Ballroom Dancing Isn't Just For Old People

Jul. 30th, 2011 06:48 pm[personal profile] joreth
joreth: (dance)
Ballroom dancing? Psshhh, that's for old fuddy-duddies! That's what people did in Europe like, 300 years ago, or like in the '50s when people used to force their kids to take lessons at summer camp! Even if I admit it looks cool when people do it well, there's no practical use for it! I mean, who plays classical music anymore anyway?

That's a common attitude I encounter when I mention that I like ballroom dancing, in spite of ballroom dancing, and dancing in general, making a huge splash in popular culture lately with two of the most popular contest-style TV shows, Dancing With The Stars and So You Think You Can Dance. And I think it's great that both shows are so popular, but something they both fail to do, is convince the average American audience that your average Joe can pick up a few steps, go out anywhere in public, and expect to show off his skills. With So You Think You Can Dance, those dancers are all professionals or have been training for years, or are otherwise exceptional athletes, who just happen to be learning new styles for this competition. In Dancing With The Stars, sure, they take "normal" people, i.e. people who have not necessarily ever danced before, and teach them how to dance, but they're celebrities that can afford (and are getting paid) to spend hours and hours every day training one-on-one with a professional dancer. And many of those celebrities are, actually, athletes, just not in dance.

So, what about the average Joe? What about you and me, who will never have the money or the time for a dedicated pro, who has no desire to enter a competition, and who just wants to go to the next family wedding and pull out a couple of moves to impress people with even less dance talent than us? What about the guy who doesn't watch the shows and hears the phrase "ballroom dancing" and thinks 18th century Vienna?

Well first, there are lots of places, especially in cities, that offer dance opportunities. It's called "social dance", and the venues offer large dance floors to just go out and have a good time, with no judges, no ballgowns, and plenty of good music. Most of these places offer free or cheap lessons about an hour before the dance floor opens up, and you don't need to sign up or commit to a series of classes. You just show up, learn a few steps, then cut a rug an hour later with everyone else! I maintain a calendar of just such events for the Orlando and Tampa areas.

Second, there is a huge misconception about what kind of music qualifies as "ballroom" dance music. There are so many different styles of dance, that there is at least one for pretty much every rhythm available in Western music. See, Western music hasn't changed much in the last hundred years. Well, OK, there have been some major changes in music styles, but the rhythms come in only a few flavors that keep getting repeated, over and over again, for decades. Yes, there are exceptions, let's not get derailed by minutae from the point here. Basically, Western music comes in 4/4, 6/8, or 3/4 time* and, for the most part, that's pretty much it. Those time signatures can be varied a little by changing which beat gets the emphasis, creating a lilting or a swing feel, and the combination of lilting/non-lilting rhythms and those 3 time signatures are what makes up the foundation for Western music ... and for ballroom dancing!

As an example, I'm going to show you my own personal music collection for dance music. Below the cut is a list of songs arranged by the type of dance that you can do to it. You'll see some specialty, foreign, classical, and classic music, but you'll also see some popular, modern music - the kind you will hear at regular nightclubs, concerts, weddings, parties (especially office parties and conferences), and even restaurants and tourist attractions! I have often broken out into dance at restaurants that had music playing over the loudspeakers, or in hotel lobbies, or waiting in line at a movie or theme park. Now, I'm not the most up-to-date when it comes to the cutting edge of pop music and rock, so my playlists might skew a bit towards the older music, but I think you'll be surprised by a few of the songs in the list, and some of them should at least give you an idea of what to look for in whatever genre you prefer or whatever's playing on the radio and in the clubs at the time you read this.

