Hi All, Myles Munroe here (Tessa's partner)
Tessa asked my opinion on this matter and thought my background in multiple dances would lend for a very informative post, so here goes:
The first question about the possibilty of being limited by dancing upeat/down beat vs. Downbeat/upbeat is a good one, the debate is still going on in the Hustle community and the Nite club Two-step community. There are two answers, one simple, one not so much.
Once two dancers start moving (one on the down, the other on the up) they will look equally on time. If a hustle dancer or MJ dancer were dancing to a techno song that had bass hits on all beats 1, 2, 3, 4 etc..... then you would not be able to tell the difference of an upbeat dancer or a down beat dancer.
Here's the trickier part. Most modern music (unlike classical) is accented on the up beats. The main pulse is on the ups (think of what beat you would snap on) and the phrasing and structure of the songs are all set on the 1's or downbeat. This allows people to think it best to dance on the upbeat to stay on the accent. These people will dance to only one aspect of a song. Musicians aren't thinking about dancers when they write music. They will start their instrumentation around the 1 beat and same with the lyrics. When a song hits a break or a dancer starts dancing to the start of the song is where the difference of the downbeat or upbeat dancer shows itself.
A downbeat dancer will begin moving when the song starts or resumes after a break. An upbeat dancer will either move before or after the start/resume of a song and will appear to be "off-time". Again, once they're going and until the next break they will both look fine except to the musically trained person who understands phrasing.
Almost every song that we would wcs or mj to will have the breaks on 1 or 5 of an 8 beat measure of music. A down beat dancer will be more likely to be "naturally" hitting it by having their patterns beginning on the downbeats because they will hear the break or phrase change coming a few beats early and will only have to pause or not start a pattern and they will hit the music.
An Upbeat dancer will have to interupt their patterns or wait an extra count once they hear the break coming. The upbeat dancer will be forcing the breaks as it is more likely that they will be beginning a new pattern on the 8 and have to wait from 7 until the break on 1 or start and stop their patterns.
As far as the interpretation of music goes, it is in most cases more beneficial to the overall dance to dance on the downbeat. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, again in the case of classical music and most traditional asian songs where the pulses/accents are on the downbeats. These songs would best be danced on the upbeat. (I have a fascinating summary of a study done on Chinese people and North American music and Dance, I'll bring it up in another post if people ask)
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