Between sound and movement in embodied tango performance

Abstract

In a previous study Alimenti Bel & Martínez (2015) identified differences that characterize the compositional and the sound performative styles in the music of Aníbal Troilo’s and Osvaldo Pugliese’s tango orchestras. The relationships between phenomenal accents and grouping units of the sonic melodic-rhythmic patterns were analysed in both the annotated and the performed pieces, to find potential identity features in both styles. In the present work, we continue the stylistic analysis focusing on the expressiveness of the tango performer’s body movements. So far, the study of movement has been applied more to academic music than to popular music. For example, it was described the way structural features (changes of tempo and chronometric density) shape expressive movement during piano performance (Davidson (2007). After analyzing the quality of body movements and effector gestures (Laban, 1971; Leman and Godoy, 2010) in the performance of rhythmic-melodic patterns by two tango bandoneonists, we liaise them with our previous sonic outcomes, in order to describe the identity features of the sound-kinetic complex that characterizes each performative style.