Ensemble Activity: Laid Back, a little bit

Two weeks ago I introduced the percussion concept of 'laid back', where an instrument sounds late to very late relative to the central the beat. In truth some participants had already achieved this, albeit inadvertently, last month (see: http://salsadiary.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/ensemble-activity-strictly-in-pocket.html Exercise One, Result 2).

Although they'd become comfortable with the practice format, the ability of play late on the beat as a synchronised ensemble still eluded them. Whenever the 'laid back' call was issued from a well-synchronised 'in the pocket', the unit dissolved quickly into a mish-mash of lates.

I can only put that down to different individual offsets.

Offset: A physiological phenomenon
If a motor signal is issued from the brain to the arms and legs at the same time, the arms will move before the legs will. This is because:

1. the signal path lengths are shorter to arms than to legs; and,
2. arms have lower mass than legs and so can accelerate more quickly.

α-motorneurones have a nerve conduction velocity range of between 80-120 metres per second. That sounds really quick, but if there is a half-metre difference in signal path length between arms and legs, there would be a lag of at least 4/1,000s of a second (by simple calculation) and that's the best-case scenario. It might not sound like much, but that's the difference between an 'in the pocket' and a 'slightly late' attack. In practice, I see offsets in the order of tens of thousands.

So, if two concurrently-timed signals are issued from the brain to the arms and legs, and the arms play the maracas very late on the beat, the legs will step off-time. This is the challenge of playing and dancing late: there has to be near-zero offset.

Near-zero offset can only be achieved by sending impulses to the legs BEFORE impulses to the arms.

A mish-mash of lates
The phenomenon of everyone playing different interpretations of 'late' is unsurprising given the factors stacked against them, different perceptions of beat; signal path lengths; limb masses; and conduction rates.

The efforts where valiant, and occasionally successful. However at the third session of asking it was time to change tack. Instead of going the whole hog, as we did with the push, I started using the cues "slightly late of pocket" and "a little later". My scientific self wrinkled its nose at the arbitrary terms (how late is slightly late?) but the change worked. It got participants to play later synchronously.

We'll have to inch our way to the back of the bus.

Loo

Opening the Timba chapter

"What is timba?" has become a recurring question in Solares. So much so that I knew the time had come to address it, because deflecting the matter further risked frustrating inquisitiveness (a damaging prospect) and allowing blurred narratives a chance to take root.

The timing of it couldn't have been better, I've been scouting out different themes for use as a contrasting activity alongside to the chapter on percussive attack. But the challenge lay in how to address the question of timba through the experiences of a dancer. Conventional approaches tackle the topic through its layers of percussion - explained by drummers for drummers. How can timba be understood by a dancer with a limited base of percussion experience to draw upon?

THAT's the sort of challenge I love to sink my teeth into.

Given the misconception, here in the UK, that rueda de casino should ideally be danced to timba, I think it would be useful to use rueda de casino as a lens through which timba can be examined, to reveal 'truths' and misconceptions.

Exercise One: Rueda de casino, federated calling
Partnered ensemble, to music. Vocabulary restricted to: 'dame'; 'enchufla-dame'; 'enchufla-dile que no'; 'enchufla con mambo'; and, the 'pa'rriba' modifier. Calling was devolved to all members of the group, each call was preceded by the 'oyé' aural cue with the simultaneous raise of the free arm as a corroborating visual cue. Conflicts where resolved by eye contact. This is the equivalent to co-operative musicianship observed in African music performance.

Four iterations of this exercise were required until a good level of proficiency was attained. According to all participants, the dynamism of the rueda was elevated to a plane not experienced before. They where no longer passively engaged in the interpretation of one person's call. Instead, they had to open their eyes and ears for calls emanating from around the circle, and decide upon the next appropriate call and issue it.

Participants also came to realise the importance of the timing of the 'oyé' cue with its concomitant raised arm visual cue. The energy of discovery from the federated calling exercise was perfect, necessary even, for what was to follow.

