Vals rhythms – choices we can make to dance to them

The following is a copy of the notes provided to participants at a “Tango Tips” musicality interlude at the Toca Tango Practilonga in Auckland.

TANGO TIPS – 13 April 2025

Today’s tip is about different vals rhythms and the choices we can make about how we dance to them.

THE PULSE : The pulse of the vals is the continuous “beat one” in each set of three beats. Dancing valses solely on the “one” (with pauses between phrases) is always musical.

“THREE – ONE” : A second option is to also step on “beat three”, which we all do at times, such as to execute particular movements, to change from parallel to cross system stepping, and to dance the “chan – chan chan” vals cliche to resolve a vals phrase or song.

“ONE – TWO” : A third option for our vals rhythm repertoire, is to dance on beats “one” and “two”. To dance it musically, this option should be used ONLY when an accent (or at least a note) is expected on “beat two” in the music, such as on the “day” beat in the Happy Birthday song.

  DUPLET : A tricky rarely-danced fourth option, is to dance two even steps across three beats, to match duplets played in the music. Duplets are played in many recordings by Canaro, Gobbi, Calo, de Angelis and many others, and are always played in “Que Nadie Sepa Mi Sufrir”.

  “ONE – TWO – THREE” : A fifth option, also rarely danced by social tango dancers, is to dance on all three beats. Most valses have musical phrases that invite these steps, either as runs or adornments.

There are many other options.

I invite you to include more than one of these five options while dancing to La Tubatango’s version of “Corozon de Oro”, which incorporates rhythms suitable for all five.