Understanding The Technique

I usually attend Mass with my mother every Sunday. We generally go to the 9:30 am Mass since she sings in the choir.  This past weekend the choir was singing at the Saturday vigil and I found myself there for the Saturday 5:00 pm Mass. The Gospel reading was from Mark 9:35 

And he sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them, "If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all."

Fr. Glenn gave a nice homily, although it didn't quite seem like his normal approach. Then at the end of Mass, just before the final blessing, he stopped himself and said to us that he just realized that he had a perfect example of those who are servants to all in the wonderful choir.

As the congregation applauded, I though, "YES! THAT sounds like what Fr. Glenn would normally say."

Which got me to thinking, who do I know that lives in service to others? As I sat there waiting for my mother, reminiscing about all the people who have contributed to my dancing, I was a bit overwhelmed. The list is really, really long.

I know a lot of people who give of themselves with seemingly boundless generosity. I could never have accomplished what I have in dancing without the service of so many. Every dance I ever ran. Every time I've ever taught or performed. None of that would have been possible without the selfless generosity of any number of people who care about our dance community.

It would be impossible for me to name them all, and if I tried I would surely miss out on someone who deserves mention. I will say that I think about Madeline Augenblick often and with great fondness. And any day that I can open my email and find some little thing from yorkiedance, well.. that day is a better day.

But there are many, many names of people who have touched my life through dance. I never set foot on the floor without them being present for me.

This week I've been preparing to head over to teach at the European Round Dance Week run by Klaus and Marion Voelkl and Joachim and Kristin Bradl, and a host of other people who support them in making this extraordinary event possible.

Year after year they put on an amazing event. We celebrate and dance and share our passion for dancing. It is an honor and a privilege to get to go. If you have never been, I would encourage you to consider it. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the event. Come and celebrate with us. You will love it.

As I thought about the week to come, I realized just how much work there was left to do. Six dances. Six cuesheets. Not all finished. 

Normally I try to have everything ready about two months in advance. I try. I fail. But one week before I'm supposed to be on the plane and I'm still writing cuesheets? Thank goodness for modern electronic communication….

Year and year, cuesheet after cuesheet. Another draft to proofread. Another song to check out. Another question about how to write this or do that. And year after year, cuesheet after cuesheet, one person making sure I write XRif instead of RXif and DLC instead of DC. Helping me to understand the difference DRAW and PULL, and trying (and failing, miserably failing) to get me to be a little less long winded.

I have no idea how many people Annette Woodruff proofreads for. But I know I'm not the only one.

I have no idea how many committees Annette has served on, for RoundaLab, for the European Round Dance Teachers Association, for her community in Belgium, for ICBDA (formerly URDC), and goodness knows who else.

What I do know is that Annette has given a lifetime of selfless service to the Round Dance community, and I, for one, have benefited enormously from her contributions.

So as I prepare to get on the plane the fly to Belgium where I will meet with Annette and Frank and their lovely daughters and their husbands I just wanted to say THANK YOU. Thank you for your generosity, your hospitality, your friendship; for sharing your life with me, opening your home to me; for the food, the wine, the conversation.

Thank you for reading my cuesheets. Thank you for your honest criticism and strong opinions. Thank you for trying to help me even when I'm being an a**.

Thank you for the amazing gift of dance.

If you are reading this and you have ever benefited from the selfless generosity of Annette, please take a moment to drop her a line and say so.

Annette, my love, I can't wait. Another year. Another duck, or rabbit, or something from the North Sea. Another glass of delicious sweet white wine. Another chance to sit with you and honor all those who have come before and will come after as we debate the merits of diagonals and revel in the extraordinary lives we live.

I am truly blessed.

I want to take a moment to thank all the people at the ICBDA convention in Lakeland, FL this past week. I greatly appreciate all the kind words of support, and the personal stories you shared with me about how intolerance and homophobia have impacted someone you know and love.

Several of you asked about the text of my remarks. The full text can be found here: MY REMARKS

Many of you also asked about additional resources for Lesbian and Gay youth.

• THE TREVOR PROJECT – Resources for preventing suicide among Gay and Lesbian youth
• IT GETS BETTER – Video messages to young people about hope for a better future
• PFLAG – Parent, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
• GBLT National Help Center
• A list of resources for Lesbian and Gay youth struggling with their spirituality
• The Huffington Post – Books for Gay Teens

These are but a few of the myriad resources available today. If you have someone in your life that you think needs help, please do not hestitate. Too many young lives have been lost to hatred. Sometimes all it takes to save a life is to know that someone cares. You are that person.

