepts and derive the actual steps from them.
- 00:41
- I love what she says, that it's an indulgence, because it's sort of true. This is for us, I hope you like it, but we're doing it because we think it's... We think it's great.
- 00:51
- We do, we think this is what's... This is the core concept of what's really important about making dance beautiful.
- 00:57
- So before, it was about each individual step, now it's about overarching thoughts.
- 01:01
- So, our overarching thoughts, one of them is that you always want your body aligned, it comes from the center and goes through your whole body
- 01:08
- He says that like it's really easy
- 01:10
- No, I'm done
- 01:11
- A second concept is that tango is not a simple dance, it's not... It's a dissonance, so you hear something as dissonance beauty.
- 01:23
- I give this example, that tango is not "Oh, your face", tango is "Oh, your face!", so there's this pulling away
- 01:31
- So we have this idea, that inside your own body there's a part of you that's away
- 01:38
- and then a part of you that yearns back to your partner.
- 01:42
- Sort of like now what I'm doing here, where this part of my body is going that way, and then this part of my body is going this way.
- 01:48
- And there's some idea in tango, that we try to get there and we don't quite make it. So we try... I'm not like this with him
- 01:57
- I'm trying for it, and I'm not quite making it, and this tension in my body is part of what makes tango tango.
- 02:04
- And likewise, there's body alignment, and so oftentimes things look terrible, because they are terrible for your body.
- 02:13
- If you ask someone to dance, and you hold your hand like this, it looks terrible. Well, why is it terrible, what's wrong with it, other than the fact that it looks ugly?
- 02:20
- And I would assert, that the root cause of it looking terrible is that it's bad for your body,
- 02:27
- It's going to your shoulder in an unhealthy way, it's cranking in your wrist, the energy isn't flowing, here you'll see my hips are off.
- 02:34
- So if I lift up through the hip, then let this energy flow through my leg, it makes me more whole.
- 02:40
- If instead of having my shoulder back here I have it here, then it connects my arm through my back to my body.
- 02:47
- So it's about letting the center emanate outward in this connected way.
- 02:53
- And so in these common combinations, or steps, we're going to show you, or talk about
- 02:58
- how each step, some of the miniature of the technique can be detailed, from these principles.
