strathspey@strathspey.org:11817

James R. Ferguson

Re: Dancing to pipes - or not!

April 27, 1998, 1:02 a.m. (Message 11817, in reply to message 11659)

Malcolm & Helen Brown (York UK) wrote:
> 
> 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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Is this a little like the centipede who got so confused trying to figure
out which foot moved when that he finally couldn't move at all?  Donna