What’s the difference between dancing on time and dancing on Rhythm?

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EdgarCuevasCruz

Changui
Mi pregunta surgió después de escuchar a un profesor de Mambo/on-2 decir que la mayoría de los maestros, bailarines y alumnos solo bailan a tiempo, pero no al ritmo de la canción. Dice que el tiempo solo te permite saber dónde o cuándo pisar o cuándo empieza la canción, pero el ritmo es diferente.

So what’s basically the Rhythm? Because I believe the Rhythm depends of the instruments playing and they’ll play accordingly to the time of the music.
 
Rhythm is repetition of events in time, time would be when exactly that happens.
There could be contradictions, there could be no contradictions. That quote is not enough.

Each instrument in the arrangement have their own rhythms. In salsa they usually are quite straight and exact. So dancing on time would be stepping and transferring the weight at the same time when instruments play. (Which instruments? What if they contradict? Another discussion topic) Dancing behind time would be doing your dance moves slightly later, would give you chill relaxed feel. Dancing ahead of time would give you rushed exciting feel.

It's possible that dancer decides to step in their own (implied) rhythm that matches music only at few points and ignores specific rhythms that musical instruments play. For classes it could be dancing "on count" 123(4)547(8). Music is never this exact (let's skip generated music).

Practically, just dance at home to the songs you like in the way you like and let music grow with your body. You'll have your own style. Everyone hears music a bit differently and likes to express it a bit differently. Then go to the parties and see/feel how others feel the music. Learn and absorb from your partners, from better dancers. There are many good ways to dance.

Classes are simplified for a reason to teach material easier, in real life you need to mold the material for each song, partner, mood, floor, surroundings, etc.
 
Hm. It hink it is a silly thing to say. What's the difference between timing and rhythm?

"Rhythm is the pattern of sound in time, like a heartbeat, while timing is the skill of playing or singing that pattern at the right speed and in synchronization with others. In music, rhythm is the structure or the arrangement of notes, whereas timing is the player's ability to execute that structure accurately and together with an ensemble."
I think the on2 teacher is trying to be esoteric. Perhaps he means within the rhythmic structure instead of exactly on the pulse. In the pocket is the term I believe.

Also i refuse to call it Mambo since original Mambo was taps on 1 3 5 7, and kick 1 swivels on 234, kick 5 swivels on 678. The "Mambo basic" is the forward and back variation of the SON step.
See.. it's not just him that can be difficult.
 
I wouldn't rule out that there's something to it. Thinking of it like playing music: There can be a difference between playing mathematically precisely to the metronome and adding some imprecision (deliberate or not). E.g. swinging. Nevermind that "mathematically precise" isn't even that clear of a concept, think "attack" (which translates to a step not being a single moment in time, but actually spreading over a whole beat, and you can vary how to do that -- when does the foot lift, arrive? timing of weight shift).

And then there's synchronizing with others in a group. Is it the same if you synchronize via a metronome? If you have a shared sense of rhythm? Does it shine through if the musicians are internally keeping track of 1234 or clave? How easy is it to get individually recorded instruments in a studio setting to gel, compared to a group playing together live?

Dancing to music is a lot like playing an instrument. (And dancing with a partner who lacks rhythm is a lot like somebody playing the campana wrong...)

I started out counting. Now if I'm practicing conciously, I usually vocalize clave (or sometimes other instruments). But sometimes, I manage to lose track of the analytical understanding of the music entirely, and have to take concious effort during the dance to zero in on an instrument to determine the count and figure out what timing we're dancing. I think that's a good thing, and it makes me empathize with the dancers who started out with a "natural" feel for the rhythm and are then confronted with counting in a class setting.
 
Yes I agree these are different. Dancing 'on time' means you are stepping according to the base beat of the 4:4 time signature.

But salsa is polyrhythmic, so there are different instruments that play other rhythms which are complementary to the base beat. I would say that dancing 'to the rhythm ' means taking all these complementary instruments and rhythms into account.

If dancing 'on time,' what you are doing would work with any salsa song that has the same bpm. But dancing 'on rhythm' might look different for 3:2 clave and timbales cáscara vs 2:3 clave and timbales mambo bell (random examples, I'm not a percussionist).

Dancing with someone who is 'off time,' like they can't hear the beat, is really awful.

Dancing with someone who is on time but ignoring the rhythmic complexity can be fine, perfectly serviceable, even solidly fun as long as they don't prevent *you* from responding to the different rhythms.

Dancing with someone who is *in* all of the rhythms with you is wow!
 
