posted by admin on Aug 27
Beautiful women, lively music and men in formal suits waltzing away may well be the image you have in mind when anyone mentions ballroom dancing. These forms of dances can be slow such as the Waltz or they can be fast and upbeat such as in Fox Trot.
If we look at the definition by Webster’s dictionary, for ballroom dancing, it is “any of various, usually social dances in which couples perform set moves”, it seems that the scope is wide and varied. The word ball actually comes from the Latin word “ballare†which means to dance. This is also the base word for ballerina and ballet.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries dancing was very popular among the upper classes of England. The working class really didn’t catch fire with this form of activity until the early 20th century. Later the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing created a Ballroom Dance Branch, whose sole purpose is to create a standard for the modern day version of ballroom dancing.
Modern dancing revolves around five dances, the Modern Waltz, the Viennese Waltz, the Slow Foxtrot, Tango and the Quickstep. Here are some Latin American ballroom dances if you are inclined to know Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, Cha-Cha and the Jive. The word Latin America actually refers to Latin and America and not in reference to the Latin countries.
The modern day ballroom dancing consists of specific steps and tempo with couples dancing together. Basically, there are five main points of contact between the couples. His left and would be holding hers while his right would rest comfortably on her left shoulder blades. Other point come close as her right side of the set touches his left chest and the elbow, her left touches his right touch each other as they glide round the dance floor. This is the posture that the European Royal Court had been graced as couples float endlessly on the dance floor during grand social gatherings.
A few decades ago, men danced while wearing their sword and this helps to explain the obvious right-tight contact between the men and the women. The dance involves some counter clockwise movements, this is also attributed to the existence of the sword during a dance and this movement helps prevent the sword form hitting any of the watching audience. The posture changes in the American Latin dances. Like the Modern Ballroom dancing, the Latin American Ballroom has been standardized for instruction purposes and has a set, internationally recognized vocabulary, technique, rhythm and tempo.
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