Donald Daniel
1999
visit Donald Daniel's Website These comments concern social ballroom dancing, as opposed to latin or swing dancing. They are based on considerable experience social dancing with many ladies who had little dance experience. They are primarily directed at school or recreation officials deciding what a dance class should consist of. The will also be of interest to people who would like to learn, and wonder what they should learn.
Learning social dancing should not require the patience of a dance enthusiast, it should be easily within the reach of people who are only mildly interested. The dances should be fun do dance, easy to learn, and easy to lead and follow.
The problem is to select dances that meet these criteria. The following suggestions combine American and International steps. A good book for International steps is Alex Moore's "Ballroom Dancing", available for less than $40.00 from Ballroom Dance Supply in Campbell, CA, http://bdsweb.ballroom.com/IBooks.htm , and also from http://www.prodance.com . This book is mainly about competition dancing, but is also good for social dancing. I am not aware of any similarly good book on American style, and to make matters worse, the various American style books call the same figure by different names.
The slow waltz danced with small steps and no rise and fall is too boring, and gives social dancing a bad name. With large steps and rise and fall it is too difficult for beginners to learn to be included in any realistic class in social dancing.
The international quickstep danced at the full speed of 52 bars per minute is too difficult for many, though not all, beginners, and should therefore be ruled out. However, some figures from the quickstep are very useful for beginners at slower tempos.
The beginning American foxtrot, which is known as rhythm dancing in International style terminology, is easy enough, and should form the basis of any social dancing curriculum. It should be initially taught at slow foxtrot tempo, 30 bars per minute, but is easy to dance at tempos up to the speed of jive, 44 bars/m. It should not be just barely taught, it should be drilled and practiced at various tempos so that it will be retained to a useful extent.
The easiest steps to lead in social foxtrot are the quarter turn with progressive chasse ending from quickstep, but danced slower here. A little more difficult to lead is the American forward basic, where the man does forward left, forward right, side left, close right, slow, slow, quick quick and the lady does the natural opposite. The American left turn is given on p. 315 of Alex Moore's book as the reverse pivot turn. It and the natural pivot turn from quickstep are also easy to lead. A final figure is worth adding, the chasse reverse turn from quickstep. This last figure may be hard for the lady to follow if she has not been taught it, because the rythm is different on this figure. This collection of steps works for a wide range of tempos, and provides enough variety to make a reasonably interesting dance. I can take a lady with little previous dance experience and lead her through all these figures except the chasse reverse turn, provided I start off with the quarter turn and progressive chasse to get her used to the slow, slow, quick-quick rhythm before I launch into the other figures.
For tempos that are faster still, the beginners should be taught not the quickstep, but the onestep. The main figure in the onestep is merely walking forward or backward in normal dance position. You take one step for each beat of the music; there are no slows and quicks for any figure in this dance. The heels must be kept off the floor for smooth movement at fast tempos, but one must not be up high on tiptoe. No rocking or bouncing should occur. From international foxtrot the natural turn and the impetus turn are easily adapted to onestep. From quickstep the chasse reverse turn is easy to lead even for women with little previous dance experience, in contrast to the relative difficulty of leading it in the social foxtrot. Onestep can be danced to disco, meringue, west coast swing, polka, quickstep, samba and cha cha music. When dancing to complicated rhythms, ignore everything but the major beat. With 4/4 time music that is too slow to comfortably dance foxtrot, onestep can be danced to the "quicks". If the music is too fast to do the foxtrot, one can dance to the "slows".
Now, suppose all the above has been enthusiastically received by a social dancing class, and they are clamoring for more. Not likely, but we can dream. They are not beginners anymore. What more advanced ballroom dance should be given priority at this stage? Personally, my vote goes to international Viennese Waltz. I have two reasons. First, any more advanced dance will take considerable effort to learn, so why not learn the most thrilling social dance of all? Second, the other four ballroom dances, with the possible exception of quickstep, at an advanced level are probably more practical and fun on an empty floor. Viennese waltz is more fun on a crowded floor, and is therefore more of a social dance than the others. This dance's reputation for difficulty is in part because Alex Moore's book neglects to point out that the timing of the steps is uneven. Any attempt to keep all six steps in time with the music makes the dance unnecessarily difficult. The dancer should only concentrate on keeping steps 1 and 4 in time with the music; steps 2 and 5 should be allowed to happen later than the music.
BACK