Published March 22nd 2019
Author: Chris
Title: Understanding Musicality: “Dinámica y Sincopación”: Filling in the Blanks of Argentine Tango Book 6
Author: Oliver Kent
Pages: 117
Published: February 2019
ISBN: 1730957935
Link to Amazon
The latest instalment of Oliver Kent’s series on Filling in the Blanks of Argentine Tango continues to delve into musicality and helps you to add dynamics into your dancing.
This is the 6th book in the overall series on Filling in the Blanks of Argentine Tango but can be considered the 2nd in a sub series that concentrates on musicality. Book 5: Al Compás del Corazón introduced the reader to the principals of music and how to find the beat and this new book now takes the reader through some options of how to interpret the music.
The author starts his 117 page book with a brief introduction and refresher on the previous book. Straight from the off Kent uses his own observations to explain the different motivations that people have to learn musicality. From there he has devoted chapters 1-3 to double time and half time before moving on to look at dynamics with sections devoted to: Staccato, Legato, Yum, Elastic and Raindrops. In each section the author explains each of these terms and presents some exercises that will help you implement them into your dancing. The books final chapters concentrate on rebound and rock steps.
As with all his previous books, Oliver Kent’s writing style makes this book very easy to read, and uses links to YouTube in order to facilitate the exercises throughout the book. Also, this book sees a return of the illustrations by Oscar B. Frise to lead the reader, especially in the later chapters on rebound and rock steps. I was also pleased to see the Author has continued to use quotes throughout the book, this time including lines from Winnie the Pooh, The Matrix Reloaded and Star Trek. For me the highlight of this book is an experiment that Kent suggests that involves watching videos of people dancing with different pieces of music laid over the top.
Again Oliver Kent has written a book that is a very good addition to any Tango Library. This book builds on his previous book on musicality and will help any tango dancer understand the subject and add to their knowledge. As with the previous book, it is not a complete overview of musicality but more a focus on one particular area and the reader will look forward to the next instalment.
Urban Tango Nights 