"Anonymous. Don't write rubbish. You can't name me one teacher or coach or competitor in Latin or Modern who doesn't count. If you don't you will go off time that's garanteed."

You inexperience is showing...

The reality is that counting is almost a sure-fire way to be always slightly off time.

Yes, when you don't yet have a reliable feel for the music, counting is a good place to start.

But at some point, when you have developed a reliable feel, counting becomes an extra thing interfering between you and the music. And that is when you have to stop doing it.

Perhaps from time to time your feelings will get a little shaky and you will want to practice counting some for a while. Perhaps you do it at the beginning of each song. But in the long run, COUNTING INTERFERES WITH MUSIC. It is an extra, though-based translation stage that must go away if you want to intimately involve your body with the music.

Anonymous. Have you ever strummbed your fingers or taped your foot to a piece of music. Do you strum to the beat or do you strum between the beats. If you do it on the beat are you not counting if you did it between the beats are you not counting. Do you find it possible to tap your fingers off the beat. Try it if you can, or anybody else for that manner. Lets have an answer there.
Lets get serious. how can you after a Tipple Chasse Quickstep change the timing to four quicks on a Running Finish. Could you on one Fallaway Slip Pivot Waltz do the timing 1 2 3 and. As well as another 1 2 and 3.without counting. How about a Tele Spin. where the lady has one more step than the man. The man has to let one beat go by. Can you do that without being aware of the number of beats. I don't think so.
And you completely left Latin off the agender didn't you.

"Anonymous. Have you ever strummbed your fingers or taped your foot to a piece of music."

Yes. And most music teachers try very very hard to cure students of that habit. In the end it actually gets in the way of interpretation. Instead of ear to finger/tounge/diaphram, you insert this wholly unecessasry foot stage in between. I've known conductors who will scream at you from the podium if they see you tapping your foot.

"Lets get serious. how can you after a Tipple Chasse Quickstep change the timing to four quicks on a Running Finish. Could you on one Fallaway Slip Pivot Waltz do the timing 1 2 3 and. As well as another 1 2 and 3.without counting."

By directly interpreting the music.

A student first puzzling this out may need to the use the tool that is counting. But a DANCER just moves to the music, with no intermediate stage necessary.

Your posts strongly indicate the worldview of a beginner/intermediate who thinks they know everything based on the authority of the quite limited information available to them... when in reality, there's a whole world of championsship practice of which you've seen only the glimpses packaged for sale to the general public or passed on by those on the edge of it.

Take occasional lessons with true champions (not average quarterfinalists) and learn about some of the things set winners apart from those quarterfinalists.

"How about a Tele Spin. where the lady has one more step than the man. The man has to let one beat go by. Can you do that without being aware of the number of beats. I don't think so."

Absolutely. Try participating in your partner's dancing. You may not be changing weight there, but she is, and you have a role to play in that.

Anonymous. I thought you might have asked. Why would it be neccessary to change the timing. But you didn't.

"Anonymous. I thought you might have asked. Why would it be neccessary to change the timing. But you didn't."

It did strike me as a little wierd, but it's not always necessary to pass judgment on others artistic choices.

Especially when there are more glaring errors in their technical methods!

If you have a choice of disagreeing with someone where they have gotten a basic, widely known thing wrong, always go for that, rather than the opinion issue.

In the end, when you get to the point where you can stop counting and simply interpret the music, you won't have to worry about what is changing the timing or not. Because you often will not even conciously know the timing you danced - you will simply know that you danced what fit the music. Change the style of music within the same dance and a different timing might result. Dance the same figure at a different point in the phrase and a different timing might result. But you do not necessarily have to be aware of it, once it is a part of you.

You can construct an appoximation of dancing numerically, and that is a good thing to do as a STUDENT. But when dancing becomes as natural a part of your life as walking, you will not be thinking about its technique simply to do it. You will still study of course. But a lot of the time, you will simply be a DANCER.

Anonymous. If you were a judge and a couple were continuously dancing 3412 instead of 1234. Would you mark them down. If we are not counting how would we know. Have you noticed how a few judges tap there foot to the beat. If you did a Quarter Turn and a Progresive Chasse into a Lock Step and wanted to do a Natural figure .( a V Six would do ). How would you get back into rythm after the Lock Step. This is why I pose the question. Is it neccessary to change the timing, and if it is, how would you do that without being aware of the beats.

"Anonymous. If you were a judge and a couple were continuously dancing 3412 instead of 1234. Would you mark them down. If we are not counting how would we know."