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How and Whys of Tango Musicality

The tools of this are floorcraft and shared musicality, and when it goes right it creates a unique pulse and energy on the dancefloor. But i think this requires too many things to go right for this to happen in most communities, so i am mostly content to work on my partner dance. Here, this is...
www.dance-forums.com www.dance-forums.com


“So I would like you to demonstrate the difference between playing Bach as a technical exercise and then investing your musicality in it and making it beautiful. Because it's easy to think, oh, it's a kind of bunch of, like, grand arpeggios, some of it.”
You can hear Yo Yo Ma playing it technically and then musically.

“Everybody who plays Suzuki Book 5 will play this piece. And so but bourree is a dance, right? So you're thinking dance, and a dance, a particular dance with steps and you know, the dance master would create a dance every week for people to dance on the weekends. So people were really working hard at dances, so. You put a kind of lightness to your step. It turns it into something that titillates someone else's imagination to say, oh yeah, I can dance to that. As Mark Morris' dance group choreographed a whole suite to this music, to dancers who then created a dance for this bourree. Does that make sense“

“It was interesting. Now, why is this beautiful? Well, as a 4-year-old, I learned it, you know, fairly easily. Kids absorb things, as a sponge absorbs water - really easily. After 9 years old, you don't pick up languages naturally. You actually you start to analyze things. You use your mind. And it's a different process of assimilation. So by the time I got to my 20s or 30s, this piece became hard. Because how do I play it? How do I - and what I discovered and what made it so beautiful for me is that whereas it was hard to start, but if I thought of an image of water, of a brook or a river, and if I thought that the piece started before I began and I just joined the water - you know what it is about a river? It's never the same river, but you always call it the same river, but the water's never the same. So if I think of a water element, here's what it ends up sounding like.”
 
Great question!

In short, rhythm defines what and how, timing defines when. Rhythm is the sound each musician makes, timing is how they stay in sync, even if this is the first time, even if it involves complex breaks like transitioning from one instrument to another.

For dancing, it works the same way. Two people dance for the first time to a song they never heard of, how they stay in sync? They rely on the timing of the song, which means they must hear the same timing. What each dancer does is basically their own dancer's rhythm, counterpart to musician's instrument rhythm.

When two experienced dancers come together, they hear the same timing from the song, thus able to move smoothly between lead and follow. That's on time. But if one is newbie, still dance on count, then often the feeling is rush and drag.

But when two great dancers come together, they can go further, not just dance on time but also in rhythm. That means they are able to match their dancer rhythm to the instrument rhythm of the music. Their dancers' peak and valley is perfectly matched to music's peak and valley. One best example is this clip, a song full of breaks and awesome when dancers hit them all, like Terry and Martina. That's dancing on time and in rhythm!

 
MamboCha said:
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I have seen this clip posted several times on the forums. I realized it is one of my fav social dancing. Close to perfection or almost perfect.

I seen Martina dance so many times and she is always a fantastic dancer. But in the clip she is taking it to a whole new level even by her standards. The best thing I like about this clip is how uninhibitedly joyful she is when dancing. Musicality wise this one of the best dances I seen a clip of .

This is also the one of Terry’s best social dancing clip for me. Except for a bit of terrying for half a minute in the middle, it clearly shows he ability to be musical without crazy partnerwotk. While he is also enjoying (who wouldn’t with a partner like her), you can see big difference between the expression of joy between the two. While Martina’s emanating joy externally, Terry’s face is relatively serious and his joy is all internal .
 
My suggestion when dancing with people like Martina or Terry is forget about count, rhythm, time, and just go with the music and flow.
Easier said than done, but I've had many good dances with her with such approach.
 
Smejmoon said:
My suggestion when dancing with people like Martina or Terry is forget about count, rhythm, time, and just go with the music and flow.
Easier said than done, but I've had many good dances with her with such approach.
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What you mean by let go of rhythm and time. They are both very much in the rhythm and in time in that clip.
 
Offbeat said:
What you mean by let go of rhythm and time. They are both very much in the rhythm and in time in that clip.
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When you are with the music you'll be with the rhythm and time automatically. You don't need to think about that, neither you can during such a rich dance. And if you do, you'll spoil the dance by taking your attention away from it.
 
Smejmoon said:
When you are with the music you'll be with the rhythm and time automatically. You don't need to think about that, neither you can during such a rich dance. And if you do, you'll spoil the dance by taking your attention away from it.
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Right On! My read...

Body and music are two entities moving in parallel lines. When we dance, we try to match, at various points, our rhythm breaks and valleys and peaks to those in music. But when two masters meet, on the rare occasion of being on top of their game and going through a magic moment, the two lines fused into one. No longer dancing to music, they are IN the music, like another musician, and body is the instrument. Timing and rhythm just flow through, so focus is instead on creating spontaneous sparks.

