Cadencia: Surfing on the Waves of the Music
“If you have to ask, you will never know.”
- Louis Armstrong, when asked ‘what is jazz?’
Simba Tango prefaced her blog post on that mysterious, elusive concept called cadencia with the quote above. No one can give you your definition, but I find it truly enjoyable to consider how others define cadencia and reflect on how it resonates with my own experience.
Pedro “Tete” Rusconi speaks of cadencia as the meaning and life of music in the dancer’s body in an interview with Silvia:
Le diría que empiece por entender qué habla el cuerpo cuando está con otro cuerpo, qué le da a su compañero cuando baila. Hay un movimiento muy especial que produce el cuerpo con la música. Ese movimiento se llama cadencia. Es desde los hombros a la cintura donde el cuerpo está viviendo algo. Y cuando no se baila así se nota claramente que el cuerpo no se mueve, el baile no tiene vida. Y eso tiene que estar aunque se baile otro estilo.
Here is the English translation provided by Silvia at the same link:
I would tell them to begin to understand, what the body says when it is with another body, what gives you your partner when dancing. There is a very special movement that makes the body with the music. This movement is called cadencia. It is from the shoulders to the waist where the body is experiencing something. And when you do not dance with cadencia it shows clearly that the body is still, the dance is lifeless. And that should be even when dancing a different style.
For many, one of the clearest moments to feel and cultivate cadencia is in the pauses between movements. Dan Boccia is quoted in Virginia Gift’s Tango: A History of Obsession:
One of the hidden powers of tango is the ability to pause but still retain the feeling and motion of dancing and connection with your partner and the music. It may look like the man stops dancing to allow the woman to express herself with adornments, but we know that the man is still dancing, still interpreting the music, still navigating. To me, during these moments, the partnership connection is often intensified dramatically. Tension can be built up, allowing the opportunity for explosive releases.
Alex Krebs describes this on a more global level in his interview with me:
Part of being musical is not just putting the music in your feet and your legs. There’s what the Argentines call cadencia, which is the twisting and lilting. It’s the way the whole body reacts to the music. The whole body is sort of a musical palette rather than just the feet or legs, which tend to be the major emphasis in tango.
Coming back full circle to Simba Tango, here’s a few of her thoughts on cadencia in a very poetic form:
Seeing the dancers flowing around the dance floor, the music arriving in waves. And the dancers surfing on these waves. Breathing with the phrases. Doing their thing. Not rushing it. Not controlled by it, but somehow following it nevertheless. While the feet go ric-tic-tic-tic-tic.
And that is the essence of the cadencia, I think. This flowing motion of the bodies. Waves, pendulums. Rising and falling. Apparently cadencia comes from Latin and means fall, so I could be on to something here.
And me? I relate very strongly to the sense of cadencia, and I couldn’t imagine the dance without it. For me it is indefinable yet undeniable. It is not something you can teach; it is only something you can discover. It’s that internal energy you feel in the music that gets manifested physically in a way that can’t be broken down and pieced back together. It falls apart when you try to analyze it, because it only exists in the moment and within the real and immediate context of the partnership in the music. It is physically subtle (at least compared to the moves and patterns that are the focus for many) yet viscerally powerful. It elicits sensitivity like a whisper that makes you want to lean in and breathe deeper. All the smaller body parts and muscles – often neglected or thought to be irrelevant to connection and musical expression – bring their life to the service of the dance. It is personal, revealing, and – I believe – one of the reasons that close embrace tango has such a deep appeal that its devotees believe can’t be found in other styles and dances: you are so close to the other person that you can feel that energy, that movement, that cadencia, more clearly and yet more subtly through the close physical connection.
I think I will be coming back to Simba’s poetic analogy often, because the words give me such a peaceful feeling. I would just add a few words to cover the partnership, because when I dance I feel very strongly how my partner and his unique energy are essential to my experience of cadencia with the music. I feel my partner’s subtle, honest, beautiful expressions and responses, and they elicit the same in my own body. And when we are very deeply speaking to each other, it’s like we have a shared cadencia. I can no longer tell his contribution from mine, nor do I want to.
So here is my focus of meditation:
Cadencia: surfing on the waves of the music and the connection.
What does cadencia mean to you?
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