--- From: rhn@netcom.com (Ron Nicholson) Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance In article , Henry Neeman wrote: > >The famous dollar bill (pound note, credit card, whatever) dance: the >instructor says to a student, "Here's a dollar bill. Put it under your foot >and dance a waltz without losing it." The student is flabbergasted and fails >utterly. The instructor then proceeds to dance an entire song this way, with >partner. > The goal is not only to not lose the dollar bill by picking up your foot, but not grinding it to shreds either. This is actually about an amazingly difficult skill and one of the easiest to spot differences between really good dancers and avarage social dancers. I thinks this skill is most noticiable in international style foxtrot and west coast swing. This skill is knowing how far down the floor is. More specifically, it's knowing how far away ones foot and c.g. are from the floor. A really good gymnast will know exactly where the balance beam is, not only in the horizontal plane, but in the vertical dimension also. Similarly, a good ballroom dancer knows how to move their foot exactly horizontally along the floor, even if their upper body is involved in rise/fall, sway, etc. I really appreciate seeing the skill of dancers like Woods & Lewis or Verasset [sp?] & Smith in this particular area. If you watch their feet, they never go klunk, and the right part (heel, toe, inside edge, outside edge) is always in contact with the floor. You can watch beginners and see several kinds of things that show they don't really know where the floor is. They feel for the floor by extending their toes even on lowering forward steps. Or they KLUNK when their first learning heel leads. Or they just sort of mash their foot into the floor, stumbling forward, using an early next step or their partner to keep from falling on their face. On a really good day, I can sometimes feel my feet just brush lightly across the floor until just the right time for a weight change. (Of course, on bad days, I'm just trying to not fall on my face, just like most beginners.) --- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance From: rhn@netcom.com (Ron Nicholson) Subject: hustle history Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 07:20:39 GMT I recently talked to a couple of dance teachers about the history of (3-count, syncopated, ballroom nightclub, New York, LA?, disco) Hustle. They both said that the dance that we ballroom dancers currently call Hustle came into being in New York, between 1978 and 1982. Both of these teachers said that they were in the New York dance scene to see this happen. Here the 2 stories diverge. Marie Torres (1993 World Hustle Champion) said that during the disco dance craze of the late 70's there was a new disco fad dance introduced every week. Several of these dances were danced with 4 steps to 4 beats of music and had 4-count patterns. When disco music slowed down, the dancers played with dancing the 4 steps in 3 beats of music. By the early 80s, the 3-count version stuck and became what we now call Hustle. The early versions were counted "&1-2-3", other counting methods are recent aberrations. The second version of the story also had Hustle evolving from a New York fad dance. But this fad dance was an early form of West Coast Swing called "Latin Hustle" (Why would anyone in New York would call a new dance "West Coast" anything!) This dance had as its basic: "tap, step, coast- er step, walk, walk" with a count of 1-2-3&4-5-6. (same basic as the silly franchise dance studio version of WCSwing with the count offset.) One version of this dance had all the fancy turns and arm work on the last two walks. So the dancers who got bored with the tap-step at the beginning just removed the first 2 weight changes. The first weight change was the tap-step; and the other weight change removed was the first step of the coaster. Since a coaster is "back-together-forward"; when the first step is removed, what's left is "together-forward". So this streamlined new dance was "together-forward-walk-walk" danced to &4-5-6, or the equivalent &1-2-3. This dance was un-slotted (e.g. a rotating dance). Recently, some studios have been re-slotting Hustle to make it easier to teach. So, historically speaking, Hustle may be a Swing dance derivative, even though it currently has very little in common with West Coast Swing or Eastern Swing dance technique. "Dance Action" magazine is supposed to have published another history of Hustle somewhere around 1989. Anybody have a copy of the magazine with that article? (All errors and misquotes are solely my fault. (who else?)) --- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance From: rhn@netcom.com (Ron Nicholson) Subject: Hustle and West Coast Swing Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 07:23:49 GMT In my opinion, the key difference between Hustle