Creating Smooth Routines

etp777

etp777

Active Member
As mentioned in another thread, I have started putting together little "routines", just to try to help expand my understanding of the dance from another viewpoint (and to give me a memorized something that i can do during parties, lessons, whatever, so I can look like I know what I'm doing ;) ). This is working pretty well for rhythm dances, but having more trouble with the smooth dances. I suspect it's in large part that I don't exactly grasp how you can plan routine for progressive dance. I seem to remember someone saying that you need long and short side to the routine (unless you have a square ballroom I guess). Are there any other rules, or tips, or any guidance anyone might give? I'm trying to find ones we used for comp in march to get some ideas of how teacher wrote them, but not sure where they are right now. Plus, as was almost all social foundation stuff then, didn't have much of anything very long, think everything in those "routines" fit on one side of floor. Particularly with how small of steps I was taking then. :)
 
As a starting place, I would suggest looking at the USISTD Syllabus for Silver Smooth. From here you can learn the different figures (you may already know most of them) and you can see which ones can proceed and follow each other.

Once you get a feel for how to dance the steps you want, dance them and see how much space they take up. You can use this to judge how many steps you will need on each wall. Just remember that you can always adjust the direction of these steps as needed to turn corners or avoid couples.
 
(Well etp777 is an advanced bronze dancer at at a FADS, so the Silver USISTD syllabi probably won't help too much)

Its going to be a little hard to craft "interesting" routines out of preliminary advanced bronze. (Gotta love that juxtaposition "Preliminary Advanced...")

Here's how I tend to start routines, when using the FADS patterns:
a) List each figure you have/want to use
b) list its starting facing and position
c) list its ending facing and position.
(since all teh fads figures start on the same foot you don't need to worry about that...)

Now think about which figures can naturally follow each other. Ie if one figure ends facing DW, but the other figure starts DC, that's going to be a problem. if one ends in PP and on starts closed, likewise thats a problem. Some of these problems are surmountable, but at the beginning I'd try to avoid messing with that.

Also remember that if you finish DC at the end of a wall, you're also DW on the new LoD, which can let you chain different figures.

The next piece I start to worry about is what is the "character" of the step. Is it generally progressive, stationairy, regressive. Stationairy figures tend to want to be placed center of teh long wall or in the corners. Regressive figures (which sadly FADS has some real doozies....) almost have to be either a starting figure, or the end of the long wall, so you have time to make sure you have space behind you, etc.

Finally you can start playing with mixing up types of steps -- primarily closed position, primarily pp, primarily something open -- strongly progressive, strongly turning, pose/lin -- etc. You'll definitely want to pay attention to how much the step moves any strongly progressive step should be considered for along the long wall, especially when you don't have a lot of options with only SF + the 3+3 Advanced Bronze/DS.

My gut instinct (never assembled FADS Bronze routines) is that until you get to either Intermediate Bronze + DS, or Senior Bronze with/without DS you won't have enough material to really make a lot of choices of routine arrangement.
 
Yet again Neilsen, it scares me how much we think alike. Last quarter page of my foxtrot notes is a chart that has three columns. pattern name, direction it starts, direction it ends (and if it turns corner, for #4). Just yesterday started measuring how long they run in relation to short or long leg of our studio and adding it to the table. :)

The rest of that all looks really good, sadly, including fact that I think you might be right on me not having enough for routine yet. my Rumba and chacha one are coming out pretty well (still tweaking), and actually could use at a comp for regular bronze or dancesport entry, but the smooth ones just don't seem to have everything I need yet. one in particular is foxtrot, where with 1-4, everything ends counterclockwise of where it starts, so only way to turn back around to left (which since two of the four start DC, is a muts) is my stupid trouble step, which I want to avoid. Supposedly 5 and I think 7 turn the other way, but don't have those yet.

The silver stuff is probably far outside of my ability for now, but think I'll grab a copy anyway and take a look at it. Just a couple years before I'll actually use them. :)

Thanks guys.
 
Wish I had my notes in front of me....

