Rhythm 101

Some people say they have no rhythm, that they’re rhythmically challenged. And it’s true. They’ve got no rhythm. But have no fear! A better understanding of rhythm is just a few moments away. And with it, something to play with and practice and incorporate into all your dancing. Like many of the things I teach, it’s something that is obvious once you hear it, but not obvious until you hear it.

This is something I knew to do dancing from before I started dancing. I don’t know where I learned it or picked it up. No teacher ever taught me it, and as a teacher myself I didn’t think to teach it. Until one day I read a book about note grouping. I thought “Oh my gosh! I’ve done this forever in my own dancing and never realized to teach it and it’s something some of my students are missing.”

Many people I’ve taught who say they have no rhythm can hear the beat of the music, clap or tap or do what ever perfectly to it. Some of them have near perfect internal metronomes (maybe that’s something that screws them up). And that’s all great, but not really what rhythm is.

They can also all speak fine. What? Why is that important you might ask. Language has an important skill that they’re not applying to their dancing. And many people, especially if they learned dance later in life don’t apply right away to their dancing with out some direction or instruction.

All languages have rhythm. Each language has a different rhythm. It allows us to understand word breaks. It’s why for a language we don’t know we can’t hear the word breaks. And why for a language we do know, we can hear the work breaks even if we can’t understand the words. And it’s why it’s recommended to take dance lessons or listen to the music when you move to a new country so that you can pick up the language faster.

What’s important about language is what needs to be done to your dancing. Not all syllables or in the case of dancing beats (or movements) should be danced the same. English and the romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc) have a particular up-down pattern to the syllables. One syllable is accented, then the next not, then the next after that is accented. And this is half way to understanding rhythm.

In dancing (and playing music) we need to group notes together. Grouping them together into groups of 2s or 3s on the lowest level and then grouping those groups into bigger groups. Here’s a super important point – in dancing (or playing music) – we need to increase the intensity or strength of the accent as we go.

Let’s take a look at Cha Cha. On the basic level we have:

1    2    3    4 &

In the Latin dances (Cha Cha, Rumba, etc) we group across the measure boundary to end on the 1. (In the American dances – like Swing – we group staying within the boundary of the measure.) That will give us a very different feeling for the music.

So let’s re-arrange a bit…

2    3    4  &  1

Now let’s group them (into a group of two and a group of three), and increase the intensity and accent of the beats…

2    3        4  &  1

So now we have something very different to dance. We’ve all seen dancers that dance every step the same. Maybe you cringe a bit when you see it (I cringe a bit). Maybe you realize what you’re seeing, maybe you don’t, maybe it just looks wrong, or feels wrong to you. If you’ve listened to computer generated music and it just felt dry, un-alive, un-feeling. Yes, the notes are all there, the playing was all the same though.

This is not just for ballroom or latin dancing. This is important for modern and ballet too. I saw a performance just recently. In this performance there was a section where all the dancers were out on stage doing a sequence of things. And most of them, just were don’t a very even rhythm, except for one. That one was doing this beautifully grouped and accented version of what everyone else was doing. It was beautiful.

Now, all rules in art you should have, you should follow most of the time, and sometimes you should just break them. As one of Wally’s student’s quoted of Wally: “You know all my rules, this is not an exam, go break them, break them all!” (Wally being Walter Laird – that cool dude who wrote the Latin syllabus). Understand note grouping. Use it most of the time – build a rapport with your audience through the music. And then break it and take them on a wonderful intellectual and artistic journey. Entertain, enlighten, and educate all at the same time.