and WCSwing is the initial lead. In Hustle the woman should aggressively step forward on "one" unless prevented, whereas in WCSwing the woman should stay in place on "one" unless led forward. In WCSwing you need a good connection to start a pattern, whereas in Hustle you can dance with a good follower by only indicating where to turn and barely connecting otherwise. I recently danced with a woman who had serious carpal tunnel problems with her wrists. I was demonstrating to her husband how she can be lead in a fairly energetic Hustle without ever touching her hands, but only using her back and light pressure against the sides of her arms for leads. I doubt this could be done with WCSwing. --- > As you may have gathered from various other discussions, the meaning of > the term 'beat' is by no means unambiguous. Even if we were to define a "beat" as a precise instant in time, that may not help. Real percussionist are not drum machines and the duration between beats are not even in time. The other musicians in a musical ensemble will be interpreting their own melody part in relation to the drummer slightly differently. Even if the music is created by a drum machine and MIDI synthesizers, the "note-on" messages will be off from strict time by a millisecond or so. The definition of a "step" in ballroom dance is even more problematic. A dancers foot moves and his/her body moves. These movements cannot happen instantaneously due to the laws of physics. One must start to move a foot at some point in time, and stop and place it on the floor at another point in time. In some steps in some dances the foot moves and then the body commences to move. In some dances the body commences to move first, then the foot (Samba, I think). In some Foxtrot steps the body may even have a temporary movement counter to the foot movement, before going with the traveling foot (Foxtrot reverse waves, I think). Some steps in some dances have one transferring weight onto a new standing foot. Some steps in some dances may have one transferring ones center of gravity through the perpendicular of the floor contact patch without ever stopping over it (body flight?). What's needed is to instrument some championship dancers and record their motions in relation to the Midi time sync. track of the music they're dancing to. Given artist rights, they'd probably want to copyright the data files though. The problem with simple explanations about step timing is that they lose all the above detail and some poor person needs to be told that the only way to learn the "right" timing is to take lessons. --- Depending on the dance, traffic and skill level, you have lot's of options. In social dance, there's looking at, smiling at or even flirting with your partner. Many nightclub partner dances and swing dances lend themselves to this kind of thing. With traveling dances in crowds, you might need to look around for converging traffic. How much you need to to look around depends on the traffic density and the skill level of the other dancers. In beginning crowds, you may encounter people who have trouble leading and looking where they are going at the same time. In advanced crowds, you may encounter couples who will make that exact 3/8ths of a turn, no matter how many people they have to run down to finish their amalgamation. For some smooth dances, I've heard that keeping the head turned about 45-60 degrees to the side helps the balance and shape. Keeping the center of mass of the head to the side definitely helps prevent sticking out ones posterior to counter balance forward head weight. The difficult decision for me is what to do when the head position for the best balance and shape in a step leaves me with a blind spot. --- rlg2@cornell.edu (R. Gray) writes: >A couple characteristics of the ballroom culture that I still find puzzling: > * The partners don't look at each other when they're dancing (especially > in smooth or modern or whatever it's called) (Mostly called American Smooth or International Standard.) My guess is that this has to do with human anatomy and physics. If you look straight at your partner, then you're left with peripheral vision to spot converging traffic. Since I know how good looking my partners are :-), I can leave them in my peripheral vision and use my central vision for spotting traffic. In my opinion, good (closed position) dancing is all about balance, and moving the balance points or two people together in time to the music. The human head is one of the heaviest parts of the body, as well as being at the very top of the body and very easy to throw around. If you're trying to control your balance to within a centimeter or less, as top dancers do, then throwing around a heavy weight (head) out of sync with what you're trying to do with the entire step is quite detrimental. Most of the heads mass is in front of the axis of the neck. If you leave your head