strathspey Archive: counting for circles

I'm wondering if anyone can answer this question. One of our dancers, who is
a musician, has always been bothered by the fact that we count travelling
steps and setting steps in "real" time, i.e. 1 and 2 and 3 and... (I know,
123, 223, 323,...), but we count circles 12345678, even though those steps
only take four bars. Can anyone enlightened her (and me!)?
Cheers,
Colleen

In four bars of music you will dance four travelling of seting steps.
However in four bars of music (for a circle), you will dance eight slip
steps. As simple as that. (eight slip steps round and back) As teachers we
tend to count the steps rather than the musical bars.

Simon Scott

>I'm wondering if anyone can answer this question. One of our dancers, who
is
>a musician, has always been bothered by the fact that we count travelling
>steps and setting steps in "real" time, i.e. 1 and 2 and 3 and... (I know,
>123, 223, 323,...), but we count circles 12345678, even though those steps
>only take four bars. Can anyone enlightened her (and me!)?
>Cheers,
>Colleen
>
>
>--
>"Colleen Putt" <cputt@kayhay.com>
>
>

Simon Scott writes (in reply to Colleen Putt)

> In four bars of music you will dance four travelling or setting
> steps. However in four bars of music (for a circle), you will dance
> eight slip steps. As simple as that. (eight slip steps round and
> back) As teachers we tend to count the steps rather than the
> musical bars.

And a dancing "bar" is the time it takes for one travelling/setting
step, which may or may not correspond with what a musician thinks of
as a bar, hence the problems dancers have with pipe bands.
Unfortunately (despite what I have been told by people who ought to
know better) there is no simple rule of thumb about when a dancing
bar is twice as long as a musician's bar, but I think it only happens
when the musician is playing a 2/4 tune (2/4 march?). Maybe one of
the musicians on the list can give more detail.

Cheers,

Ian
--
Ian Brockbank, Indigo Active Vision Systems, The Edinburgh Technopole,
Bush Loan, Edinburgh EH26 0PJ Tel: 0131-475-7234 Fax: 0131-475-7201
work: ian@indigo-avs.com personal: Ian.Brockbank@bigfoot.com
web: ScottishDance@bigfoot.com http://www.scottishdance.net/