Posts Tagged ‘dance’
“Let there be bass”*…
Sometimes, it really is all about that bass…
A recent study in the journal Current Biology found that people danced 12% more when very low frequency bass was played.
The study was done by scientists at the LIVElab at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, who wanted to see what musical ingredients make us want to dance.
“We look at things like what kinds of rhythms most pull people into that steady beat that we groove along with, and what kinds of interesting, syncopated, complex rhythms make us really drawn in and want to move more,” said Daniel Cameron, a neuroscientist and the lead author of the study.
Now, the lab for this experiment wasn’t the classic fluorescent lights, white coats and goggles setup. Instead, the LIVElab space was converted into an electronic dance music concert, and EDM duo Orphx performed live for volunteers adorned with headbands that had a motion capture sensor.
The lab was equipped with special special speakers that can play a very low frequency bass, undetectable to the human ear. The set lasted about an hour, and researchers introduced that very low bass every 2.5 minutes, and found that the concertgoers moved more when the speakers were on – even though they couldn’t hear it.
“It’s the inner-ear structures that give us a sense of where our head is in space,” he said. “That system is sensitive to low-frequency stimulation, especially if it’s loud.”
“We also know that our tactile system, that’s our sense of touch … is also sensitive to low-frequency stimulation, low-frequency sound.”…
“And that’s feeding into our motor system in the brain, the movement control system in our brain,” Cameron said. “So it’s adding a little bit of gain. It’s giving a little more energy … from that stimulation through those systems.”…
“What makes us dance? It really is all about that bass,” from @NPR.
For more on ultra-low frequency sounds and their effects, see “How low can you go?“; and lest we think this phenomenon restricted to humans, “Watch These Rats ‘Dance’ to the Rhythms of Mozart, Lady Gaga, and Queen.”
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As we go low, we might recall that it was on this date in 1792, during George Washington’s first term as president, that the first edition of The Farmer’s Almanac was published. (It became The Old Farmer’s Almanac in 1832 to distinguish itself from similarly-titled competitors.) Still going strong, it is the oldest continuously-published periodical in the U.S.
“I introduce you to the hardest-working man in show biz, ladies and gentlemen, the Godfather of Soul, Mr. James Brown”*…
James Brown shows you how…
Don’t go into this expecting Arthur Murray-level clarity of instruction. This is Soul Train-era James Brown, shaking way more than any simple footprint pattern could convey. That’s not to say there isn’t concrete information to be gleaned here, especially if you never really knew which moves constitute The Funky Chicken. Ditto The Boogaloo, The Camel Walk, and something I swear sounds like The Mac Davis.
James proudly demonstrates them all, as unconcerned as a peacock would be when it comes to breaking things down for the folks at home. (Trust me, your kneecaps will be grateful he’s not more explicit.)…
Learn from the best: “James Brown gives you dancing lessons,” from Ayum Halliday (@AyunHalliday) in @openculture.
* Danny Ray, emcee and “cape man” for James Brown
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As we shake a leg, we might send virtuosic birthday greetings to Aretha Louise Franklin; she was born on this date in 1942. A singer, songwriter, and pianist, she began her career as a gospel singer in her father’s church in Detroit. At the age of 18, she signed as a mainstream recording artist for Columbia Records. But it was in the late 60’s when she switched to Atlantic Records, that her career blossomed; she released a string of hits– “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)“, “Respect“, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman“, “Chain of Fools“, “Think“, and “I Say a Little Prayer“– that cemented her status as the Queen of Soul.
In all, Franklin recorded 112 charted singles on the US Billboard charts, including 73 Hot 100 entries, 17 top-ten pop singles, 100 R&B entries and 20 number-one R&B singles. With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world’s best-selling music artists of all time.
Franklin won 18 Grammy Awards, including the first eight awards given for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (1968–1975) and a Grammy Awards Living Legend honor and Lifetime Achievement Award. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1987, she became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She also was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005 and into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked Franklin number one on its list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time”. And in 2019, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded the singer a posthumous special citation “for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades”. In 2020, Franklin was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
“Each lovely Grace by certain Marks he taught /And ev’ry Step in lasting Volumes wrote”*
The late seventeenth century gave rise to a powerful innovation in Western European social and theatrical dance, the art of dance notation. The new representational technology ofdance notation provided a means to broadcast fashionable dances emerging from the French court as well as new compositions from dancing masters operating in London and elsewhere. In the first three decades of the eighteenth century, dance notation quickly reached faddish heights, with published dance manuals in high demand among upper levels of English society. One publication from the era, Kellom Tomlinson’s The Art of Dancing Explained by Reading and Figures, provides a window onto the descriptive tool of dance notation, its function in society, and its eventual decline. While providing a previously unimagined communicational technology, the completeness and specificity of the dominant form of dance notationultimately spelled its demise…
The fascinating story (with more nifty illustrations and diagrams) of a 1735 attempt to capture the ineffable: “From the Page to the Floor:Baroque Dance Notation and Kellom Tomlinson’s The Art of Dancing Explained.” [TotH to Ben Evans]
* Soame Jenyns in his 1729 poem “The Art of Dancing” (in part an ode to Kellom Tomlinson’s work)
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As we capture choreography, we might recall that it was on this date in 2005 that Halle Berry accepted the Razzie as Worst Actress for her role in Catwoman. Holding the Razzie in one hand and her Oscar (for Monster’s Ball) in the other, she gave a parody of her emotional Oscar acceptance speech, beginning “First of all I want to thank Warner Bros. Thank you for putting me in a piece of s***, god-awful movie!”