Briefing: "What does rueda mean?"
Gathering everyone into a circle, I asked, "what does rueda mean?" I received the well-intentioned published responses such as "it means 'a wheel'".

"Yes, that's right on a literal level" I said, "but what does it mean when we're arranged in a circle?"
Puzzled looks abounded. "The circle in this case, and also in rumba, represents the Circle of Creation; and that is what we're celebrating." You could have heard a pin drop. I launched into a short story on one of sub-Saharan Africa's many concepts of creation, Oyá, before and including its embodiment as a Yoruban Orisha.

Exercise Two: Rueda de casino, visualising the Circle of Creation
Partnered ensemble, to music. Federated calling. Vocabulary restricted to: 'dame'; 'enchufla-dame'; 'enchufla-dile que no'; 'enchufla con mambo'; and, the 'pa'rriba' modifier. Participants were asked to visualise the circle of creation while dancing rueda.

The outcome of this exercise was not as I'd expected. Although it possessed energy, that energy came from the practice of federated calling, but it lacked the textural quality which combined visualisation achieves. It turned out to be the case. I'd made the mistake of assuming that participants were (a learning point for me) already familiar with the relevant imagery.

Briefing: Oyá as the storm of creation
Participants encountered difficulty because they were visualising the Cycle of Creation - birth through death - and hence could not see its relevance in the exercise. I re-pitched the visualisation as the storm at the birth of Creation, immediately when the sky and sea where sundered.

Exercise Two (modified): Rueda de casino, visualising the Storm of Creation
The outcome was as I'd hoped: and ensemble performance of dynamism with a quality of emotional depth. I decided to stack on another layer of skill to assess participants' levels of naturalisation.

Exercise Three: Rueda de casino, visualising the Storm of Creation, attack 'in the pocket'
The refinement of an 'in the pocket' attack was introduced, intended: to create a powerful inexorability to the performance; and, to introduce a counterpointing element of restraint to the energy of federated calling. In this, no participants were successful.

I decided not to prosecute the contextualisation of learned skills further. Instead, I decided to work with what was successful this session: the use of metaphor.

Exercise Four: Rueda de casino, visualising the self as an Agent of Creation
In keeping with the concept of Oyá as a powerful event and the creation of the first land which followed, two sub-metaphors: 'drawing thunder' (with each arm-raise) and 'creating earth' (with each step) were introduced, helping participants visualise their equal roles as agents during the Act of Creation.

Conclusion
Power, cohesion, emotional commitment. These were present in the rueda performance at unprecedented levels. Such is the potency of understanding dance as moving metaphors.

"Will this session change the way I dance?" asked one participant before the session started.
I thought for a while before answering, "yes."
I heard another snort in disbelief. He wasn't sniggering now.

Instead I got, "how does this fit with learning what timba is?"

Loo Yeo

"slowandslow"

Yesterday's Solares fell in that 'no man's land' between Christmas and New Year. With some regulars being away or unavailable during the festive season, I was presented with a double-length session; an opportunity which I was all to happy to take advantage of.

The circumstances demanded a programme of content which was:

• varied or simple-but-challenging enough to avoid learner saturation;
• non-core so as not to penalise those who couldn't attend; and yet,
• of meaningful importance to benefit those who'd committed to attend.

Tricky. Very tricky.

I briefed them that this workshop was going to be all about elevating the quality of what they already had.

Warm Up: Simple embodiment transitions, with maracas
Solo, to music. Playing maraca rhythm. Lower body moving between the Caribbean sway, marking rhythm on the spot, walking forward.

Warming up with the maracas exercise was the cornerstone to the workshop's design because: it allowed me to assess the quality of participants' dance 'slows' as transited through Caribbean sway to walks; and, it opened up an alternative route in the workshop narrative - back to maracas development - should participants become learning saturated with the primary activity.

Briefing: The "slowandslow" vocalisation
Even though the "quick, quick, slow" vocalisation (of last session) makes sense, there is a fundamental flaw in the vocalisation - the word "slow" is only one syllable long. Dancers using the vocalisation will time their movements to the rhythm of the vocalisation, instead of the logic of the vocalisation i.e. they will dance three quick movements instead of two quick and one slower.