For Terry and Martina, this happens the entire song. That's the ultimate Dance in Rhythm! Special shout out to her for matching every dot, in a dazzling array of matching moves, mirrored moves, counter moves.

And I'm thankful for this kind of video taping. Dynamic and organic magics simply don't repeat.
 
MamboCha said:
Body and music are two entities moving in parallel lines. When we dance, we try to match, at various points, our rhythm breaks and valleys and peaks to those in music. But when two masters meet, on the rare occasion of being on top of their game and going through a magic moment, the two lines fused into one. No longer dancing to music, they are IN the music, like another musician, and body is the instrument. Timing and rhythm just flow through, so focus is instead on creating spontaneous sparks.
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And when you dance with something that actually exists in the music - a melody line, shift of mood, or energy, then these people understand. They understand why you did it and can answer in the same language.
And while it's a skill, I don't know how these two know so many songs, it's also an attitude. Willingness to open the ears and move.
 
Smejmoon said:
They understand why you did it and can answer in the same language.
And while it's a skill, I don't know how these two know so many songs, it's also an attitude. Willingness to open the ears and move.
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its two different skills. You can do former without later. What I meant is you can be as musical in dancing and dance movements without knowing the song. Knowing it before hand is not a requisite. You need to have mastery of movement and able to move yourself in expressing the music.

Let’s say they do know the music. But DJ cuts of certain parts of the song for some reason. May be to shorten the song. They would still be able to dance the same.

What I am trying to refute is that people think because they know the music they can dance and synch so well. They would be able to do so for music that they are hearing for the first time too.

Ability to mirror each other (which they did in that clip) requires two skills as well. One is able to respond to the partner in split second and second is having tools/skills to move yourself body in the same way (similar).

MamboCha said:
Special shout out to her for matching every dot, in a dazzling array of matching moves, mirrored moves, counter moves.
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She is very bit equal. To me there were more times where Terry was matching her moves and mirroring them. Particularly when they were dancing apart. She seemed to initiate and he was mirroring her.

I rarely seen Terry dancing this way. I seen him dance countless times in person.
 
Smejmoon said:
And when you dance with something that actually exists in the music - a melody line, shift of mood, or energy, then these people understand. They understand why you did it and can answer in the same language.
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Indeed! For mere mortals, most of us just oblivious to all these breaks, as evident by everyone around them. But for these two, every break, from melodic bursts to rhythm pauses to instrumentation shifts to actual timing stops, is the turning of another page. The 2.00min to 3.00 min mark is just insane, nothing learned from any school, nothing seen ever again. Just watching it put me in cloud 9...
Smejmoon said:
And while it's a skill, I don't know how these two know so many songs, it's also an attitude. Willingness to open the ears and move.
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Well Martina is/was a DJ so a walking jukebox. And this is the only time I've seen Terry out sang by partner, hands down.

Another clip of them dancing recently is much more down to earth. Martina in fact got shaded by commenters referencing this clip. Kudo to her, freely admitting.. yeah I'm getting old.
 
Offbeat said:
What I am trying to refute is that people think because they know the music they can dance and synch so well. They would be able to do so for music that they are hearing for the first time too.
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Absolutely! In fact knowing can be a downside too. As you said often DJ had own cut of the song, so knowing it then hearing it different from expected could easily throw many dancers off. Ever harder with live music as bands always play well known songs differently. So for great dancers, knowing it or hearing it for the first time hardly makes a difference.
Offbeat said:
She is very bit equal. To me there were more times where Terry was matching her moves and mirroring them. Particularly when they were dancing apart. She seemed to initiate and he was mirroring her.

I rarely seen Terry dancing this way. I seen him dance countless times in person.
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Glad you get the same feeling too. I mentioned she sang more than he as that's more clear. But this point is less clear cut. Credit to her!
 
MamboCha said:
Ever harder with live music as bands always play well known songs differently.
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Indeed. I was going to point out that fact about live music. Not too many people have grown up dancing salsa to live music as beginners. I did. Many people in tango and salsa explicitly say they don’t like dancing to live music.Primary or only reason is because they don’t know the music live band will play. I always found that puzzling.


MamboCha said:
So for great dancers, knowing it or hearing it for the first time hardly makes a difference.
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+1
MamboCha said:
Glad you get the same feeling too. I mentioned she sang more than he as that's more clear. But this point is less clear cut. Credit to her!
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:)
 
Smejmoon said:

Or like here: notice that they know song very well, still mess around with timings and rhythms.
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If you are deliberately messing around with timing and rhythm that can be artistic freedom. Or doing it to inject some excitement. When you know the rules, it is okay to break them.
 
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