Watch her acceptance speech here.
“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”*…
In Atlanta’s historic Vine City neighborhood, hidden among the trees overgrowing the lot at the corner of Sunset and Magnolia, is a barren concrete slab. On this spot, in the heart of an early-1930s African American community, Atlanta was first introduced to what would become “America’s National Dance”: the Lindy Hop.
Teenagers from all over the Westside would flock to the Sunset Casino and Amusement Park. The cavernous pavilion, which had been converted to a dance hall, featured a rotating cast of local talent along with the best swing bands in the world — Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald. The Sunset also held Saturday afternoon dances and weekly Jitterbug contests. At the Sunset, for just 25 cents, the city’s black youth could briefly escape the ravages of the Depression and Jim Crow and dance their cares away…
Swing Dance is a modern umbrella term that describes a range of partner dances associated with swing music. But the realest swing dance is the Lindy Hop. The Lindy Hop was an art form invented by black dancers at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem during the late 1920s, and almost the entire history of African American dance was its source material. The dance is based on a core move called the “swing out,” in which two partners engage in a reciprocally counterbalanced swinging movement around each other. The dancers then layer on infinite embellishment and elaboration, including the acrobatic “air steps” for which the dance is known. Lindy hoppers may use rehearsed choreography when competing or performing. When dancing socially — as we normally do — Lindy Hoppers, like jazz musicians, improvise all their movements in real time, creating a wholly new dance at each moment on the floor.
The Lindy Hop evolved through the growing popularity of big bands in the mid-1930s, especially as dance troupes began touring and appearing in Hollywood movies. The term “jitterbug” was introduced to the lexicon by a Cab Calloway song in 1932 and became the preferred term for young Lindy Hop dancers, ultimately becoming synonymous with the dance itself. By the time that LIFE magazine belatedly proclaimed the Lindy Hop to be “America’s national folk dance” in 1943, the dance had been a part of cultural and social life in African American communities across the country for well over a decade…
In the South of 90 years ago, young African Americans started dancing the Lindy Hop. It was an act of resistance, an assertion of freedom against the discrimination and violence of the time. Today, swing dancers across the South — black and white together — pay proper tribute to that legacy: “Jitterbugging With Jim Crow.”
* music by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Mills (1931)
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As we trip the light fantastic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1940 that Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. became the first African American to rise to the rank of General in the U.S. Army. His son, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr., was the first African American General in the U.S. Air Force, a rank he attained after commanding the famous Tuskegee Airmen.
Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., in 1944
“Dying is easy, comedy is hard”*…
Neighbors. Dir. Edward F. Cline/Buster Keaton. Perf. Buster Keaton, Virginia Fox, Joe Keaton. Metro Pictures, 1920.
As he migrated from vaudeville stage to movie set, [Buster] Keaton realised the comedy itself did not need changing, though the opportunities afforded by the camera could extend the world in which the spatial interplay he had developed since childhood took place.
“…the greatest thing to me about picturemaking was the way it automatically did away with the physical limitations of the theatre. On the stage, even one as immense as the New York Hippodrome stage, one could only show so much. The camera had no such limitations. The whole world was its stage. If you wanted cities, deserts, the Atlantic Ocean, Persia, or the Rocky Mountains for your scenery and background, you merely took your camera to them.”
Keaton’s comedy derives largely from the positioning —and constant, unexpected repositioning— of his body in space, and in architectural space particularly. Unlike other slapstick performers who relished in the close-up and detailed attention to the protagonist, Keaton frequently directed the camera to film with a wide far-shot that could contain the whole of a building’s facade or urban span within the frame. Proud of always carrying out his own (often extremely dangerous) stunts, this enabled him to show the audience that his actions were performed in real-time —and real-place— rather than simply being tricks of the camera or editing process. It also allowed him to visually explore the many ways in which his body could engage with the urban form…
An appreciation of that greatest of all silent comedians: “Buster Keaton: Anarchitect.”
* variously attributed to actors Edmund Keane, Edmund Gwynn, and Peter O’Toole
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As we take the fall, we might send delighted birthday greetings to Stanley Donen; he was born on this date in 1924. A Broadway dancer (who befriended a young Gene Kelly), Donen followed Kelly to Hollywood as choreographer, then a director– of such classics as On the Town (1949) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), both of which starred Kelly who co-directed. Donen’s other films include Royal Wedding (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Funny Face (1957), Indiscreet (1958), and Charade (1963). Credited (with his rival, Vincent Minelli) with having transitioned Hollywood musical films from realistic backstage dramas (a la Busby Berkeley) to a more integrated art form in which the songs were a natural continuation of the story, Donen is highly regarded by film historians.
One might note a kinship between Keeton’s astounding physical relationship to his surroundings and that of Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Fred Astaire in Donen’s films…
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