To achieve the desired slow movement, the vocalisation needs to be changed such that the 'slow' is rhythmically longer yet still logical. The ballroom adaptation is useful to know, and highly successful. The vocalisation is: "quick, quick, slowandslow".

Exercise One: "slowandslow" with long nails
Solo, without music. Long nails practice synchronous with the "slowandslow" (beats 3&4) vocalisation.

Exercise Two: "quick, quick, slowandslow" with long nails
Solo, without music. Complete embodiment rhythm, on the spot. Long nails practice synchronous with the "slowandslow" (beats 3&4) vocalisation. I danced with each participant to provide a movement archetype as reference.

Exercise Three: "quick, quick, slowandslow" with long nails
Solo, to music. Complete embodiment rhythm, on the spot. Long nails practice synchronous with the "slowandslow" (beats 3&4) vocalisation.

Participants reported feeling a deeper quality of relationship with the floor, almost adhesive and elastic. Once acquired they found it challenging to revert to their customary more superficial relationship with the floor. I introduced them to the concept of 'quality of movement' and labelled what they were experiencing as "deep movement" and "light movement" respectively.

Exercise Four: Relationship of qualities of movement with music
As the participants became accustomed to the exercise, freeing up cognitive headroom, I asked them:

1. "Does quality of movement affect your relationship with the music?"
2. "Which instruments do you have a stronger relationship with using light movement?"
3. "Which instruments do you have a stronger relationship with using deep movement?"
4. "Are there any instrument-relationships which do not change?"

The answer came back a resounding "yes". How you move affects how you listen. One song demonstrated this clearly: Los Hermanos Lebron's updated "La Temperatura" from their 40th Anniversary album, vol.2. (2009).

At this point, after multiple iterations, participants were comfortable with individual practice. It seemed prudent to provide them with a broader more relevant context, and introduce an additional variable.

Exercise Five: "quick, quick, slowandslow" in the rueda de casino context
Partnered, without music. Rueda de casino basic step, attenuated partner hold.

The basic step involved a small back step on the circumference side and a small forward step on the axial side on the quicks, and a close step (not a guapea side step) in-between on the slows.

I demonstrated how the basic step could be derived from the Caribbean sway by: contracting the width of the side step until a close step; and, converting the axial step from a small back step to a similarly-sized forward step.

The attenuated hold avoided the overtly expansive arm-cycling on the circumference side, and maintained contact between palms on the axial side throughout.

By silencing the consciously-induced noise from the arms, participants were able to feel how movement born of the upward joint cascade flowed into the partnership frame. Participants found this revelatory; how the torque built up from the floor manifested itself in articulations of the contredanse hold, as natural resultant movements - the same movements which are commonly overtly 'simulated' by dancers without those skills.

This is the difference between derivative movement (former), and prescriptive movement (latter).

At this point, the two hours where up. In the excitement of discovering the relevance of "slowandslow"-sponsored movement quality in the rueda basic, I think participants' overlooking of the 'big picture' difference between derived and prescribed movement can be forgiven. It gives me something to dedicate a Solares workshop to in the future.

Loo Yeo

The Fundamental Characteristics of African Dance

Index of the fundamental characteristics of African dance and derivatives. Derived from Welsh-Asante's seven characteristics of African dance in "Commonalities in African Dance: An Aesthetic Foundation" (1985).

1. Low to the earth
African cosmology regards the Earth as a benevolent world which sustains them, as compared to the European's place of trial to ascend from. Hence the characteristic of African dance is one which works with gravity, not one which seeks to defy it.

The 'Earth-Centred' Posture
With the ankles just inside one hip-width apart, and the body in a seated posture but inclined forward with knees flexed, this is a root position of West African dance. The posture places the dancer in dynamic equilibrium with gravity: energy from the dancer radiating downwards to the earth is in balance with the energy radiated from the earth upwards.