By LISTENING to the music.

If you have to count in order to listen, then you are not yet very good at listening.

Counting can be a good way to start towards improving your ability to pay attention to the music, but it is an artifical relationship to it. It would be as if when listening to another person, you had to under your breath or even silently repeate each word before you could understand it.

When you get to the point where the music speaks directly to you, you will not need to count any more in order to be on time.

"If you did a Quarter Turn and a Progresive Chasse into a Lock Step and wanted to do a Natural figure .( a V Six would do ). How would you get back into rythm after the Lock Step."

By adjusting where I started the group in relation to the music. Or by extending something an extra two count. Simply replacing a single slow with a quick will do nothing but put the emphasis of all the steps exactly off. The two quick pairing of stress must be preserved, whears preserving the measure is important at the beginnings and ends of phrases, but not necessary at other times - indeed, in a quickstep or a tango dancing figures 3412 can impart a very nice sense of "not done yet" sustenence through a grouping. That should be used much more sparingly in the foxtrot though.


This is why I pose the question. Is it neccessary to change the timing, and if it is, how would you do that without being aware of the beats.

Anonymous. I was at a lecture given by Espen Salsberg He mentioned that early in his career he found it difficult dancing to bad music. So in his head he split the beats into halfs and counted four beats as Tic a tic a tic a tic a. Those were the words he used. Try that without counting.
Getting away from Latin. If you do not count the beats you will go off time or out of rhythm or both.
Just think about this one. You have said that you dance without music. So you start. What is running through your head. Are you just pacing it out. Or on a Feather Step are you saying to yourself S Q Q S. Of course you are.
In our studio every one is liable to have to count the class in and start them on time with the music. If they want to count in slows and quicks that's ok. The count in, is always in numbers.5 6 7 8 start. They must start in phrase with the music. Can't just start anywhere. It gets even harder sometimes when we are starting in the middle of a group. But we even have a ten year old who can handle it as well as these twelve year olds in the young peoples technique class. If you didn't count you wouldn't survive. I will add to this that in Modern this is an exceptional school. But any of the other schools in Latin I have not struck one when it gets to a higher teaching standard that does not concentrate on the counting as well as the steps. It could be because we have a style here where if you didn't count you wouldn't be able to dance in this style. There are a few dances where the lady has three steps and the man two. After this we have to be on the same beat and step. Failure to do this will result in the whole dance being danced on the wrong beat. Every couple are dancing the same timing.Some of the dances are 16 bar phrased and some 32. All are based on the Modern style. At the end of the phrasing the sequence must be finished ready to start again.I've put this in , it might be of some interest to some to know what goes on the other side of the dancing world.

"Anonymous. I was at a lecture given by Espen Salsberg He mentioned that early in his career he found it difficult dancing to bad music. So in his head he split the beats into halfs and counted four beats as Tic a tic a tic a tic a. Those were the words he used. Try that without counting."

Counting is indeed a usefull tool to use when you are confused.

But counting is an aritificial interefernce between you and the music. If the music speaks directly to you, you do not need to count and in fact counting would severly get in the way. On the other hand, if the music does not yet accurately speak to you, you need to count.

"If you do not count the beats you will go off time or out of rhythm or both."

On the contrary, that is what will happen to you if you rely on counting - and worse, you will not be musical.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The rest of the dance world considers ballroom dancers - even most of our champions - to be very stiff, artifical, and unmusical. And the reason why is because we don't let the music speak to us - we are so obsessed with technical perfection, counting the beats and breaking the movements down in equivelent ways, that we forget to actually listen to the shapes in the music.

"You have said that you dance without music."

No. You need to learn to read more carefully. I said that a good dancer does not need music, because good dancing can be it's own music.

"Or on a Feather Step are you saying to yourself S Q Q S. Of course you are."

Of course I'm NOT. If I were to do that, I would be thinking something related to foxtrot, such as "swing catch drift" or something like that. The numbers mean nothing in foxtrot music, it is the patterns of musical drive and drift, stress and release, which are important.

"In our studio every one is liable to have to count the class in and start them on time with the music."

A tool, but not an end goal. Yet like most ballroom people, you are too caught up in the exercises to understand where it is you are supposed to be going.

Yes, ballroom is more technically demanding than many other dances so you do need to put a lot of work into the exercises. But you will not be A DANCER until you can start letting go of the technique and just trusting your body and your ears, dancing and interpreting the music without thought. Not all the time of course - you will need to keep doing exercises physical and mental, but you are not dancing until you can safely let go of those concerns from time to time.