looking straight forward, then most of the heads weight will be forward of your bodys center of gravity. That leads to counter balancing the head weight by sticking out ones butt or leaning on ones partner, neither of which is considered good dance form. If you put your head slightly to one side, then the head weight will be more over on foot and therefore less likely to require body or frame distortions to counter balance the head weight. There's a lot more to good head positioning and movement than this, and that stuff for far more qualified netters than I to write about. --- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance From: rhn@netcom.com (Ron Nicholson) Subject: hustle and the laws of physics Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 00:13:07 GMT I was wondering why some women pulled on me so hard when dancing hustle and exactly how much force was required to move back and forth in a fast slotted dance like the hustle. Before someone adds that hustle should be a light dance and no force should be required, I'd like to point out that movement in dancing must obey the laws of physics. Any movement back and forth indicates a change in velocity with respect to time and this requires a force. The only question is where the force comes from, the floor or ones partner. So I made some measurements, pulled out my old physics textbooks and made some calculations. According a measure per minute chart posted by Jay Dusenbury, hustle tempo in 28-30 mpm. This corresponds to 112-120 beats per minute or in the range of 500 to 535 milliseconds per beat. A hustle open and close basic requires 6 beats to do 8 steps (&1 2 3&4 5 6) or in the range of 3.0 and 3.22 seconds for a woman to move up the slot and return to her starting position. At the local Tuesday night hustle dance, I was able to measure slot lengths in the range of about 1-2 meters (3-6 feet) depending on the height and energy of the dancers. A typical slot was about 1.3 meters (4 feet) in length. The music was averaging 120 bpm or even a little faster at times. The minimum acceleration required to move back and forth across a 1.3 meter slot at 120 bpm is 2.31 meters/second/second. This is equivalent to 0.24 G's or almost 1/4th the force of gravity. To put this in terms of something you can feel, if a lady weighing 120 pounds were to solely depend on her partner to pull her up and down the slot, the force required would be equivalent to holding a 28 pound weight. And this is the minimum possible force, assuming a constant acceleration towards the center of the slot. A more reasonable acceleration profile would be a periodic motion where the acceleration towards the center of the slot was proportional to the distance from the middle, e.g. coast in the middle of the slot and push on the floor the most when stopping and turning around at the ends of the slot. This periodic motion requires a max acceleration of 0.29 G's at the ends of the slot. In order for a woman not to pull on her partner when doing a hustle basic at the above dimensions and speed, she needs to take a back step of 7 to 9 inches behind her at the end of the slot (on the "3" count or second slow, NOT on the "&" or the first step of the coaster, which should be a "together") to get enough force off the floor to accelerate herself. This back step gives a good hustle follower the look of a split weight step where there body seems to be between their two feet instead of over one foot; but in actuality the acceleration will put all their weight over the back foot. In actuality, I expect to feel a few pounds of connection when leading a hustle basic with a good partner. So the womans acceleration might be split 90% from the floor and 10% from the hands. In addition, the total leg force required to provide both the lateral force to accelerate up the slot and the vertical force to counteract the force of gravity is an extra 3-4% over the normal standing force. I think that failing to provide this extra leg force leads to the (incorrect) bounce I sometimes see in beginners hustle, where they sink or skid into the floor on the "1" count (second step of the coaster). for reference: hustle open and close basic, woman's footwork and timing: timing - & 1 2 3,& 4 5 6 R L R L,R L R L together forward forward back, together forward back back or quick quick slow slow, quick quick slow slow. 8 steps in 6 beats. "together forward" is sometimes called a "coaster step". Any corrections to my physics calculations would be appreciated. --- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance From: rhn@netcom.com (Ron Nicholson) Subject: Re: hustle and the laws of physics Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 02:39:30 GMT In article <40j4v6$q2e@anarchy.io.com>, Scott Allen wrote: >Anyway, my question is this - if you maintain a constant connection, >10 or 15 or 20 pounds of pull doesn't seem like very