Dancers' Inner Counting Voice

An interesting observation from Rodrigo Ramalho via Jaime Aroxa: The way you count the music out loud is the way you dance! I've been fascinated by this idea recently in classes and have noticed it when teaching as well.

I'm bringing more conscious awareness of counting voice to all my dance classes. And my own internal counting voice when dancing.

If I count like those dance teacher memes it's great. If I am not thinking of the moves in my head and I am just counting pedantically the students can't even do the choreo. If I count as just noises it works pretty well.

It also works well for me for learning combos. Sometimes I need the numerical count as well, but a lot of times I can "feel" if the count comes to eight without any numbers. I guess there are some common patterns and accents.

It's like we are our own conductors, but instead of gestibulating with a stick we are using our internal voice.

It was very interesting taking 3 classes in a row last night from 3 different Ramalho siblings and seeing how yes indeed they each dance how they vocalize! Dancing with each of them, I tried using their voice to count in my head. So cool and fun to try and channel different people.

When we learn to dance with a partner on the same wavelength, dancing on the same vocal wavelength is an interesting parallel or "way in" to dancing on the same emotional/dramatic level. It's another level of depth for the dance/languge analogy, and perhaps an easier "way in" for speech communicators trying to understand how to relate to a partner, for those good at the practice of reading other people's affect through their voices from birth.

Val and Vanessa used this concept in the Canada teacher training with the "tigirigirigiri" hips.

It's what I find lacking in one of my ballet teachers. It's part of what I loved about some of my favorite ballet teachers.

I tend to watch a lot of dance videos with the sound off. Sometimes I make my own internal "song" for the dancers, and lots of times I am surprised by the voice the dancers chose to bring to that song.