One of the biggest challenges for dancers is finding the beat. Since celebrating the music is the major reason for dance, and interpreting the music with own styling is what and how your dancing move people, this is really a critical issue. Moreover, if you are serious enough about dancing that you may want to take test or entre a decent competition, you will be told that if you are off time you are placed last no matter how good the technique.
Get the first beat
Obviously, there is a start for all music, and every thing starts with a ‘1’ beat. Even though some songs may have a sound effect or snippet of conversation or other unconventional treatment for the introduction, the first true musical beat you’ll hear in the song is usually still a ‘1’ beat. Once you get the first beat, the rest is to match your feet with the beat.
Time signature and Dancing Timing
Dance music has timing aspects that make each dance unique. The swaying ¾ time of Waltz is different from the crisp 2/4 time of Samba; although we practically we group 6 in the Waltz and 8 in the Samba, the way we count does not change the time signature, it only tells us to treat 2 bars, or its multiples, as a phrase.
Musical emphasis
Throughout the song, the ‘1’ beat usually receives slightly more emphasis. That doesn’t mean it’s louder. In fact, it may even be quieter than other beats, but it is deeper and feels like a down beat. It takes time to get this quiet ‘1’, however, once you learn to hear this ‘1’’ you’ll start to see the bars of music unfold without even thinking about it. And the only way to get there is to practice, listen to a lot of music, and literally count them all.
The Bars of the music
Although western dancing, line dancing and most social rhythm usually refer tempo to beats per minute, International styles (both Latin American branch and Ballroom branch) use bars per minute. We always want to have continuity but not just a four beat in a bar, we like to see the dance goes along with the music, and pause when the music sound to have a halt. Even if you are not dancing International style, I personally think that it is still very useful for dancers to hear the bar instead of music. The reason is simple, you must get the beats in order to get the bars, you must know the music well enough to know how to group the beats into a particular music. I mean, you can’t group the a down beat with two up beat for a Foxtrot, and if you can immediately get the time signature, grouping, phrasing, and a rough idea of tempo to any given piece of music, you have more potential to become a good dancer. And if you can’t, work on it and you will be there with practice. This may not be a natural talent, you can grab this skill with diligence.
The Movements and the beats
Once you have the first, you will start to have the rest of the beats; you will be able to ‘see’ the bars, ‘feel’ the phrase. However, counting them solely does not help with your dancing. Finding the beat may not have much meaning to dancers if the body does not coordinate with the music. There are a lot of dancers who can hear the beat and count the beat to a given piece of music, they can also count the dance timing and actually do the dance rhythm correctly, however, when the dance and the music meet each other, the feet and the music seem to have their own very rhythm.