much. How much >does the average briefcase or purse weigh? The 30 pound number in the absolute minimum. Less smooth force patterns can easily require half a G (half the womans weight!) in force to turn her movement direction around. Hopefully it comes from the floor and not my wrists, arms, shoulders and back. The ability to dance with a light connection is just as important in a fast Hustle as it is in a West Coast Swing. >I've been reading numerous posts saying that the "&" step of the hustle >should be a together rather than a rock back. If the womans weight is going backward on the "&" step, she has very little time to reverse herself and accelerate forward for the next step. Although it is possible to do this and be smooth, many women when using a rock back on the "&" step, yank their partners back with them or end up not moving anywhere on the next (coaster) step. >To my mind, it very much reminds me of the issue in West Coast Swing of >whether the woman walks forward on one or hesitates until the "&" after >one. Frankly, I think it usually depends on the lead. If the man doesn't >lead until count "1" and the woman is already coming forward, she's >BACKLEADING. Just to be clear, there is a difference between West Coast Swing and Hustle (at least as danced around here). In West Coast, the follower should never step forward on "1" unless led; in Hustle the woman should always step forward on "1" unless prevented (&1 2 3 count). This give Hustle a more ballistic feel than West Coast Swing. >We need to teach women to follow their partner, NOT the exact foot placement >instructions that this or that instructor says is the "right" way to do it. Yes. Very important in any partner dance. --- From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: hustle and the laws of physics Date: 14 Aug 1995 23:28:31 GMT eijkhout@jacobi.math.ucla.edu (Victor Eijkhout) wrote: .. > Ah, but there is a difference between stepping back instead of together > and moving your centre back. If a rockback is understood as > `step back right, replace left' then we will probably agree that > this is not the way hustle is (supposed to be?) done. `Step back right, replace left' may work for a stationary pattern, but leaves the woman with no momentum to get to the other end of the slot in slotted patterns. My previous post was only discussing the physics of patterns like an open and close basic, where the woman has to move from one end of the slot to the other. For these types of patterns, I think that the idea is to start moving ones center forward before the end of "&" step, instead of letting it float back. The apex of the womans backward motion may be somewhere between the beginning and end of the "&" step. But she has to start accelerating forward much earlier than this in order to dissipate her backward momentum. > But it is possible for the & step to be back and the subsequent > 1 or 3, depending on how you count, to go forward. I was watching > a beginning hustle class the other day, and Patricia Reeves (a longtime > NY style hustle dancer) does not do a together step, but rather > a back in 3rd or maybe even 5th position. Her 1 is then definitely > forward. This works and can be used to nicely accent the music. But, the later the backwards motion is reversed, the more POWER it takes to get going forward in time for the "1". (&1 2 3 count) --- From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: hustle and the laws of physics Date: 15 Aug 1995 19:57:38 GMT Rahul Dhesi wrote: > What I see is: > > As she steps back with her left foot on the 3 count, her body is > leaning forward, and her CG (center of gravity) is slightly ahead of > her left foot. > > On the & count she brings her right foot back to both feet are about > side by side. At this point she is leaning forward and is on her > toes, and her CG is above or a little ahead of her toe. > > Now she moves, by stepping forward with her left foot on the 1 > count. Since she is already leaning forward, she can push with her > right foot and gain momentum quickly. .. > her > forward motion doesn't begin significantly before the & count. But she > is *already leaning forward* when the & count occurs. Well, I actually see the same thing you do. However the laws of physics do not allow one to lean without accelerating, so what I assume is really happening during the 500 milliseconds between the the 3 count and the 1 count ("&1 2 3 " @ 120 bpm) is a de-acceleration of reverse motion and then an acceleration forward, with the "&" step somewhere around the apex. Plotted as displacement vs. time, the CG motion would describe a shallow arc, never standing still except for an instant. I think a lot of what we see in dance is visual illusion. That's one of the reasons I started to analyze the physics of this particular dance movement. --- From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Hustle timing Date: 15 Sep 1995 18:46:20 GMT Has anyone noticed that some good Hustle dancers fudge the timing. For example, using the &123 (qssq) count and an 120 bpm rhythm: Instead of .. & 1 2 3 & ... 