2. Undulating from the centre outward
(remarks to follow)

3. Polyrhythmic
(remarks to follow)

4. Emphasis on the pelvic girdle
(remarks to follow)

5. Body part isolations
Each body part tells its own story.

"All the elements of the music are displayed clearly in the body and nothing is left out." - Emily Willette (2012)

6. Whole foot touching the ground
(remarks to follow)

"We are the men of dance, whose feet draw new strength pounding the hardened earth." - Léopold Sédar Senghor (1945).

"stamping feet on the ground is a show of extreme joy" - Alphonse Tiérou (2000) 

7. Bent knees
(remarks to follow)

"dancing in a bent-over position with arms folded over the chest is a symbol of initiation" - Alphonse Tiérou (2000)

8. Texture
describes how dance functions as bodily (performative) conversation.

"Tell me how you dance and I'll tell you who you are." - Alphonse Tiérou (2000)

"When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are." - Mikhail Baryshnikov

References

Senghor, Léopold Sédar (1945). Prayer to Masks. In 'Songs of Shadow'. Original text: "Nous sommes les hommes de la danse, dont les pieds reprennent vigueur en frappant le sol dur." See excerpt: http://www.drmalotaibi.com/courses/prayer-to-masks.pdf [Retrieved 08/07/16]

Tiérou, Alphonse (2000). Tell Me How You Dance and I'll Tell You Who You Are. The UNESCO Courier. October 2000, Page 45. See: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001207/120752e.pdf#120774 [Retrieved 08/07/16]

Welsh-Asante, Kariamu (1985). Commonalities in African Dance: An Aesthetic Foundation. In "African Culture: The Rhythms of Unity" edited by Molefi Kete Asante and Kariamu Welsh-Asante. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Willette, Emily (2012). The Africanist Aesthetic in American Dance Forms. https://sophia.smith.edu/blog/danceglobalization/2012/04/13/the-africanist-aesthetic-in-american-dance-forms/ [Retrieved 18/06/2016]

Cultural Knowledge

Last Saturday was our Sheffield Parranda Espectacular event in Sheffield. Apart from the hospitality, operational and performance aspects make up the running of a great night, I try to squeeze in a few moments to sound out Solares/The Rueda Academy (STRA) attendees. The way they express themselves, their interpretations of their own learning is richly informative, helping me understand how better to tailor their learning experience.

One of them made an astute observation. When Solares first started, he was under the impression that it was a novel kind of workshop; that there were subcomponents or aspects being trialled which would inform my dance research. And yet after two years of workshops, all the material we'd covered was contained in my rather snazzy salsa website. This snippet, which should be read in a positive tone, was couched within a larger conversation of satisfaction with Solares' direction and modes of delivery. I had the chance to explain later that while "yes" the material was similar, it was the environment and means of delivery that was novel.

When I first elucidated the content elements and hierarchy some fifteen plus years ago, the young women and men whom I trained turned out to be exceptional educators and dancers displaying physical and conceptual skills at the peak of Bloom's taxonomy. Where they were (comparatively) less strong was their fluency with the musical, rhythmic, and cultural domains in Caribbean dance.

In retrospect, it was my naivete in searching for an ideal objective means of dance instruction that was to blame. I had neither the maturity nor the experience associated with the cultural knowledge of salsa to appreciate its value, its necessity as a subjective part. This except from "Spinning Mambo Into Salsa" (2015: 114) by Juliet McMains captures the difference between then and now.

"For Cuban Pete, mambo was not something that could be learned in a dance school. It was cultural knowledge he inherited from his family, dancing in the kitchen with his mother.

"This tension between Latin dance as cultural knowledge that can only be learned through time spent in a particular community versus Latin dance as a technique that can be bought and sold in formal dance classes intensified as the salsa dance industry emerged in the 1990s."

While I am not able to provide the literal environment of growing up and dancing in a kitchen with a Latin American mother like Cuban Pete's, I am interested in whether a surrogate environment may be created where subjective Latin American cultural knowledge may be acquired.

This is the basis of Solares' novelty.

Loo Yeo