Another thing that you might notice is that the playlists are weighted a bit towards country music. The reason is because I didn't go out looking specifically for dance music, I just searched the music I already had and this is what I came up with. So the list has a lot of country partly because I just like country music, so I have more of that than any other genre, but partly because "country" is like "rock" - a hugely varied genre that has dozens of distinct sub-genres of its own. Country music is a great place to find songs for ballroom dancing, which is the primary reason why I brave the cigarette smoke & obnoxious men and visit the country bars. I know, I know, many of you are just convinced that you don't like country music, and I have no solution to that. But if you want to dance, or you want to know more about dance music, and you don't know where to start looking for music that isn't in your grandpa's record collection, country music is a great place to begin.

Clicking on the names of the artist takes you to that version of the song, mostly on YouTube, but a few from other locations if YouTube didn't have it. Most are videos, but a couple are just the audio. Several of these songs can be danced by dance styles other than the category they're listed under. I duplicated a few, but I'm sure I missed some, and I also left out a whole bunch of dance styles, like rhumba and quickstep and paso doble, primarily because they're not dance styles I know well and they're not nearly as popular outside of ballroom circles as the ones I did list.

Y = YouTube video, M = MySpace audio, V = Other video source, A = Other audio source. All YouTube videos are collected into a single video playlist window below each dance style list. All MySpace audio files are collected into a single audio playlist which is linked below that style's list, because MySpace won't let me embed playlists.

Cha Cha

Foxtrot

Hustle (not the line dance, the partner dance)

Salsa

Swing - either East Coast/Jive or Lindy

http://www.myspace.com/stagehandtees/music/playlists/dance-music-swing-1556462

Tango

Waltz - Viennese & American Standard

http://www.myspace.com/stagehandtees/music/playlists/dance-music-waltz-1558282

*For those with absolutely no music theory, here's a very basic summary of what those fractions mean. 4/4 time is the most common time signature and what almost all of the music you listen to is written in (even without knowing what style of music you listen to). It's the music that you can count "1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4" to if you say the numbers on the beats of the song. It sounds like the rhythm repeats itself every 4 counts, because that's what it's doing.

3/4 time is music that you can only count to 3 before you have to start over with 1. 6/8 time is, for most people with no music theory, indistinguishable from 3/4 time, but people who understand it will actually count to 6 because the beat after 6 is heavier than the beat after 3. In other words, in 3/4 time, the heaviest beat is on the one, and it repeats itself every 3 beats. In 6/8 time, it might sound like there's a heavier beat after the 3, but it's not as distinctive as the beat after 6, so that, in order for the beat on 1 to match every time you say 1, you have to put the 1 after the 6, not after the 3.

If that's confusing and you really want to understand it, I highly recommend taking a musical theory class, where they can give examples and spend more than a single paragraph trying to explain it. I find a greater understanding of how music is composed increases my enjoyment of music in general, so that's not a brush-off, I really do recommend learning musical theory.

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Date: 7/31/11 12:32 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] leora.livejournal.com
It is extremely rare to see things like 13/8 and I only know of one song that does that. It won't play when you are out dancing and thus can safely be ignored. :)

Date: 7/31/11 12:37 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] joreth
joreth: (Kitty Eyes)
Yep - there's also the famous song Money that's in 7/8 time and although famous, it is, again, so rare as to be safely ignored for the purposes of this discussion :-)

And besides, should some place actually play one of those songs because it's not a dance club but you're dancing anyway, I consider it an opportunity for a break and a drink of water!

Date: 7/31/11 12:46 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] leora.livejournal.com
Well, the song in 13/8 is Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat from the musical Cats, so it's reasonably famous (longing running show on Broadway). But it's not going to turn up at a place for dancing. It has, of course, been danced to, in the play, but then it's choreographed and not classical dancing at all. We used to have the piano music to tons of songs from musicals in my house when I was growing up, and the 13/8 time really stood out and was memorable. It's a fun thing to throw at people who aren't expecting it, but it's fun because it's so rare. You're just not going to have to deal with it under normal conditions. Although if you are a very good dancer and think you can improvise to a time signature like that, it'd be interesting to see. That extra step is going to keep throwing you.
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