ok, so i've recently (about 2 weeks ago) had to start taking ballroom dancing cause my friend told my mom and she just signed me up, at first i though it would suck, but after 2 classes, it started to be enjoyable
even though i just started, i already know (maybe most of) the cha cha and waltz

what about you KL's?

I do, or did. For 3 years. The 1st class was boring. Dum dum dum the Box Step.

I stopped taking modern recently (been taking it for 3 years) because in order to take it next year i had to take 2 hours of ballet a week and that was too much considering i dont particularily like ballet (took that for 3 years too)...

Otherwise, ive taken a swing dance class which was ok, probably wont go back, but i really want to take salsa if i could find the time...

that was annoying, just foward, side, back, side, foward, side, back, side for over 20 minutes

Yeah. Even the name of it wasn't to attractive.

ya but once you get good at it you can embellish... swing dance is that way too the basic step is really boring if thats all your partner knows (if your female *cough* if you are male it doesnt matter how much your partner knows cause your leading). I cant remember the actual step at the moment but whatever... when i was at an open dance thing, i either had to dance with guys who were better with me or the guy who i was reteaching the step to (aka just barely learning), because the guy i came with was just below me and it got kinda boring to dance with him... (sorry....)

so guys, i encourage you not only to take dance, but become good at it... cause if any other girls are like me, they wouldnt mind a guy whos actually better than them at dance, especially cause guys lead and the girls, well, simply follow whatever he does.

yeah, we have to lead, alot, turning are bodys so are partners can turn, it gets a little annoying

this is waltz and cha cha month, and i already know them now, and still have 2 weeks to go with it *sigh*

How about Salsa? Dimitry and Kseniya seem to have fun when we watch them dance at the Taste.

i SO wanna take salsa but i think i want to find someone to take it with first...

yeah, they are good
but now my class has learned the entire waltz and cha cha, and still have 2 weeks of it, what to do, what to do

Ah, Cha Cha. We had to learn that the first year. It was confusing until now.

lol
we just learn 2 dancs every 2 months
and they were learning this when i joined

Damn, we had it every Friday.

I don't know any actual dances, but I can do "modern" dances I guess.

Partyyyyyyyyyyy.

im going to take major offense to that statement. I took modern dance for 3 years. So unless you can tell me who Isadora Duncan is, without looking it up, i will not believe you know anything about modern dance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_dance wikipedia article says that "modern dances" as you put it can also refer to 20th century ballroom dances.

but serious, kid... modern dance is an art form, and isnt the school-dance-perverse version of hiphop (if anything) that most people think i do when i say i take modern.

Well, when you say modern dance you could mean either one. Both are modern. Lmao, school dance perverse.

Hmm...you need a dose of djbob vocabulary

Modern Dance: "I can wave my arms around like a loon and shout 'SOJA BOY! SOJA BOY!'".

haha soulja boy..funny. Well a couple years ago for school in gym we learned cha cha, waltz, and swing, it was pretty fun considering it was with all of your friends, especially swing. I don't take dance lessons, I'm self teaching myself in hip hop. just off of youtube video's and some things my sister knows. Cause she was taught hip hop by a close friend.

well I havnt talked to djbob much... i just usually take offense when people think hip-hop when i say modern, especially cause i am not by any means a fan of hip hop. Honestly, im not sure why they're called modern dances, its more like a "group of people generally from your school bouncing up and down, moving provacatively and a few rubbing against eachother in a slightly (or more than slightly) sexual manner while teachers try to get them to stop"

lol its not that bad, at least not at my school, but still... few people do anything that could truly be called dance. Oh how much i long to get myself into a partner dancing scene, swing would be awesome... or salsa... or anything... *needs a dancing binge* the ballroom right by my house closed >.<

Note I put the word "modern" in quotations. Furthermore, I mentioned right before that that I don't know any real dances. My dance "style" would be considered by most a style of "modern" dance. I'm not sure how the term is defined in the dance community, but within the community I am familiar with that would be the best way to define what I can do.

I have never taken a dance class, but that does not mean that I cannot dance. Furthermore, just because you have been taught that modern dance means something other than the obvious conclusion based on the definition of the word "modern", doesn't mean that that definition applies universally.

Your argument seems sort of elitist, honestly. Only the people who know 20th century ballroom dances can say they know how some "modern" dances? I think that I have the right to say that I know modern dances, whether or not the studied dance community agrees with me. Furthermore, no offense, but you have not right to define my dance type as "school-dance-perverse", especially if you have never seen it.

My final conclusion: based on the definition of the word "modern", the dances that I can sort of do can be called "modern" dances. Especially considering I used quotations to emphasize the use of the word "modern" as an adjective in its standard definition.

Crank That Soulja Boy is actually a pretty cool dance if you take the time to try to learn it. It's easy to see something as silly until you have tried it.


A lot of the people at the taste of ICS were pretty good dancers...

Although, I would wonder if you would call Japanese choreographed dances "dances", because you seem to be defining it as only ballroom dance. Would you, for example, define High School Musical's choreographed dances as a "dance"?


Perhaps it is elitist. However, when things get different enough, you could either categorize it, or put it as a totally different word. For example, I could scratch some random stuff on paper and call it writing.

You could scribble some crayon on paper and call it art.

However, writing usually means meaning, so I wouldn't say that I wrote.
Scribbling without intent does not use any of the basic "foundations" of art, so many people would not consider it art.

True, definitions are misleading. Of course. There's no way to define something the same way. However, by the colluquial defintion of dance, I would consider what you do "dance". By the formal "dictionary" definiton, I don't know of anything better to call it, so I would call it "dance" or "club dancing", I guess would be the best term.