Feel free to contact me directly. I will be happy to offer any assistance I can. CONTACT RICHARD

Thank you all again for your kind words, emails and phone calls. It's good to be home.

Discussing timing in writing is a difficult thing to do. But ….

The musical notation system we use is specific to our Western oriented thinking and understanding of music, which is NOT comprehensive, or adequate to the task of describing all that can be created by gifted musicians, and dancers. Nor does it adequately reflect the rich traditions of other cultures in which the musical traditions include uncommon time signatures and accents.

I want to address a different set of issues, specifically the widespread use of ROLLING COUNT timing in some dance communities (most notably West Coast Swing) and the use of spoken timings that are expressed differently in written form.

Getting Started….

Musically, the NUMBER is the first note or rest (regardless of duration) in a bar of music. The remainder of the bar follows. It is customary to count the NUMBERS as the notes associated with the bottom number in the time signature.  So for 3/4, 4/4, 2/4 , we count quarter notes as numbers. For 2/2 , we count half notes as the numbers.

An example using a bit of Round Dance punctuation where a comma signifies the end of a beat and a semi-colon the end of a bar (measure): (If you just HAVE to know more about that… Reading A Cuesheet )

4/4 can also be counted in slows and quicks in a variety of ways. It is customary for quicks to come in pairs.

All ways of expressing the four beats.

Music is a mathematically exact written representation of a limited set of possibilities. Clever people can take this notation and use it to express many things, but some real world rhythms simply can not be expressed in traditional western musical notation. But it is still a rich and useful set of notations, based on dividing by 2.

The DOT notation allows for greater flexibility. When a note is DOTTED you take half again as much as base value of the note and add that to the base value of the note. For example:

SOOOO,

BUT, you could use the DOT ( · ) notation to create:

That is,   ¹ / ₄ plus the Dot (half again of the  ¹ / ₄ , so  ¹ / ₈ ) plus the remainder, so another  ¹ / ₈ .

As long as all the notes and rests add up to the total given in the top number of the time signature, everything is fine. That is a starting place for understanding how we talk about music and timing, and what we mean when we talk about music and timing.

Counting Music The Lawrence Welk Way

Why did Lawrence Welk say:  "An a ONE an a TWO" ? The answer is a human issue, not a musical one. Ask another person (or group of people is even better) to CLAP when you say GO. Then ….  say, "GO." Chances are, especially in group, that you will NOT all clap at the same time.

Now ask them to CLAP when you say ONE. Then say, "And A ONE." Chances are, you all clap at the same time.

The purpose of this "AND A" is to give warning of the event ONE so that we can all be in sync. When music is PLAYING, we don't need that because the previous beats of music tell us when to expect the next beat of music. But when we are just counting a beat, starting from nothing, we have to provide some kind of indication as to WHEN to start against the counting. Most dance teachers figure this out pretty early on, and come up with their own way of getting everyone moving at the same time. For example:

I had a partner who would use the following for WALTZ:

It really doesn't matter what you say, as long as people know WHEN to expect the beat so they can all move together. In West Coast Swing, it is common practice to say: "AND A" …. before each beat. That serves the purpose of getting everyone going, but …..It also does something else.

The Concept of a Triplet

Musical notate is based on dividing by 2, as noted above. But the AND A ONE, AND A TWO counting does not match that basic split of beats. That counting is dividing by 3, creating THIRDS. Let's see if we can picture this….

A number followed by 11 dashes (a total of 12 things). The following must be displayed in a FIXED WIDTH FONT to see it.  The reason for 12 is it is the smallest number that is divisible by 4 and by 3, which we need to see the full picture of how different ways of counting produce very different interpretations of the music. (And the potential movement against the music).

