One of the great difficulties in ballroom dancing is recognizing when to take the first dance step. There are several difficulties here: Firstly, you have to dance to the beat so that the steps match the beats in the music. Secondly, most ballroom dances have a certain rhythm and you can only start dancing at certain points in the rhythm.
When to start dancing?
To recognize the dance cue, you first need to get a feeling for the beats and the rhythm of the song. Then you have to get the timing right: Take steps according to the beat of the song and at the same time use the right beat to start dancing (as not every beat is suitable for starting the dance).
We’ll give you first insights into how you can recognize when you need to start dancing in the following – never be lost on the dance floor again!
Just start dancing: discofox
Probably the easiest dance to recognize the dance cue is the discofox. Discofox is danced to a 4/4 beat. And the great thing is: the beats are usually all equally emphasized. This means that you don’t have to pay much attention to the rhythm. You just have to get a feel for the beat sequence and then do the first dance step to match any of the beats.
Good for beginners: Waltz and slow waltz
Not quite as easy as the discofox, but still easy are the waltz and the slow waltz. They are both danced on a 3/4 beat. You can easily recognize this beat, as the first note is usually much more accentuated than the other 2 notes. It is this emphasized note on which you take the first dance step. The easiest way to “catch” the right note is to count the notes in your head on the dance floor for a few bars (i.e. “1”, “2”, “3” – as described here).
More difficult: Jive, cha-cha-cha and co.
Once you have mastered recognizing the dance cue in the waltz and disco fox, you can move on to the “more difficult” dances: samba, cha-cha-cha, rumba, jive, tango and quickstep. These are still beginner dances, which means that you can quickly learn to recognize the right cue. Here, too, it is important to recognize the first beat of the rhythm for the first dance step, but the rhythms are more complex than in the waltz. The best way to do this is to listen to lots of dance songs and get a feel for the different rhythms. You can find out the easiest way to do this in the next section.
Recognize the dance cue: Practice to become an expert
You need to practice a lot to recognize the dance cue reliably. In practice, this is not always easy, because as a beginner you sometimes don’t quickly realize when you are dancing out of the beat. That’s why we’ve developed an app that allows you to practice recognizing the dance cue. In the app, songs belonging to different dances are played and you have to recognize when to start dancing. The great thing is that you get direct feedback on whether you were too early or too late – or whether you hit the spot!
Start practising now:
