As a Latin dance, cha cha has that clave rhythm that puts emphasis at times that feel unusual when compared to traditional European music. To match this, the dance puts emphasis on count 2 with a heavy step. Many people have a hard time doing this, like in the movie Dirty Dancing, when the protagonist keeps telling his follower, find the 2. So to help those dancers who would step on the right beat if they only could hear it, choose songs that have a louder syllable being sung on beat 2, or a drum being struck there, or both. For example, I Need to Know by Marc Anthony has percussion for beat 2 that stands out and doesnt happen any other time during the 8 count step. It is more rare to find the melody emphasizing beat 2, but certainly possible. For example, in Wild, Wild West by The Escape Club, he sings, Shes so mean, but I dont care, I love her eyes and her wild, wild hair He puts an emphasis on these pairs of words, which match the dancers paired steps in cha cha, and not the triple cha-cha-cha part. That song is also a good example of the sometimes blurred line between cha cha and west coast swing. When the song first starts, and there is only drums, it fits cha cha, cut and dried. Then when the chorus kicks in, the timing of the guitars is different, and the singer changes his timing to match. These melodic elements, which are more swinging, push the drums into the background for a while. So a person who started with the cha cha rhythm could keep hearing it and stick with it, yet if someone wanted to swing dance they could find elements to work with too. Fortunately, since both cha cha and west coast swing are danced in one place, having both happen on the dance floor at once will not cause undue traffic problems. When playing a song you know may be good for both, I recommend announcing it as a cha cha. People who are really into west coast swing will grab onto any song that has the attitude they are looking for; you wont need to tell them they could west coast. Charleston Foxtrot - Vintage Foxtrot - Modern Hambo Hambo is a folk dance in 3/4 time. If you are wondering whether you have folk dancers in your audience, playing a hambo is a safe way to find out. Your crowd can dance a rotary or Viennese waltz to the hambo music, if they dont know the choreography for hambo. In order to fit the hambo, your song needs to not only be in 3/4, but also needs to be made up entirely of regular verses, 8 bars long each. It is easiest to find these in collections of folk music that are intended for hambo, or for forms of country dancing which require regular verses. It is certainly possible to find contemporary music with regular verses, but it is a lot of work. Set yourself up for a long day of listening to waltz songs, and counting out the entirety of each one, writing down verses as you go. Or better yet, dance the hambo (or some other 8-bar dance) to the whole song. Never assume that, just because the first half of the song is regular, the whole thing is. The feeling of hambo music has a lilt that is later in the beat than regular waltz, a sliding sound (usually produced by a fiddle) between count 1 and 2 that more resembles mazurka. So if you have already collected a number of songs for mazurka, it is well worth listening to them again to see if some of them are also useful for hambo. Some folk dance groups do their hambo with a pronounced bounce. Yet the music is not bouncy in an obvious way, like music is for polka or jive. There is a suble springy feeling, more like the flexing of a trampoline and less like the pogo stick you have in a reel. Hustle Lindy Hop Mambo Mazurka Merengue Nightclub Two Step One-Step Polka Polka is that happy, homey, white-people dance. Most of us were raised on it, as polka is the most common beat used for cartoon music and kids songs (from Mickey Mouse to the Wiggles). The polka craze of the 1940s is still on the edge of the memory of living people. Perhaps your grandmother can tell you about the Lawrence Welk show. This means that polka has the surprising combination of being the dance that is most energetic and aerobic, and also the most nostalgic and cozy. Polka music is in 2/4 time, with an oom-pa, oom-pa feeling that is easiest to hear from the tuba of an old brass band, but can be played by a variety of instruments. The accordion lends itself particularly well to the 2 beats of polka, since it has to go in-out, in-out anyway. You can find polka music from a variety of countries and historical eras. The original polka craze of the 1840s had mostly slower polkas, until Strauss and other famous composers caught on and made some more fiesty, complicated things. Then in the late 1800s we had Sousa and Dede, and there were many popular and folk songs written as polkas. In America some of these have survived, especially in the context of documenting the westward migration of homesteaders. In the 1910s and 20s polka was obscured by the ragtime stuff, but in the 1940s it made a big comeback. This centurys polkas were a bit faster, and most were popular songs on the radio. Frankie Yankovic is the most famous of the era, but many pop artists recorded polkas: the Andrews Sisters, Patti Page, Louis Prima. This lasted until the 1960s, when polka faded from the mainstream along with all the other ballroom dances, since the groovy young people would rather dance by themselves. The challenge when identifying a song as a polka, is to make sure it is not some other bouncy dance, and that it is a dancer-pleasing tempo. I count polka beats as though it was in 4/4, to make it easier to compare with other dances, and as such I find most dancers have a hard time below 216 and above 280. I recommend the majority of your polkas be in that range, unless your crowd seems to request otherwise. So an example of the slow end would be This Ole House by Rosemary Clooney, and at the fast end Camelot Song by Monty Python. Oh yes, lots of comedy music is 2/4 polka. Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Weird Al, etc. The trouble with comedy numbers though, is that they often contain narratives, tempo changes, and other irregularities -- so play with caution. Punk music is also a great source for polkas, although I have found that a polka full of angst does not get as many people on the floor as a cutesy old one. The dances most commonly mistaken for polkas are reels and jigs, the other bouncy white people dances. Jigs are in 6/8 so, to pass on what an Irish dancer friend told me, you can tell its a jig if you can say patio furniture, patio furniture along to it. Reels are in 4/4, which is a little more even-sounding than the 2/4 of polka, and the bounce is different. Reels have a more sudden, up and down bounce, where polkas are more gradual and stretched out (to go along with traveling farther). To hear the difference, listen to a traditional reel like Ill tell me Ma or Star of the County Down and then compare it to one of my polka examples above. Another instructive example is the techno hit, Turbo Polka by Atomik Harmonik. Even though it has polka in the name, its a reel, not a polka; its in 4/4. One other mistake we make occasionally: I always wanted to polka to Kodachrome by Paul Simon. But when I played it at a dance and people werent as enthused as I was, I realized it was a quickstep. Listening to it again, I realize it has more tickety-tick than oom-pa and I should have known better. Quickstep Redowa Rhumba Salsa Samba Samba is a bouncy dance, but the bounce is more relaxed than polka, less insistent than swing. One theory I was told by a dance teacher, is that where swing divides the beat into 3 pieces, samba divides it into 4, so that the second step of your triple is very delayed. Samba music sounds Latin to most of us clueless white folks, and this leads to some confusion, because we use so much Latin music for salsa. But it is important to distinguish the two, since so many dancers know how to do salsa, and so few know samba. When you play a song as a foxtrot and the dancers choose to swing to it instead, it causes little or no harm to your party. But when an intended salsa turns out to be a samba, it can clear the floor, which is cause for concern. Here are some examples of songs that are good for samba: Under the Sea, from Disneys Little Mermaid; Whenever, Wherever, by Shakira; Eastern Bloc, by Thomas Dolby. These come from different genres of music, with different instrumentation, but what they have in common is the rhythmic bounce. None of them have the constant tick-tick marching percussion characteristic of salsa. To isolate the difference in rhythm, look up the hits by Gloria Estefan. Hablemos el Mismo Idioma is a salsa, Youll Be Mine (Party Time) is a samba. Same singer, but very different feeling. Schottische Swing - East Coast Swing - Jive Tango Waltz Waltz is possibly the easiest dance to recognize when you hear it played, because it is the only ballroom dance with an odd number of beats. All our others, being in 2/4 or 4/4, will have the feeling that you could divide them in half. Most waltzes also have a swaying feeling, making you want to rock to and fro rather than walking or running. Waltz has been around for hundreds of years, and many styles of it have come, and gone, and come back out again. So here are descriptions for specific varieties of waltz. Waltz - Box Step This sort of waltz is done in modified rectangles instead of spinning circles, and therefore has a lot in common with Foxtrot. Long walking steps require rather slow music, 90-120 bpm. Traveling in long lines, hovering, and stately contrabody poses all run against the swaying of older forms of waltz. So the music needs to be devoid of oom pa pa and instead feel like walking, tick tick tick. This makes music for American waltz harder to pick out than others, because many of us would not notice a song is a waltz, without the swaying feeling. For example, you could play Natural Woman by Aretha Franklin. When she sings you make me / feel like a / nat-u-ral / wo-man- each of those syllables is equal in duration and emphasis. Each syllable is a beat of music, and a weight change for the dancer. The even-ness is good for plain walking. As opposed to a song like Iris by the GooGoo Dolls; when he sings and I / dont want the / world to / see me the word dont is much louder and later in its beat than the other two syllables that follow it, and slides into them with a lilt. So a song like Iris sways too much (and is too fast) to be good for a box step waltz. Also note that people doing the International, competitive version of box step want the slowest songs; in order to rehearse at the speed they are accustomed to, and demonstrate control of their bodies. Over 100bpm and they can feel awkward using their standard moves. Waltz - Cross-Step Waltz - Rotary Waltz - Viennese West Coast Swing
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 12:34:53 +0000
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