IIRC for fox, you have Left Rhythm Turn, Right Rhythm Turn
, Grapevine Combination, Left Adlib Turn. (Ithink Pivots and Sways if 5 right? or have I reversed 4 and 5)

So here's how I would think about it -- first try dancing the grapevine variation "full out" see how far you're currently traveling with it. I think its close to 3/4 a long wall by itself once you're really using your feet/legs. If you're traveling that much, then I think I'd follow it with the Right Rhythm Turn to finish off the long wall. If you're not traveling that far, I'd stick the Left Rhythm turn before it. I'd probably slip into some SF (quarter turns/left rock turn(aka trouble step) to turn the corner for now and get say 1/4 of the way down the short wall with SF figures getting into position for the Left Adlib turn/grapevine step to finish off the short wall. I think there's enough flexibiility in the ending alignment of it to reach either DW or DC of the new long wall. and repeat from there.

In reality it doesn't really matter but the Grapevine variation really feels "long wall" to me, while the left-adlib series really feels like "dance into the corner" figure...
 
I suspect you're doing grapvine combination slightly different than I am (though yes, those are 1-4, you just have 3 and 4 reversed). Halfway through we use the twinkle to turn the corner. Certainly no reason I couldn't open the step up along long wall, will ahve to think about that. Actually, that's part of one of steps i am going to try tweaking into my own version, have yet to try it with a partner and see. Looking at taking left turning rhythm halfway through, right to point where you do side together facing wall, and see if I can overrotate that a touch into DW, then go into grapevine combination (or the SF grapevvine, or Right turning rhythm).

Going to play with your suggestion though after work. Suspect after doing chasses and locks, that unwrapping grapevine combination into one long step instead of turning 90 degrees around corner should be no problem, and that does give me a good step for long side then.

But yeah, as you said, i'm stuck with the trouble steps for now. that's life. :)
 
Yeah, my grapveine combination is pure linear, so the middle twinkle turns a bit more to "flatten' out the figure. I think your idea on the left rhythm turn should work. You can probably get about 1/8 of an extra turn as indicated, you could probably get another 1/4 if you really needed it on the sidetogether/ladies underam turn portion.

Chasse and locks, isn't that a waltz figure not a foxtrot?
 
Yeah, was just coming back to clear that up. :) Waltz #3 or something. But at least to my way of thinking, a very similar feel to grapevine combination done your way. In that it's two linear steps, with twinkle halfway through to reverse direction you're facing (without changing the flow of the step down same line still).
 
Just you wait... Senior Silver gets quite crazy, got a waltz "figure" that's basically 1/3 the long wall, all of the short wall, and another 1/4 of the next long wall.... And that's just one "figure".... its 10 bars long... so that single figure is almost 1/3 of a song, given how short they tend to play them at competition.... Definitely messes with your ability to create more "varied" routines from what everyone else is doing
 
can someone link me to a gold smooth syllabi? i know there are like 9 floating out there, but an NDCA or USISTD syllabus would be great.
 
One consideration that I don't see mentioned here. In rythem dances, couples don't travel much, so there's a minimal amount of concern about whether or not you'll run into someone.

However, with smooth dances, you've got to deal with a lot of other people who will be moving in and out of your way. If you try too hard to stick to your routine, and ignore floor craft, you'll start crashing into people.

Make sure you have an "oh $#!%" step available (pick a single basic step) that you can use if someone moves where your choreography doesn't expect them to be.
 
kimV6 said:
can someone link me to a gold smooth syllabi? i know there are like 9 floating out there, but an NDCA or USISTD syllabus would be great.
Click to expand...

Drop me a PM, when I get home I can pull out the USISTD Gold Smooth Manual and write the list of the steps.... or else go to DanceVisions site and look at their videos for Gold Smooth, (the description of the video includes the complete step list for their Gold Smooth syllabi for each dance)
 
tangotime said:
Chasses and locks--in various forms-- all smooth dances .
Click to expand...

yes but in this context its the name of a pattern as used by the franchise at which the poster studies... Within the syllabus he couldn't just move an amalgation or even a basic element from one dance to another.
 
I could, I might annoy my teacher and confuse my follower though. :)

And as you know, syllabus is not always right. just got back from lesson. Went in considering rumba and chacha my two strongest dances. We started on Chacha 4 and that shot chacha completely out of top running. :)
 
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