Elements in American Style (not amalgamations)

[DanceMentor]

Having been involved in International style for a while now, I can't help but think in elements when it comes to American style dancing. In other words, rather than thinking in terms of amalgamations that last 6 or 8 measures, such as what is used in many studios, I think in terms of individual elements such as the 5th position break, the rumba walk, or the crossover break.

While I understand amalgamations are an important way of grouping together elements, we do the same thing in International, but we still think in elements. A couple of advantages to this way of thinking:
1. a recognition of the elements for what they are (rather than getting confused when they put together but not explained individually)
2. student learns to fit things together, and is not always limited to "school figures". In the end, they can better think for themselves.
3. There is more flexibility in creating amalgamations.

I would love to know your thoughts on this.

Thanks,
David

[Tzah]

I'm confused. I thought all reputable teachers, when teaching a pattern or "mini routine for sake of the big picture" in a class also individually attributed the elements and components creating it- particularly if it were a private lesson?

In fact, when we changed from a secondary teacher to a real coach, this was the first thing we asked for, having not gotten it from the other. "Could you please tell us where one element ends and the other begins and identify it for us?" because at the time (it was quickstep), we DID NOT KNOW- we'd seen "the pattern", all strung together, and could NOT have told you where to break up what and when. The woman just didn't know- she was parroting what *her* teacher (now part-time ours) had shown her, conveniently glossing over the nuances and subtler details. "We'll work on that later" she'd always say if we asked to split hairs for a moment.

I don't think I could learn any other way. At the very least, I couldn't take the teacher seriously. In fact, there's a group-class teacher at another studio we sometimes visit who does this "gloss-over-for-the-sake-of-group-class" thing. He'll bring something up we'll wonder about, never focus on it, and later on, it'll come up in actual detail during one of our classes, swing workshops, etc. and then, we're able to understand it.
Is this what you were going for? I'm not sure.

[waltzgirl]

How does someone teach an amalgamation without breaking it down into smaller elements? I've never seen a bronze class that didn't teach individual elements, even if they were in a set routine. I have taken silver group classes where the patterns are taught in larger segments, but I've assumed the assumption is that we know the individual elements, so can pick up the choreography in larger chunks.

[Josh]

I think DM is not talking about amalgamations of several figures, but rather how in american style syllabi, figures tend to be longer because they put a "beginning" and "end" onto the figure to make it easier for dancers in the beginning.

For example, a crossover break in int'l rumba is just QQS (3 steps), whereas in most American syllabi, the figure named "Crossover Break" is a half a box, a side step, one crossover break, another to the other side, another to the first side, and a side-together or something like this (15 steps or so). So when some people think "crossover break", they think multiple breaks, and many beginners are so accustomed to doing 3 crossovers and a turn ending that anything else will feel alien to them, because to them a "crossover break" is all that stuff. A natural turn in waltz is the DVIDA syllabus is 4 measures, as it tacks on a closed change to the beginning and end of the figure, whereas in int'l it's just 2 measures--the natural turn itself. And so on...

One obvious pro for the american style way, in the DVIDA syllabus at least, is that in every figure that I can think of, the man always starts on the left foot, and the lady on the right. Not that this is a big deal for advanced dancers, BUT for newer dancers it's a huge help. But then again, as DM said, the other side of the coin here is that two figures that can easily be combined to take out the "fluff" in the end and beginning are not done so in many cases, so dances may not flow as smoothly. However, I think astute students soon figure this out, and even better, most competent teachers will help students to be able to do this. It should be part of the learning process anyway. Especially in private lessons, I think it naturally occurs that students learn to change weight to either foot before beginning something, so I think this advantage is minimal.

One big disadvantage is that technique books are friggin huge compared to Int'l style ;-)

[Tzah]

Ah- this I get.

When we're helping people get hand-to-hands, parallels, etc. some times the guy (usually the guy, sorry to say) gets SO frustrated, he'll blurt out "Just... just tell me how many! I gotta know exactly how many!" and "well... um.. any amount so long as you come out on this..." won't suffice. They NEED that TV-dinner-style. The ladies pick it up (our studio has *the* best backleaders *giggle*) just fine, but these guys are so frustrated. It's a combination of "I feel g@y doing this" and "I'll NEVER get this, and whenever I goof up, my female is going to read me the riot act for spoiling her dreams of becoming a princess, this is just too d@mned hard" and of course "Heh. That's easy- look at how they're doin' it- it's JUST walking/turning/whatever... I can do THAT"... and when they can't Just do that, it's "Well- they're doin' somethin else... it LOOKS the same, but it ain't."