250 500 500 250 millisecond intervals between steps. they delay the "1" (perhaps even with a hitch kick or tap) and step into the "3" early. So the timing looks more like: .. & 1 2 3 & ... 350 400 450 300 millisecond intervals between steps, or closer to steps that are equal in time. The "slow" steps become quicker and the borrowed time is used to make the "quick" steps slower. This version of Hustle timing is sort of like a swing rhythm, part way between a straight-eights rhythm and a 4-against-3 (reverse triplet?) rhythm. The 4-against-3 timing would smooth out the dance significantly, but be almost impossible to teach. Anyone else see this timing in hustle? Notes: 120 beats per minute -> 2 beats/second -> 500 milliseconds/count --- From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance The equation I used to calculate the minimum acceleration needed for the womans part of a hustle basic was the classic: s = (1/2) * a * (t^2) or displacement = one half a t squared. The minimum acceleration needed to start at one end of the slot and stop at the other end would be if a constant acceleration towards the center of the slot was applied. If s = half the slot length s = D/2 and t = 1.5 beats of music (1/2 of 3 beats) t = 1.5*60/bpm then, solving for a, a = D * (bpm/90)^2 or, for D = 1.3 meters and bpm = 120, a = 2.31 meters per second^2 --- From: Ron Nicholson Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 15:59:38 -0800 Rahul Dhesi wrote: > Note we are talking about ballroom here, in which the follower does > not know in advance what is about to be led. I am not talking about > formation dancing, which is a different story entirely. (Scott Allen) wrote: > Call it backleading if you want, but I don't think a woman having a > pretty good idea where she's supposed to be and where she's going is > an entirely bad thing. One problem is that the words "leading" and "following" are misnomers. What we call leading and following in ballroom dance is really of form of bi-directional communication. The type and style of dance determines the vocabulary of the language of communication. The follower is not a sack of potatoes. She must be able to distinguish a right turn from a sack toss into the french fry machine, and respond accordingly. Fred Astaire could do a great dance with a lampstand, but that isn't ballroom dancing. Neither are judo throws. If I say "hajimemashite" to someone who speaks Japanese they will probably responding accordingly. If I lead an open hip twist with a follower schooled in international style latin she will probably respond accordingly. Someone who speaks neither language might be able to guess from the context and fudge accordingly, but they're more likely to go "huh?". If I feel like doing a feather step in foxtrot, I'd like to have a partner who knows what a feather step is, and how to make it feel good for her leader as well as herself; who, essentially, know the language that I'm trying to speak. Leading in social dance requires experimentally determining the followers vocabulary and picking out from the subset of your possible leads the ones that you determine she's likely to be able to follow. In competition dance, the leader and follower have already chosen their base vocabulary during their practice. Only the subtle adverbs and adjectives that allow them to avoid other couples and interpret the music need be communicated on the dance floor. Even in a rehearsed competition ballroom dance routine there is bidirectional communication. A good leader will not only lead a step, but then also adjust to his partner (a form of following). The follower may have ended up on a different part of her foot due to the limitations of her own skills or due to avoiding traffic in the leaders blind spot. A good leader will then respond to his partner and perhaps modify the next step to blend in with here they ended up after the last step. Leading is following, following is leading. Each pair of partners negotiates the precise boundaries needed to make the dance work. These boundaries change with different dances (WCS vs. intl. foxtrot) and with different steps (forward vs. back changes). Rahul Dhesi wrote: > Women should learn the rhythm, not the count. There is something we > can call 'the rhythm' in every dance. There is no such thing as 'the > count' because it depends on what is being led. She cannot know in > advance what is being led. Some dances have mostly rhythm, some have mostly count. WCS seems to be mostly a rhythm dance. Viennese Waltz is definitely a dance with a count. (but English or Deutsch? :-) --- Copyright © 1995 Ronald H. Nicholson, Jr. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Last Modified February 05, 1996