1 - - - - - - - - - - - 2 - - - - - - - - - - - 3 - - - - - - - - - - - 1

1 - - - - - & - - - - - 2 - - - - - & - - - - - 3 - - - - - & - - - - - 1

1 - - e - - & - - a - - 2 - - e - - & - - a - - 3 - - e - - & - - a - - 1

1 - - - & - - - a - - - 2 - - - & - - - a - - - 3 - - - & - - - a - - - 1

• The first line is just a standard 3/4 bar of music counting only the BEATS, that is, the numbers, each representing a ¹ / ₄ note in music. 
• The second line a standard ³ / ₄ bar of music counting BEATS and half beats (the "&"s) and would be written using ¹ / ₈ notes. 
• The third line is a standard ³ / ₄ bar of music counting BEATS, and ¹ / ₄ beats, and would be written using ¹ / ₁₆ notes. 
• The FOURTH line is a  ROLLING COUNT , which divides the bar (measure) into equal THIRDS.

Musically this is what is knows as a TRIPLET. A TRIPLET is three notes in the space / time of two notes. Normally, ¹ / ₄ note = TWO ¹ / ₈ notes. In a musical triplet, we replace the SPACE (or time) of TWO notes, with THREE equally spaced (time valued) notes. The notation is a curved arc over the three linked notes. So in a TRIPLE ¹ / ₄ = ( ¹ / ₈ + ¹ / ₈ + ¹ / ₈ ). 

Mathematically this is wrong. It should be ¹ / ₄ = ¹ / ₁₂ + ¹ / ₁₂ + ¹ / ₁₂ .  We don't have a notation for a 1/12th note directly. What we have is the TRIPLET notation. If you want to know more about Triplets, I recommend The Eighth Note Triplet

What's important for our purposes is to get is that the "AND" and "A" of a ROLLING COUNT do not fall in the same place as the "AND" and "A" of a standard count.

Skippy Blair, who is widely recognized as the CREATOR of West Coast Swing, teaches exclusively using ROLLING COUNT. Not just for WCS, but for ALL dances. In my opinion MY OPINION, let me say that again MY OPINION, she is BRILLIANT and her contribution to the dance world has been AMAZING and she deserves ALL the respect and admiration that the dance world can heap upon her.  AND basically what she has is a really really good hammer, and treats all music as if it is a nail. It produces a predictable result, but frankly, I think I know more about waltz and foxtrot than she does. Rolling Count is not the best way to treat all music and all dancing. My OPINION… MY OPINION.  MY OPINION. If I ever Ever EVER hear any one say that I said Skippy Blair was wrong, I'll will personally hunt them down and correct them with a 2×4. But that is beside the point….

Skippy also always counts ALL the ROLLING COUNT sounds AND she always starts with the "AND" and "A" from the previous measure to ensure that when you MOVE, you move when she wants you to. Bear in mind, that one says AND A ONE, AND A TWO this does not mean the AND and A belong to the same BEAT (or even BAR) of music as the ONE, or the TWO, etc. But it creates a mental linkage that can be important. Again: THE "AND" and "A" do NOT belong to the ONE. They belong to the PREVIOUS BEAT. The PREVIOUS BEAT. THE PREVIOUS BEAT !!!!

Rolling Count In Dancing

Of all the communities of dancers I know about, the ones who do the most with Rolling Count is the West Coast Swing dance community. Some might say that you don't really know WCS until you figure out how Rolling Count works.

Let's look at a 6  count basic (side pass, sugar push etc). Using Rolling Count, it would be:

& a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a 5 & a 6
    ^     ^     ^   ^ ^     ^   ^ ^

In contrast, someone NOT from deep within the WCS community is likely to count WCS those six count basics as: 1  2  3&4 5&6, and treat the 3&4 5&6 as triples, splitting the ¹ / ₄ notes into ¹ / ₄ ¹ / ₄ . NOT TRIPLETS, but Triples.

They are VERY different, and that is the basic point of this exposition. Is that WRONG?  No… Is that consistent with what people who are truly experts in the WCS do?   NO WAY.

This is just great for WCS and a few other dances. But is NOT consistent with how the majority of the world views the traditional ballroom and Latin dances.

Skippy would have Cha Cha as: (switch to fixed font again)

& a 1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4
    ^     ^     ^   ^ ^

In other words, you step on 1, 2, 3 A 4, which is NOT an even split of the 3 beat into two equal halves.

Pretty much the rest of the dance world will tell you that CHA CHA is 1 2 3 & 4 (traditional break on ONE count) OR 1 2 3 4 & (break on TWO count) where the & represents an exact HALF of the beat.

Many dance teachers will even say WHOLE WHOLE HALF HALF WHOLE to emphasize the even-ness of the CHA CHA CHA part.