So we just kind of feel them out a little before we go "you can do this OR this", or "we'll START WITH this many, then LATER.."

[tangotime]

I .

One obvious pro for the american style way, in the DVIDA syllabus at least, is that in every figure that I can think of, the man always starts on the left foot, and the lady on the right.


;-)

Blame A/M for that-- he believed in simplification- EVERYTHING must start on the mans left.

Its actually not a bad idea- I use it in my social classes at the beginning , and wean them off very gradually .

[saludas]

Blame A/M for that-- he believed in simplification- EVERYTHING must start on the mans left.

Its actually not a bad idea- I use it in my social classes at the beginning , and wean them off very gradually .

Yeah, but it's really hard to break folks of that habit - they 'hop to change weight' to the 'right foot' no matter how clearly you show them things.

I firmly believe that teaching people to change weight is more important than figures, in the context of actual dancing...

[biggestbox]

Yeah, but it's really hard to break folks of that habit - they 'hop to change weight' to the 'right foot' no matter how clearly you show them things.

I firmly believe that teaching people to change weight is more important than figures, in the context of actual dancing...

This is probably one of the most basic and advanced skills in dance. Movement of course starts from foot to foot and once you understand this, you are probably a pretty advanced dancer to begin with. Even at competitions like Blackpool people talk about dancers dancing "off the floor."

[cornutt]

Ah- this I get.

When we're helping people get hand-to-hands, parallels, etc. some times the guy (usually the guy, sorry to say) gets SO frustrated, he'll blurt out "Just... just tell me how many! I gotta know exactly how many!" and "well... um.. any amount so long as you come out on this..." won't suffice.

Er, I don't think it's exclusively a leads' problem. I can't tell you how many times I've, for instance, tried to extend a grapevine down to the end of a long wall, and then had my follow balk because "it doesn't have that many steps!"

[tanya_the_dancer]

One obvious pro for the american style way, in the DVIDA syllabus at least, is that in every figure that I can think of, the man always starts on the left foot, and the lady on the right. Not that this is a big deal for advanced dancers, BUT for newer dancers it's a huge help. But then again, as DM said, the other side of the coin here is that two figures that can easily be combined to take out the "fluff" in the end and beginning are not done so in many cases, so dances may not flow as smoothly. However, I think astute students soon figure this out, and even better, most competent teachers will help students to be able to do this. It should be part of the learning process anyway. Especially in private lessons, I think it naturally occurs that students learn to change weight to either foot before beginning something, so I think this advantage is minimal.

One big disadvantage is that technique books are friggin huge compared to Int'l style ;-)

Sometimes even if the teacher tries to take the fluff out, the leads will balk at the change. One lead I know says that he understands that all these half-boxes and similar in the beginning and end can be taken out, but he needs them to regroup before starting a new pattern.

[Josh]

Sometimes even if the teacher tries to take the fluff out, the leads will balk at the change. One lead I know says that he understands that all these half-boxes and similar in the beginning and end can be taken out, but he needs them to regroup before starting a new pattern.

Yes, it's quite difficult for leaders to do this in early stages of dancing... I remember being there myself and having such a hard time linking things together, it was quite frustrating!!

[NielsenE]

My pet peeve is that you CAN'T take the fluff out.... if you do you get invigilated.... Why I would greatly prefer an element based syllabus, even if you get more complicated precedes/follows to deal with...

I'm happy with the way FADS is revisiting their syllabus, in spite of some of the proliferation of syllabi its causing. They basically have 4 "levels" below Silver (and two of them have 4 sub-levels. My impression is (of course I never went through the bottom three of these there so its just by observation not experience)

1: Newcomer -- 5 figures in 6 dances. Element based
2. Social Foundation -- 10 figures in more dances, but not all. Element/short amalgamation based (ie nothing over 4 bars that I've seen)
3. "New" Bronze -- 10 figues in most dances, 5 in some. (actually its their old bronze from about 10 years ago) -- Element Based
4. "Advanced Bronze" -- 10 figures in most dances, 5 in some. 8 bar amalgamations. In theory these patterns are built out of the elements in "New" Bronze; in practice they still seem to sample liberally from concepts I would consider to be silver.

