Modern Tango World N° 3 (Buenos Aires, Argentina) | Page 43

Cortinas create an emotionally neutral transition be- Let’s take a romantic vals like Tardes de Bolonha. I need
tween the different moods. Although he refers to tra- the first vals to tune in to the woman who might be a
ditional music Royce has put it very well:
stranger to me and get into the mood. I can only fully
enjoy the second and hopefully the third vals. But if
I’m so much into the music that, I need a break
after the first vals, there follows some monotonous
in-between tandas or something to make me
heavy pounding by Otros Aires or Gotan Project, all
forget about the previous tanda. Otherwise, I will
our mood and pleasure are lost again.
have a hard time to pull my emotion out from
what has been played, then I cannot dance the
My basic structure of tandas looks like this, —
next set of music. In a nutshell, I cannot immeThree songs in each tanda, separated by a cortina:
diately jump from Di Sarli to Donato, I need
Tango tanda - dynamic, lively and cheerful
something to wash away my Di Sarli mood so
Tango tanda - medium tempo
that I can change myself into Donato mode,
Milonga tanda
and that’s what cortina means to me. I don’t
Tango tanda - calm, romantic and sad
need a very long cortina, a 20 or 30 second corTango tanda - medium tempo
tina is good enough.
Vals tanda
Repeat everything from the beginning
I see it exactly the same way, my cortinas are thirty
seconds. I find cortinas that are much longer, a minute and more, too long. Such long cortinas are often
played by DJs, who were in Buenos Aires and try to
imitate Buenos Aires customs. What they don’t understand is that cortinas have a different function in
Buenos Aires:

The primary function of cortinas in Buenos Aires is to
clear the dance floor and encourage people to change
partners. It is a very practical reason. Cortina is a code
of behavior in a milonga. When dancers hear the cortina, everybody will leave the dance floor. If there’s
someone who doesn’t know this rule and waits for
the next tanda to start on the dance floor, then they
will find themselves extremely embarrassed, it happens quite often to the milonga first timer.. Then in
Buenos Aires, cortina usually lasts around one minute,
sometimes longer sometimes shorter, depends on different DJs and different milongas. If the dance floor
is big and there’re lots of dancers, of course it takes
more time to clear the dance floor, hence the DJ plays
longer cortina, and vice versa.

Like in traditional tandas I like to combine similar pieces, for example into a Greek, Turkish or Arab tanda.
Sometimes, I make a tanda with various instrumental versions of well-known songs like Adele’s Hello.
Other times, I make tandas of only German songs like
Fang mich an, Oft gefragt and Lieblingsmensch.
Predictability
Tandas and cortinas make the music predictable.
Let’s imagine someone simply doesn’t like Greek
music like Sou Aksize Mia Kaliteri Agkalia If I play this
song, he will know: Ok, I can forget the next tanda,
because it’s going to be this terrible whiny folk music. I’d better go to the toilet, get a drink or chat with
somebody.

Each new tanda is a new beginning, and the dancers decide whether or not they will dance, and with
whom, according to how it opens. The first song is a
sign and a promise of what is to come. Accordingly,
You may consider many rules of traditional tandas it is important that the first song accurately poras petty, for example not mixing different orchestras, trays the tanda as a whole. If it does not, the dancers
singers or vocal and instrumental. But, a lot of them start to lose trust in the DJ.
do make sense.
I hate it when I have to dance to music that I don’t
The function of tandas is always the same: A tanda is like. When you have a steady partner you can sit
both social and musical. It establishes a mood for the down and wait for the next piece. But when you
couple to share. For this reason, it’s essential that a dance with an unknown woman, etiquette forbids
tanda is coherent. The songs in the tanda should feel to make a pause already after the first dance, only
as if they belong together.
because you can’t stand the next song.

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