It’s been a month since I last posted, a very busy month!

When I last posted I had just come back from America after completing Rachel Brice’s Eight Elements level one certification. My certificate arrived in the post not long after, which my mother would like to frame.

I had a week off (apart from teaching my usual classes) and then I was teaching at the Celebrating Dance festival in Torquay. I’ve been to this festival many times before, but it was my first time as a teacher. I really enjoyed experiencing it from the other side. I was sharing a room with my friend Kathryn who photographs the event (you should check out her website) and was producing a charity calendar featuring the teachers from this year’s event. If you want to buy copies of the calendar (I am one of the dancers featured in it) get in touch with her for details.

The following weekend I was up in Wolverhampton at a bellydance intensive run by Alexis Southall and Bex which was also great. I was in the show on the Saturday night, as was my troupe Covert Bling. You can see the showreel of the event here. Then, the next weekend was the final weekend of the JWAAD foundation course, which I am pleased to say I passed. So I now have official confirmation that I know how to teach safely!

I had a couple of weekends off and then it was the last Hipnotic of the year on Sunday, which was brilliant. It was very well attended and we had some great performances as usual. I now have only two more weeks teaching before the Christmas break which I think I’ve probably deserved after this very busy year!

So after that round up of what I’ve been up to, on to the meat of this blog post which is about counting. I’m talking about counting in the “one ah ah ah, two ah ah ah, three ah ah ah…”* sense of the word. I’ve wanted to blog about this for a while, as I have some strong opinions on the value of counting, the problems that counting produces, and the more I watch dancers and the more I teach about the way music works, the stronger they get!

My opinion on counting can be sumamrised in a nutshell; I think it’s important for learning, but detrimental to performance. This creates a conflict for dancers which can be hard to overcome, however overcoming it is one of the keys to making your dance fluid and meaningful.

So, why is counting important when you are learning? It’s down to the nature of bellydance. Like the majority of dancers, bellydancers dance to music. Music has a structure, it has a rhythm, a tempo, it is divided into phrases which are themselves made up of bars, and a lot of music has a melody, which then brings other elements to do with tone and harmony and which instruments are dominating when. In bellydance there is a close relationship between the music and the dancer. We try to express the music through our dance. In order to express music properly you need to be in time with it, and this is where counting comes in. If you know the time signature of the music you are dancing to, you can use that to count yourself through it. We use this a lot when we teach combinations or choreographies, often counting our students through it as we teach it, so that they will get the timing right.

So this is good then? Well yes, ….and also no. While understanding and using the structure of the music is really important, there are some problems that come from counting all the time. The first is that it can make you obsessed with rhythm. Unless you are dancing to a piece of music that is totally percussive, the music you use will have a tempo, a rhythmic structure and a melody. When dancers obsess over counting, they can get fixated on the rhythmical structure of the music, and then ignore the melody. This manifests itself in a number of ways. Dancers can totally fail to notice and reflect the instruments that are playing, and when they change. They can repeat a motif or phrase too often because the rhythmic structure repeats, and it ‘fits’ mathematically, but it may not fit the melody if the melody changes during that time. From a technique perspective, you can become stunted in the way you execute a move, always doing it so that it fills a set number of beats because that is what you are used to doing. This is especially common if you are used to always using music with the same time signature and tempo (whether you mean to or not). All of this results in boring and/or dissatisfying choreography or performance. It can also make a dancer look more beginnerish than they may actually be, because they don’t demonstrate a deep connection with the music, just an ability to reflect the rhythm. They may also repeat phrases too often, or not show a breadth of technique execution, both of which are associated with less advanced dancing.

The second problem with counting is that you run the risk of physically counting all the time which you really do not want to do when you perform. You will perform that way you practice. If you count the whole time that you practice for performance you WILL do it when you perform, and if you count when you perform, the audience will see it. Either you will physically say ‘one, two, three, four… ‘ when you dance (I have seen it, it does happen) or you will have that vacant look on your face that comes from listening to your inner, verbal metronome and not externally connecting with the soul of the music, and your audience. This too will make you look like an inexperienced dancer, even if you are not.

Finally, counting all the time can really hinder musicality. It goes back again to the ability to reflect melody. The melody in music is divided into phrases. This is a complete section of music which makes complete sense by itself. It’s like the musical equivalent of a sentence. When you get used to music and musical structure you may find yourself working with phrases whether you realise it or not. When we choreograph we usually do so phrase by phrase too. One of the things that adds fluidity to dance, is the ability to dance in a manner moves through the phrases, rather than starting each phrase, dancing it, ending…. and then starting the next. You push through and link them all together. It’s the difference between walking down a staircase and putting each foot on the next step down every time, as opposed to bringing both feet next to each other on the same step before stepping down again. The ability to do this makes dancers looks more advanced. If you are continually counting however, as well as listening to the internal metronome and potentially repeating yourself and ignoring the melody, the chances are that you will be stopping at the end of each phrase whether you mean to or not.

So what do you do? Counting is good, and also bad? The answer is to know where counting is useful and where it is not. Counting is useful when you are learning and drilling, it isn’t useful when you are rehearsing. When you are working on a piece for performance, whether you are improvising or choreographing, there has to come a point where you know the music well and and you stop counting, and instead work on your connection with the music, rather than your ability to count it’s tempo or rhythmical structure. You will reflect it anyway (possibly better) but you will also have the freedom continue, and move, and push through and play. If you are very rhythm focussed when you choreograph, pick a piece of music that doesn’t have any percussion and work with that, look at how you have to adapt your methods and what you end up producing, and then use these new skills in music that does have percussion, and see you can produce a balanced choreography that gives a nod to both.

*apologies if you’ve never seen ‘Sesame St’ and don’t know what I’m talking about.