(This isn't even getting into their "DanceSport" variants/endings/extensions to each of the regular advanced bronze patterns)

Many teachers seem to be using the "Advanced Bronze" syllabus now as a tool for showing how to build interesting patterns from the elements, rather than as a hard-and-fast gospel.

Also earlier last year, I had fun unifying USITD/DVIDA bronze -- turned out in most cases you could capture both syllabi's amalgamations in ~12 elements per dance. Silver got a little tougher and I left that project for a while.... you start to end up with a lot of figures like say the Oversway in International Tango, where you need to list lots of possible variant endings/resolutions which can get a little messy....

[tanya_the_dancer]

My pet peeve is that you CAN'T take the fluff out.... if you do you get invigilated.... Why I would greatly prefer an element based syllabus, even if you get more complicated precedes/follows to deal with...


Is it just for FADS competitions or in general? I compete pro-am in smooth and standard and my teacher usually links everything without the fluff in smooth as much as he can, and I don't remember us getting into any trouble because of this.

[NielsenE]

Its at least FADS... I wouldn't be surprised if it were true at any "Closed" competition -- ie an AMI, or DVIDA-only event would have similar rules, but wouldn't expect an non-closed competition to be able to be that picky...

[Tzah]

Cornutt:

^turns Tzah's Box of Generalizations upside down and points to "poster may occasionally forget to add all appropriate disclaimers to prevent discrimination^
:-)

[Sunshines Partner]

I know the Bronze and most of the Silver FADS syllabus. Can you tell me what you mean by fluff?
Thanks.

[waltzgirl]

I think they mean things like the half box that precedes and/or follows the main part of many of the smooth patterns as they are listed in the syllabus. It's possible to cut those out and just go from the main element of one pattern to the next (if you know how to fit they together that way).

[Terpsichorean Clod]

It goes back to the thing of starting figures with the leader's left foot. If you have something, say, like a natural figure, beginning RF and ending RF free, DVIDA would likely "package" it with a half box at the beginning and end of the sequence.

[NielsenE]

I know the Bronze and most of the Silver FADS syllabus. Can you tell me what you mean by fluff?
Thanks.

There's a number of figures that start with an Open Twinkle and the first half of an Open Right; and a lot of figures that end with back half open right/open impetus and continuity ending -- or something that is effectively the same action with a foot fake for the leader. Bar 3 of one figure would follow bar 6 very easily and feels more natural than basically opening to PP, closing to OP, opening back to PP, closing to OP.

One example is Jazz Points followed by Promenade Runs in Foxtrot (for not-FADS people these aren't what most people thing of as PP/CPP runs, just some progressive Q's in PP). It feels much more natural/smooth to go into bar 3 of PP runs after finishing the Jazz points.

This is orthongal to the "unfortunate" bars added to an amalagation that might help teach a concept, but ruin the flow of a figure -- such as the sways at the end of Stepping Out.

[etp777]

Don't forget even that with the bronze or new/social bronze FA syllabus, you also have an extra sheet that is just called Bronze elements, that breaks out most of the elements we're talking about (thjough not all, some are still only done as part of the longer patterns).

This has been discussed before in a thread I started asking about makin gup own patterns as a bronze student.

I agree with DM though, dancers who learn the seperate elements are DEFINTEILY more flexible than those who just know the longer patterns. Both in general dancing, and particularly in floorcraft.

[Josh]

Its at least FADS... I wouldn't be surprised if it were true at any "Closed" competition -- ie an AMI, or DVIDA-only event would have similar rules, but wouldn't expect an non-closed competition to be able to be that picky...

I guess closed comps would by necessity be more picky, just due to their nature. But regular comps are not picky at all in this respect. In fact, I frequently dance international-style figures in closed American routines as well, as long as they're of a similar nature. Sometimes this is not okay, but the vast majority of comps and judges are more concerned with your dancing, not with how your figures are linked or where they came from.

[NielsenE]

Yeah, from what I'm used to in both collegiate/usa dance/ndca settings that's true. But lately I've been a purely FADS guy... The other unfortunate side effect of amalgamation based syllabi -- especially when everything is 8 bars long -- is since the figures are all already phrased and start on the 1 of the first bar, most people end up dancing off-phrase or waiting a full 8 bars to start... Some basic elements or 4/6 bar patterns would be very nice to allow a start on the 1 of the 3rd bar for example and still stay on phrase if you're stuck using the franchises amalgamations...