Perhaps we should call it "post-modern dance".

but on the other hand, consider how many people out there have at some point taken modern dance. Or, for that matter, any kind of dance. Most people who have taken one of the main forms of non-ballroom dance (Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Lyrical, Hip-Hop, Modern, etc.) have at least heard of modern dance. Many random people i have talked to about taking modern have, in fact, taken modern dance themselves. Its a well known dance style to those familiar with dance, and recognized as a form separate from, say, the Soulja Boy dance, which, if anything, would be considered hip-hop. Just a distinction. So yes, my definition of Modern Dance does apply fairly universally (it isnt just american either), even though there are necesarily differences between the way I was taught and the way modern dancers in, say, germany would be taught.

FYI: My definition of "modern dance" actually is not a ballroom dance. In fact, i was surprised to learn that.
and can you say that you know modern dances if you also say you dont know any "real" dances? You are inherently saying that modern dances are not real, which i will refute that they are very real. I also would like to refute that i didnt call your dance type "school dance perverse," it is merely a generalization of what i see at school dances: the dancing is, well, perverse.


Ok, but salsa is a cool dance if you havnt tried it. Many forms of dance are.

never said they weren't... i enjoyed it a lot, honestly...


by what you just said, i dont consider ballet a dance. Ballroom dance is dance, yes, but it is not the only form of dance... it is simply something that I am longing to try. I call myself a dancer, but i have not done much ballroom dancing (one swing class/dancing session which i enjoyed, at least when i wasnt dancing with the guy i went with >.< he was just below my level, which sucks when you have to follow the guy)

in the same manner, i could poke some keys on the piano and call it music. But it doesnt have the elements, it is like scribbling without intent.
Even if i am bobbing to the rhythm of the music that is being played, and waving my arms randomly, (djbob: im not saying this is what you do) it might not be considered dancing. Is ddr true dance? I dont really think so. Just as scribbling a crayon on paper does not use the "foundations" of art, random waving of the arms or whatever does not use the "foundations" of dance. I dont think you need to take a class to be a good dancer, and im not usually not that discriminatory. I guess what bugs me is when people catagorize "modern dance" as something so far from what it is: its like dumping some chemicals together and saying your experimenting with biology... someone saying they know about something without any actual knowledge of the subject. I know thats something well disliked here on KL.


aw, ed, be more generous: call it the basics of hip-hop lol thats what club dance generally is.... i guess...

too true...

so its obviously not a... false generalization?

I personally adore classical ballet and interpretive dance. I have been studying Domenico de Piacenza and his methods since my childhood. I suppose I have somewhat of an "elitist" air to my attitudes about dancing; I only accept established dances by professionals to be worthy of notice. For example, if someone were to simply move their feet and arms to the sync of the music, I would consider them quiet ignorant of true dance.

thus proving what i said about school dances... grinding is not dancing dammit...

I'm not a fan of grinding, nor do I know how to do it, but I do consider it dance. Just because it isn't taught in a dancing school doesn't mean it isn't dance.

You're saying that many people know what the dance-community-defined meaning of modern dance is. But I bet that for each person who agrees with your definition, I can find at least five more people who agree with mine.

You're incorrectly interpreting my statement. When I say "real dances", I mean dances that are taught in a school, for instance. I don't mean dances that exist; that would be nonsensical, of course.

Sure, but nobody's been insulting salsa.

That depends. I define music as ideas communicated through sound. If you are trying to communicate an idea, then I agree that you have composed music. For instance, take 4'33". That composition is considered by most experts true music, yet it doesn't even have any planned sounds. The question is, how do you define dance?

Yes, but I would definitely define it as dance.

No, but that's because you do DDR for a different reason than you do dance.

Actually, almost every art critic would consider scribbles art. There is a piece harbored in the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York City that consists if a single dot on a white sheet. Would you consider that art? Furthermore, there are very many famous artists who do what you just described: scribbles. If you care, I can find you a list of names.

I have absolutely no clue what the "foundations" of dance are. My dances usually involve moving my feet and arms in sync to the sound of the music - as Ed mentioned, it is probably categorized as club dance. I have never studied dance or tried to do any kind of professional dance. Yet, I consider what I do to be dance.

I think there is one major difference you are missing here:
Science is a form of applied inductive reasoning. It is based on knowledge.
Dance is a form of expressing emotion. It is based on emotion.

Therefore, you can see who people will get angry at those who try to interpret science without any knowledge. The parallel with dance would be somebody trying to dance without any emotion. But trying to dance without any knowledge seems completely fine to me, just as writing music without any knowledge about it would be fine to me, and making visual art without any knowledge of the subject would be fine to me.

from what i missed here, we have an argument over what "dance" really is

i have no definition of dance, but i can say raving and school dances aren't really "dance" but random body movement

something with movements that have choreographed movements, but can be seen in many different ways, is dance


maybe its just cause i've learned 7 kinds of international styles for my competitive ballroom dance life, but idk

but ballroom dance is still fun for me, even though the newcomer level sucks



if you want to try ballroom purrflicta, you can go to the place i go to, its a great place, and we have some of the best dancers there (our best couples in each catagory clinched first place in a giant national competition)

its called impulse ballroom, and its by skate king, and around the sears area
look it up

yeah, i know impulse, i've taken classes from some of the instructors there and liked them... I have a lady at orion that im gonna take lessons from when i get a group together (aka anyone want to join me? pm me if you're interested)