Ballroom Dancing: Types, Techniques, and History
What is Ballroom Dancing?
We can say that dancing is a social grouping of people, whether in public or private parties. To dance also involves making changes with your feet, body, and arms, following a certain rhythm. In the modalities of dance, there is a regular succession of steps and positions to the rhythm of the music that is called choreography.
Ballroom dancing refers to couples who have a particular sequence choreographed to the beat of different modalities. Ballroom dances can be defined as a group of people dancing, as a couple, or in a living room and in open spaces, linked to learned dance movements that aim to be a choreography. The dances of the living have a very active life in terms of education and topics in competition organization.
Elements of Ballroom Dancing
Line Dancing
Line dancing is the direction taken by the couple in their journeys along the trail, along the evolution. The line dance is based on right turns on the track in the opposite direction clockwise. The guy always comes out towards the dancing line.
Positions and Postures (the Girl and Boy)
In general, the position and posture of most ballroom dances must follow these guidelines:
- The head is raised, and the back is straight.
- Normally, the boy’s left hand grasps the right hand of the girl with the arm at shoulder height, more or less stretched, as in dances.
- The right arm grabs the girl’s back, a little below the shoulder blade. It accompanies or is released, according to their evolution.
- The right arm and d’équerre have to be online (elbows at the same height), slightly separated from the body, and shoulders relaxed.
- The right hand of the girl grabs the boy’s left hand and the right arm of his partner, without dropping or pressing down.
The distance between the dancers depends on the type of dance. For example, the distance is not the same in tango (very close) as in the waltz (very far).
In addition to the basic position, in some dances, according to the mode, there are different positions of component partners: side of the face, back curtain, and open filed, in which the arms and feet can also be positioned differently.
Steps
A step is the coordinated movement of each dancer’s feet with their partner. Each game has a basic step, which will continue throughout the dance, according to the figure, but may change or be changed. The steps must be done to the beat of the music, coinciding with the time signature’s musical time.
The most important steps are the tap step, chop step, turned passage, chased step, chain step, jumped step, and crossover step.
The Figures
Figures are different steps, shackled, making a drawing with the feet and other body parts. Almost all figures are adaptable to most dances. The figures that differ from the others kill the woman at the pace of the basic step of each kind of music.
The figures can be complex or simple. The complex ones are those that consist of different simple figures, such as the various links with the hands, turns, and twists.
The decorations are gestures with body parts that complete figures and dancing in general, and that is the marking style of dancing.
Coordination of Partners
In most ballroom dances, the steps of the boy and the girl are opposite but simultaneous, like a mirror. The visual effect is precisely that of a mirror.
The boy normally takes the lead in the dance. Space is controlled by anticipating the next step or figure. The boy’s gifts must be clear so that the change of step can be conveyed to his companion. The role of men in the dance takes the stage in the decision stage of evolution.
The girl, however, has a much greater role in the execution of the figures. She must know how to get carried away without losing the basic step and understand nonverbal messages from her partner.
The look is very important because the eyes are a means of communication. As you dance, you never have to look at your feet. Other aspects are also important because the coordination of the pair is good: harmony of the body, change of position, balance, rhythm, etc.
Dance: Rock & Roll
In the early fifties, the United States saw the emergence of a new form of popular music: Rock & Roll, an expression that could be translated as “to contort and shoot.” The term “rock and roll” was used in 1951 by Alan Freed, a Cleveland disc jockey, taken from the song “My Baby Rocks with a Steady Roll.”
Its most direct antecedents must be sought in jazz, African rhythms transplanted in the United States by slaves and later developed in black communities: blues and gospel.
Rock & Roll music was born as a clear generational rupture as a requirement of the previous genres. It was a heritage of youth, who, for the first time in history, would not resemble its older representatives of the puritanism and conformism of American society.
The first recordings were made on small labels in Memphis, New Orleans, and Chicago, which led to opposition from large companies, disadvantaged in business, who rejected the top rock & roll for being amoral and obscene, for its too explicit references to sexuality.
The Slope of the Rock & Roll Rhythm
It is actually a form of blues rhythm; its basic structure consists of the twelve-bar blues, around which variations are made. Along with electric guitars, a rhythm base stands dominant on the piano, the drums occupy a dominant role, and the bass marks with intensity the beginning of each bar of 4/4. Energetic and dynamic time, intense sounds, harsh, shrill voice and style, and harsh tone are also basic characteristics of the genre. The vocals usually incorporate slang terms, are frequently young, and are related to the topic of sex and the world of teenagers, practically screaming, syllabifying as in blues.
Dance: The Waltz
The Waltz is an elegant dance with slow-paced music, native to Tyrol (Austria) back in the twelfth century. The waltz won the rank of nobility in Vienna during 1760 and quickly expanded to other countries. Some authors believe that the waltz had its origin in the volte, a dance performed three times during the sixteenth century.
The word “waltz” was born in the eighteenth century when the waltz was introduced in opera and ballet. Originally, it had a slow movement, although today it has become a dance of living and rapid pace.
Upon hearing the word “waltz,” it is immediately related to classical music, but the truth is that the waltz is only one form that can be in any musical style, such as Mexican rancheras, though always in the swing month rate used (which is 4/4, in Patra F, D, F, D). Frederic Chopin, the great Polish composer and pianist, brought a number of slow waltzes for piano, including the waltz called “Minute Waltz,” the shortest. Strauss also highlighted the great composers of waltzes, especially Johann Strauss’s son. In Latin America, there are many variations, such as the Peruvian waltz, Venezuelan waltz, Colombian waltz, Brazilian waltz, and the Equatorial waltz, with characteristics that differ from country to country. We can say with accuracy that both these composers, like many others, have come to form music that has participated in artistic development, as important to humans. We know, for example, such famous pieces such as Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” waltz or “Sleeping Beauty” waltz, “Swan Lake” waltz, in the same way that we played pieces such as Strauss’s “The Emperor’s Waltz” or “Waltz of the Honeymooners.”
The Choreography of Movements
Its most significant feature is that its bars are three times, that is, 3/4. In the rhythm of the waltz, the first time is always considered as the strong time (F), and the other two are weak (d). Thus, the pattern is F, d, d.