[Josh]

I must say that musically, I really like how every DVIDA tango figure stays on phrase. I don't like the rigidity, but I do like the convenience ;-)

[tsb]

perhaps it would help to look at the historical roots of the ISTD. richard powers, dance historian and member of the faculty at Stanford describes it this way (you can find the following and other essays on the stanford dance website):


In the 19th century, most social dances were either turning couple dances (waltz, polka, schottische, etc.) or set dances (quadrilles, contra dances, etc.). The set dances were memorized or prompted patterns, while the turning couple dances and their variations were usually improvised.

Then toward the end of the 19th century some dance masters began to compose sequences of waltz steps to be memorized and executed by dance academy students. Most of these were composed by English dance masters, like William Lamb who choreographed his St. George's Waltz sequence in 1896. This led to the creation of a Sequence Dance movement in London at the turn of the century, where hundreds of dancers would memorize sequence waltzes like Arthur Morris' Veleta (1900) and then non-waltzes like S. W. Painter's Eva Three-Step (1904), eventually embracing one-steps, two-steps, tangos and foxtrots (which the English preferred to call saunters).

Different populations of dancers had different preferences, and by 1910 there was a strong class division between those who preferred freestyle vs. sequence dances. The upper classes in London preferred freestyle dancing while the working class in the outskirts preferred the sequence dances, and would hold weekly balls where hundreds would gather to learn and perform a large and rapidly growing number of sequence dances.

The creation and standardization of these sequence dances was controlled by several organizations which appeared at this time, most notably the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) and the British Association of Teachers of Dancing (BATD). Today's "international" (a euphemism for British) competition ballroom dancing is overseen by the ISTD, which was founded in London in July 1904 for "The fraternal co-operation of properly qualified teachers of dancing in the British Empire and foreign countries for the safeguarding of our mutual interests." (Quoted from their charter)

A trademark of the working classes is upward mobility. The blue-collar work ethic embraced the mastery of sequence dances, which soon evolved into competition ballroom dancing, as a way to elevate one's social position through perseverance and hard work. These roots are still visible today.


the point? we'll throw out the class distinctions while still trying to appreciate the historical underpinnings. for whatever reasons, some people want to assimilate sequenced figures and not necessarily want to understand the elements that allow for improvisational/freestyle dancing. for those types of students, the approach of teaching amalgamations makes much more sense IMO - and such, it becomes incumbent on each teacher to perceive the motivation & goals of their students.

[tangotime]

perhaps it would help to look at the historical roots of the ISTD. richard powers, dance historian and member of the faculty at Stanford describes it this way (you can find the following and other essays on the stanford dance website):





It is of interest to note, that little if any, props, is seldom given to the American teachers ( by the Estab ), who were at that time, dancing a form of F/trot among other dances . It was a D.G. Mac Lennan that introduced it to the English teachers in 1914 , after a visit to the States.

The moves at hand, were already well formulated, and if anything, as usual, the dances that we " adopted ", have eventually come to bear little resemblance ,to their original form ( amer br. being somewhat of an exception ).

It might be fair to say that a whole set of " new? " dances were created to fit a circumstance .

Being trained in the UK., you might be surprised ( maybe not ) of how little is known about the dance heritage of what we have come to know as the Intern.style . More to the point, many teachers in the UK have felt in the past ( and some even now ) that the Amer. dance standards are somewhat inferior .
I showed a tape of the Amer br. smooth to a colleague recently, and he was quite taken with some of the material danced at social levels .
When I did my lecture at the IDTA congress 18 months ago, there was great interest shown, but no follow up.

I was surprised to find out recently( by accident ) that there were certain examiners visiting schools, and introducing the Silver standard in smooth.

So-- finally-- is it going to get the recognition it deserves ? . I believe it will.

[FatBaldGuy60]

Sometimes even if the teacher tries to take the fluff out, the leads will balk at the change. One lead I know says that he understands that all these half-boxes and similar in the beginning and end can be taken out, but he needs them to regroup before starting a new pattern.

I love seeing new/different entries and exits to things. For example, we learned fifth position breaks in rumba with an exit with a quarter turn to closed position. But I saw someone coming right out into a XBL, and tried that, which worked nicely [at least that is the way I think it worked; we didn't do rumba in our rhythym lesson last week since we brought bakc swing which we will need for the comp in April, and I am notorius for my bad memory]. It helps me to look different that the "cookie-cutter" couples in group who "balk" at the changes.

My instructor has said a number of times that women even enjoy dancing simple moves if they are done well and with some variety. This also helps me to try to get my wife to follow instead of go on auto pilot.

FBG