On Saturday 10 June, BBC Radio 3 broadcast an hour-long programme on Argentine tango, by Katie Denham of Strictly Coming Dancing and the BBC Proms.
David and I were invited to speak about the music from a tango dancer’s point of view. And bandoneon player Julian Rowlands gave a tango musician’s perspective,
The programme was part of longer series “the Sound of Dance” exploring the relationship between music and dance.
It was really interesting to talk about how we feel when we dance tango, how we interpret the music and how we improvise. There are not many programmes in the mainstream media that delve into the world of traditional “tango salon”. It made a refreshing change!
We explained that tango in the most authentic form is improvised. For us this is one of the aspects that make the music so exciting to interpret. And it is one of the aspects of tango that many people are unaware of.
It is always a challenge to talk about dance without being able to demonstrate the movements. But the BBC brilliantly edited the programme overlaying the music so as to illustrate to the audience the ideas we were describing
Here you can listen to us talking to Katie. We hope you enjoy it!
