The joke at left (click to enlarge the image) came across my Facebook feed recently, and while I see why it's making people laugh and then tag me to share it, it's actually one of those jokes that is completely spoiled by knowing anything about dance.
The humor is based on what "everybody knows": waltz is a 3/4 time dance. So one can't do it in 4/4. Obviously!
The problem is that what "everybody knows" is completely wrong. The entire history of social dance, right up to present-day ballroom dancing, involves the basic principle that dances and dance steps can be converted from one time signature to another.
(Yeah, yeah, I know...someone is wrong on the internet. I just can't resist this time!)
To take a few examples:
During the Renaissance, fifteenth-century steps like the sempio and doppio were used in different time signatures for different dances: 6/4 for bassadanze, 4/4 for dances in quadernaria, and 6/8 for the saltarello and piva. Similarly, during the sixteenth century, steps such as the seguito ordinario and the continenza were regularly translated from 2/4 time into 3/4 or 6/4. An entire musical form and accompanying dance form, the famous passo e mezzo, had no specific time signature and could be played or danced in either 2/4 or 3/4 (or any other time signature!)
I'm no baroque specialist, but there were certainly examples in that era as well. One that comes to mind is the pas de bourrée. In my long-ago baroque dance lessons I danced it in both 3/4 and 4/4.
Continuing forward in time, during the nineteenth century, there were many different waltzes, not all of them in 3/4 time. "Waltz" was also a term used simply to mean "turn" in dances such as the polka and schottische -- one could do the (2/4 time) polka forward, backward, or waltzing. And converting a particular dance step from one time signature to another was a regular occurrence, often spawning a separate dance:
- galop (2/4) and valse à deux temps (3/4)
- polka (2/4) and polka redowa (3/4)
- galop racket (2/4) and racket waltz (3/4)
- "new" waltz (3/4) and waltz-galop (2/4 or 4/4) and the Pasadena (6/8)
Unsurprisingly, in the relaxed technique of the 1910s, individual dance steps were freely translated between 2/4 and 3/4 time:
- the eight-step was danced in one-step and tango (2/4), hesitation waltz (3/4), and half & half (5/4)
- some 1910s twinkles were recommended for hesitation waltz (3/4) along with one-step and foxtrot (2/4)
- the waltz walk (one step to the measure) was simply the one-step (2/4) translated into waltz time (3/4)
Vernon and Irene Castle, the internationally famous dance couple of the early 1910s, in their book Modern Dancing (New York, 1914), noted that the unusual half & half (5/4) could simply draw from the general repertoire of steps for the waltz (3/4):
"All of the modern Waltz or Hesitation steps fit in delightfully."
And, of course, the "new" waltz had become the gliding box step which is the foundation of modern ballroom. That same step was carried over into other social dances in the 1910s, such as the foxtrot and tango (2/4) and the half & half (5/4). Just weeks before Vernon Castle's death in a training accident, his use of this technique was described in the pages of an American dance journal by a very young Arthur Murray, who was a student of the Castles' and had worked in their school:
"Vernon Castle used the old-fashioned waltz as the basis of his variations, and that is what is being danced today. Whether doing the one-step, fox trot, or canter, almost all of the variations or combinations of steps are made up on the waltz step. It is very adaptable, and lends itself readily, especially to syncopation."
-- "The New Spirit in Dancing", in The Two Step, Volume XXVIII, No. 1, January, 1918, pp. 50-51
Murray, of course, would later found the chain of ballroom dance studios bearing his name. Even today, in the American ballroom dance competition syllabus, the box step is a basic step not only in the waltz but in (at least) the foxtrot and rumba as well. And in cross-step waltz, which is not part of the official ballroom syllabus, dancers routinely learn to switch the steps from 3/4 into 2/4, 4/4, 5/4, and even 7/4.
So can one waltz in 4/4 time? Absolutely. Just let me know how many ways you'd like me to teach you to do it!
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