Dancing in Sevens....

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.—Leo Tolstoy

Remember when you took fractions in school?

Some of us found them easy while others found them difficult to comprehenend. It all depended if you were mathematically minded or not.

Fractions are parts of a whole. As the fraction is part of a whole, the rhythm is part of a dance. In fractions, the pieces can be arranged in different ways, and in dances the same time signature (7/8) can have a different rhythm, depending on where the accents are.

This link, Math For Poets and Drummers describes the mathematics of music and poetry. This is especially good for right-brained people like myself who tend to see the whole first, then break down the parts. We don't analyze, we synthesize.

http://www.sju.edu/~rhall/Rhythms/Poets/arcadia.pdf

By the way I am a poet as well as a dancer so my sense of rhythm is very well developed. Math? Well, that's a different story.

I happen to be fond of dances with odd numbers in the time signature, and today we're going to examine the rhythms of the lesnoto, rachenitsa, and chetvorno, dances popular in the Balkans, and all of them with with seven beats to the measure.

The first example will be a lesnoto, a walking dance popular in Bulgaria and Macedonia. The rhythm for this is "galloping-apple-apple." The video is not in English but don't let that deter you; he does an excellent job teaching the dance even if you don't understand the language.



The next dance will be the ubiquitous national dance of Bulgaria, the rachenitsa, which can be done as a solo, couple, or group dance. The accents are on different beats than the lesnoto; apple-apple-galloping. This one is moderately fast and very macho :)



Chetvorno Horo, a dance from the Shope region of Bulgaria, is also in 7/8. The rhythm for Chetvorno is galloping-apple-apple, and has a slightly different feel from both the rachenitsa and the lesnoto. This group performs it in a shopping mall. How often do you see that?



By the way, chetiri is the number four in Bulgarian. If you look at the word in Cyrillic it looks like this: четири. The "ch" resembles a four. Which poses more questions: How does one do a seven beat dance in four? The steps themselves are in groups of two and three. (3+2+2=7) I have yet to figure that out.

If you enjoyed this you may also like:

Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drummer

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/01/dancing-to-rhythm-of-different-drummer.html

Dancing by the Numbers

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2011/10/dancing-by-numbers.html

Balkan Folk Dancing and its Relationship to Math
(a little geometry in this one)

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/balkan-folk-dancing-and-its.html


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Dancing to the Rhythm of a Different Drummer, or Why I like music in odd time signatures

Part of the fun of Balkan dance is learning the rhythms. People who are accustomed to "western" music often find that Balkan dancing and the assymetrical rhythms take a little getting used to.

Many years ago, I took a band class in school. Nearly all the music was in common time signatures, such as 4/4, 2/4, 6/8, and the occasional waltz (in 3/4 time). I found the waltz intriguing because it has an odd number of beats in each measure. When I first heard a rachenitsa from Bulgaria, I was totally smitten, by both the sound and the rhythm. It was beautiful and different!

In the Balkans, musicians like pieces with odd meters, such as 7/8 and 11/16, although in the villages, they played by ear, and sheet music to them was a foreign concept. They didn't let little things like quick-slow beats concern them, and the dancers had a lot of room for improvisation. If you're into music theory you may find this link of interest.

http://www.debone.com/MasteringOddComplexTimeSigsAndRhythms.html

One of my favorite dances is the kopanitsa, popular in Bulgaria and Macedonia. It has 11 beats to the measure. It's one of those rhythms that's a little tricky to internalize. The accent is on the 4th beat.



I have internalized the kopanitsa to the point that at a Bulgarian event I went to last year, no one got up to lead the dance. Whatever possessed me at the time commanded me to lead, and I did. Before I knew it I had about 50 people dancing in a line behind me, many of them exchange students from Bulgaria. The song lasted about 10 minutes, and I was exhausted when the music ended. This is the poem I wrote about the experience:

http://www.helium.com/items/1811432-kopanitsa-bulgarian-folk-dance

Dances often cross borders. Here are two dances from Serbia in 7/8 time which look and sound like Bulgarian rachenitsa. There are two versions of 7/8 rhythm: the rachenitsa is "apple apple galloping."

The drummer is amazing, he's playing and dancing at the same time. How many people can do that?



For more on the rachenitsa (the national dance of Bulgaria), read:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/07/flavors-of-bulgarian-rachenitsa.html

Here is the other version of 7/8 rhythm, which makes for a completely different dance, the Lesnoto or Pravoto. This dance is from Macedonia. The beat is "galloping apple apple."



One of the first dances I learned many years ago was this lively Serbian number, Niska Banja, which is in 9/8. (This time signature is also used in the Bulgarian dance Daichovo Horo).

Niska Banja is a very catchy drinking song. This link will take you to the lyrics, and an English translation, so you can sing along :)

http://www.dunav.org.il/lyrics/niska_banja.html



This is a Daichovo, also a 9/8 dance, (quick-quick-quick-slow). Although the first beat has the accent, the fourth is the longest.



Since music is related to math, and since many people who take up Balkan music and dance are often math and physics people, here is an unusual take on that subject:

http://katleyplanetbg.blogspot.com/2010/06/balkan-folk-dancing-and-its.html


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.