The Line of Dance

[Spitfire]

We all know the rule. When music for dancing foxtrot is being played those who want to dance swing do so in the middle of the floor while foxtrot is done in the line of dance near the edge, but I've yet to attend a dance anywhere where this is followed strictly. Always there's foxtrotters dancing out of the line of dance and maneuvering has to be done on the part of both to avoid contact. The exception is when there's not many dancers on the floor.

Does anyone here attend dances where this is not a problem?

 

[Joe]

It really depends on the size and shape of the ballroom. If it's really narrow, there just no way that system is going to work. It'd be better for the swing dancers to concentrate in a corner or on one end of the ballroom.

 

[Chris Stratton]

It's not a problem when people only try to do one style of dance (or at least stationary vs moving) on the floor at any given time.

The idea of line of dance as a racetrack around the outside of the room is seriously flawed and hasn't really been applicable for anything but non-dancer social dances for perhaps a half century now. During that time, the travelling dances have been habitually making use of the entire floor area, center included. Most movements have long been formally defined as diagonal, and range from almost touching the wall to close enough to touch hands with those moving down the other side of the floor.

If the number of people on the floor is very small, or if the floor is extremely large, a few stationary couples can be accomodated, but it's going to seriously alter the dance for everyone else. And even then, the center is probably not the best place for them - part way down either long side, over by the wall is less of an impediment to the flow of traffic, as that is an area that the diagonal movements can easily skip.

Really the best solution is to take turns with the different dances. This lets you play music that is ideal for each, instead of those compromise numbers that don't really fit the ideal tempo or style of any dance.

 

[Spitfire]

And I realize that when following a line of dance you often have to move around slower dancers and slower dancers have to move to avoid the quicker ones.

 

[saludas]

And I realize that when following a line of dance you often have to move around slower dancers and slower dancers have to move to avoid the quicker ones.

Slower dancers do NOT have to move to avoid the quicker ones, but the slower dancers have to keep in mind that quicker dancers require different areas of the floor than they do. Floorcraft is the art of sharing the floor with other dancers - courtesy is the key here. A slower dancer (or a faster dancer that decides to be slow for a moment in their movement) needs to understand what their movement does to the floor in general.

 

[Chris Stratton]

This reminds me of something I've always wanted to do - to find a venue with a sufficiently high ceiling to hang a wide-angle camera directly over the floor, and watch the flow from above. Would be interesting to see social dances, as well as high level competition - especially if a software filter were added that blurred the motions into peristence trails fading over 10 seconds or so - or even whole dance persistence so you could see which square feet of floor had and hadn't been used by someone.

Unfortunately, I don't know if even the gyms used for collegiate competitions would be high enough, though they seem like the best bet.

 

[fluffy]

Blackpool Wintergardens has a very high ceiling!!

 

[Chris Stratton]

Yes, would be nice if they would offer a DVD from that perspective!

 

[liangjz]

Always there's foxtrotters dancing out of the line of dance and maneuvering has to be done on the part of both to avoid contact. The exception is when there's not many dancers on the floor.

Does anyone here attend dances where this is not a problem?

Yes, but seldom when the people are really going at it with foxtrot. I've seen some where people dance basic american style foxtrot around the outside and swing on the inside. Then again, EC-swing can be a pretty compact dance and most conflicts I've experienced deal with people dance lindy.

I can't tell what kind of experience you're having, but foxtrot is a dance that fills the entire floor. Put 10 standards couples on the floor and they'll take the whole place up if the floor is small.

Things get really interesting when some dance quickstep and other dance lindy because I think the lindy dancers expect that their entire dance space will be left untouched while QS dancers can often only consider the space occupied by dancers at that very moment and maybe a couple of beats latter.

I think a lot of lindy dancers don't expect to begin a whip with plenty of space only to find, in the middle of whip, that the space is no longer there. If they lindy dancer isn't looking up, collisions occur.

 

[PasoDancer]

Well, our problem is that there are a bunch of old country rednecks still doing the two-step from a hundred years ago. They don't *have* an LOD. They blunder every which way, backwards, forwards, right into you, knocking you off-balance dancing IN BETWEEN OTHER COUPLES so that they could all but change partners on-the-fly, and so forth.

So many senior citizens, so few right-to-carry states...

 

[DennisBeach]

We all know the rule. When music for dancing foxtrot is being played those who want to dance swing do so in the middle of the floor while foxtrot is done in the line of dance near the edge, but I've yet to attend a dance anywhere where this is followed strictly. Always there's foxtrotters dancing out of the line of dance and maneuvering has to be done on the part of both to avoid contact. The exception is when there's not many dancers on the floor.

Does anyone here attend dances where this is not a problem?

Most of the places we go, most people do the dance specified by the DJ. Occasionally we go to big band or open dances and certain people do the schuffle to anything, including Tango, Rumba and ChaCha. I find it greatly complicates floor craft, when some are doing spot dances and others doing dances that move around the floor.

In my opinion, if the DJ says Foxtrot, you do Foxtrot. If they say swing, do swing.

 

[tanya_the_dancer]

Most of the places we go, most people do the dance specified by the DJ. Occasionally we go to big band or open dances and certain people do the schuffle to anything, including Tango, Rumba and ChaCha. I find it greatly complicates floor craft, when some are doing spot dances and others doing dances that move around the floor.

In my opinion, if the DJ says Foxtrot, you do Foxtrot. If they say swing, do swing.

What if a DJ does not say what it is? Seriously, at our studio parties, they don't announce what the song is. Most people figure it out on their own. But on a few occasions I saw some people doing a chacha and some doing a hustle to the same song. This work out OK, though, as both aren't travelling dances. The biggest conflict of stationary vs. travelling happens when they play quickstep and some people decide to do swing to it in the middle of the floor. Our floor is kinda narrow, so "middle" is a more or less non-existent.

 

[samina]

This reminds me of something I've always wanted to do - to find a venue with a sufficiently high ceiling to hang a wide-angle camera directly over the floor, and watch the flow from above.

At Battista's in Hackensack, NJ, the DJ room is on the 2nd floor overlooking (through a glass wall) the dance floor below. It's not directly overhead, but I'm sure it affords some amazing vantage points. And Mario's father, who runs the music, must really have some fun watching the dynamics.

They do regional amateur comps there... maybe you could rig up some cool video there for artistic purposes.

Samina