Chicken and Egg: dance or music

[Gadget]

Originally Posted by Gus

The problem is persuading dancers that there is a world of dance outside there current 'safe zone' of music that they might enjoy. I've pro-actively used LL's rep and expertise as a stalking horse ... and its drawn out dancers onto the floor to music they would never have tried before. This brings out a chicken and egg question. What comes first .. the dance expertise to dance to this music, or the music to encourage the dancers to try to advance their danceing?

So what do you reacon?

Personally, I think that people need to be inspired by dancers so that they can see what can be done with chalenging music.

[Minnie M]

Hows about dance confidence

[Graham]

Dancing to challenging music is all about improvisation. I don't see how, in a partner dance, you can do this and have any hope of taking your partner with you, unless your lead/follow technique is at a reasonable level. Having reached this level then you do, of course, need to be inspired by more challenging music.

[spindr]

I think part of the problem is that there is little/no teaching about music in MJ.

I don't think I've ever seen a beginner's class where the teacher explained how to find the beat and count in, to start dancing -- let alone get everyone synchronised with the beat, e.g. by listening and clapping along.

There is some sort of expectation that either everyone will be naturally musical from the start, or that said musical knowledge will be acquired through osmosis.

Many "average" dancers seem to have a real trouble keeping in time.

A distictly "average" SpinDr.

[Trish]

Originally Posted by spindr

I think part of the problem is that there is little/no teaching about music in MJ.

I don't think I've ever seen a beginner's class where the teacher explained how to find the beat and count in, to start dancing -- let alone get everyone synchronised with the beat, e.g. by listening and clapping along.

There is some sort of expectation that either everyone will be naturally musical from the start, or that said musical knowledge will be acquired through osmosis.

Many "average" dancers seem to have a real trouble keeping in time.

A distictly "average" SpinDr.

I agree, not enough teaching of finding the beat or listening to the music (eg finding the "breaks" in more interesting music. Certainly in my local venue, sense of rhythm is something that is left to us taxi dancers to try to teach! Luckily at least half the newbies seem to have some sense of rhythm, but trying to get it over to the rest takes a lot of time up! For some reason the new women I've danced with seem to have more natural ability at this than the men in the main, although it could be because women are more likely to have done dancing (even at a nightclub) than men, so have got used to listening for a beat. Some of the men when questioned appear to expect the tune to carry the beat in it, which doesn't help, but get better when you explain that listening to the drums or bass or cymbals (sp?) might be better - I'd have thought this was fairly obvious really but obviously not!

[MartinHarper]

get everyone synchronised with the beat, e.g. by listening and clapping along.

Note to self for tonight's classes: clap along while waiting for teacher to figure out where "5" is. (for bonus marks, clap slightly off time to try and throw him off the count... )