Musically 1/4   1/4   1/8   1/8   1/4    OR   1/4   1/4   1/4   1/8   1/8 (break on TWO)

Who is RIGHT?

Depends on who you ask. But Latin dancers believe Cha Cha is an even split regardless of what WCS dancers say about it. AND visa versa.

Let's look at a waltz measure.

Suppose you wanted to take FOUR steps in the THREE beats of music.

There are THREE ways to represent this, using standard Round Dance notation:

•  1 / &, 2, 3;
•  1, 2 / &, 3;
•  1, 2, 3 / &;

But what about ….. &1, 2, 3;  ?  Does that represent a split of the ONE beat? If so, how is that different from 1&, 2, 3; which is also a split of the ONE beat?

In Western musical notation, and in Round Dance notation, the NUMBER always represents the start of the beat. The '&' always represents the second half of a split beat. At least, that's what we have in writing.

You can SAY &123 in a way that makes it seem like they split the ONE, but Round Dance (and musical) notation does not support that. 

Let's take a simple example where everyone agrees on the rhythm and the written notation: CHASSE: 12&3… I think it is safe to say, everyone agrees… 12&3.

The written description is:

[Chasse (12&3)]  Step, step / close, step;

So my question to those who promote &1 descriptions of figures is:

If I'm allowed to say that &1 and 1& can both be valid when I'm splitting beat ONE, why can't I say that 1&23 is the same as 12&3 when splitting the TWO beat, like in the chasse?

A) [Chasse (12&3)]  Step, step / close, step;

B) [Chasse (1&23)]  Step, step / close, step;

Perhaps it depends on what I do with my VOICE….

ONE (pause) AND TWO (pause) THREE

That's the same as:

ONE (pause) TWO AND (pause) THREE

Isn't it?   Come on.  They're the same… Aren't they?

It doesn't matter how many times I say it, or what emphasis I put into my voice, in written form, they are NOT the same.

Let's look at an example where it might actually make a difference.

The SPIN & TWIST

For the Follower, this is 7 steps taken over two measures.  THE question ALWAYS gets asked. Here is my version of the question in excruciating detail:

Does the Follower take FOUR steps in the first measure and THREE steps in the second measure OR, does the Follower take THREE steps in the first measure and FOUR steps in the second measure?

Mind you, the way that question is usually asked is not nearly as specific and clear as what I just wrote. But that is what the follower (and good leaders) wants to know. Which measure is syncopated?  (And how is it syncopated, since the second measure COULD use chasse timing as a valid option…. But that is too much, even for me

If I answer by giving the following COUNT:

123&123

Then, you simply CAN NOT tell what I mean. Those words alone are not sufficient to answer the question.

I can use my VOICE to indicate the split I want. There are TWO options:

A) 123& (pause) 123

B) 123  (pause)   &123

Ok GREAT. It was clear when I said it. BUT, will it match what I wrote?

Round Dance written descriptions allow me to split the current beat into NUMBER / &, but do NOT allow me to split the current beat into & / NUMBER.

I can show:

Version A:   Desc, desc, desc / desc;  Desc, desc, desc;

And I can show:

Version B:   Desc, desc, desc; Desc / desc, desc, desc;

Each of these long descriptions is clear and represents a particular timing to dance. But cuesheets might include more than the long description. They might include a COUNT.

For the first example above it is easy. I get:

Version A:   [Spin & Twist (123&; 123)]  Desc, desc, desc / desc;  Desc, desc, desc;

But I have TWO things I could write for version B)

Version B-1:   [Spin & Twist (123; &123)] Desc, desc, desc; Desc / desc, desc, desc;

Version B-2:   [Spin & Twist (123; 1&23)] Desc, desc, desc; Desc / desc, desc, desc;

For versions B-1 and B-2, the written description is IDENTICAL, and only the manner in which I notate the split beat in the COUNT differs.

Which is "correct"?  Is &1 a special case? You can only split the ONE beat in front of the beat, but you can't split the TWO beat in front of the beat, only AFTER the beat?

Of course !! That makes perfect sense…

&123 is NOT the same as 1&23.  &123 means to steal a little bit of time from the PREVIOUS beat. 1&23 means to split the first beat.

REALLY ???? Then why not WRITE it that way, since we have a perfectly good, consistent, and universally understood way of DOING THAT.

Just my somewhat less than humble opinion. Your mileage may vary.