strathspey@strathspey.org:11810

Malcolm and Helen Brown

Re: Dancing to pipes - or not!

April 26, 1998, 3:59 p.m. (Message 11810, in reply to message 11760)

Monica wrote;

>         As for the beat, well like Michelle, to me it's just there, it's
> instinctive.  Or at least it seems instinctive.  I have a feeling that the
> experts would tell us that being able to feel rythym is a learned
> behaviour.  Some of us are just given more opportunity to learn rythmic
> movement at a young age than others, so it seems more natural to us. 

1) I am always slightly amused by the statement (excuse?)of people who do not
dance that they "have no sense of rythm" - I have this vision of them 
walking down the street taking steps of randomly differing duration.

2) I have always been convinced that not only can I hear the beat, but
that I always dance on it - only somebody recently said that I dance
behind it. The trouble I have is partly of knowing when the beat starts,
partly of knowing when does it finish, and partly of knowing what should be
happening at these times.

It all seems to start very easily - clap the rythm - so one's hands come
together as the note starts to sound - but to make a second
clap one has to separate one's hands. Similarly to land on the beat
one has to leave the floor, so to execute 4 hops (as in the Fling) one
has to leave the floor 4 times to land 4 times - but to leave the floor
to land the second time first of all the foot touches the floor, then
the body decelerates until it comes to a stop. So should ones foot
hit the floor at the start of the beat, and the head stop moving down at
the end of the beat? In a pas de basque in reel time, does the head
stop moving down at the end of the first crotchet? (And does it stop
moving up again at the end of the second?)

Does this mean we have different interpretations of landing on the 
beat in highland and country dancing? (To execute 4 hops in highland
the body must stop moving down early enough to allow for the second
hop.)

(Or perhaps in a pas de basque one is really hopping twice in a bar
whilst in highland one is hopping 4 times?)

And then what happens in jigtime? Does the up movement take a different 
length of time from the down movement? (In a p.d.b.)

Maybe it needs a physicist to sort things out.

Malcolm  

PS Helen thinks analysis of this sort will not help her dancing, or mine!
  

 
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