Give This a Try!

A student's illustration of his Jump Pattern A, at his own volition, no prompting.

Start in center.  Feet together.  Assume all four beats move on a Jump.

The first two beats work just fine as written.

In Beat 3 you are still facing forward, right and left foot are not labled, but the arrows give you a clue.

How far do you turn on Beat 4?

Can you do this pattern backwards (a reflection of the beat order, e.g. 4, 3, 2, 1)?

How else can you rearrange these four beats to make a different pattern?  Did it work?

Which combination of beats/moves did you like the best?

Video: Two of My Favorite Dancers, Together!

Here are two of my favorite traditional percussive dancers. I love how they are each so tuned into and connected to the music, especially in improvisational settings like this one. 

In this video, Melody Cameron of Mabou, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada (all of that is important!) and Nic Gareiss of Michigan (and many place beyond that) are caught on tape having an impromptu, probably late-night, exchange/playtime/conversation.  They were at the 2010 North Atlantic Fiddle Convention in Aberdeen, Scotland this July.  Later in this video they are joined by two other Cape Breton step dancers Mats Melin and Brandi McCarthy.

Cape Breton step dance was the first percussive dance style I learned, and is still my first love.  A 'neat and tidy' and 'close to the floor' tradition where most dancing is improvised on the spot in response to the music, the aesthetic is to wear shoes that have some snap to them but not taps (which I learned the hard way, but that's another story!).  In this video Melody also throws some Appalachian style clogging steps into the mix. 

Nic was just a kid when I first met him more than a decade ago, but had already been dancing longer than me.  Always an inspiration, his blog Dance is Music is, I think, the best way to describe his dancing.

Conversations

Communication is one of the main themes of Math in Your Feet.  During the program students learn how to communicate with the language of rhythm and patterns in their feet.  They also learn to communicate their original dance patterns using math vocabulary and by mapping their patterns on a coordinate grid.

Communication is a two-way street: if you want kids to learn how to communicate well, it's important to listen to what they have to say.  I'm a big fan of listening to kids (except when I'm in the middle of making dinner, I suppose).  Here are some pictures of me having a rhythmic conversation with a young friend.  It's an amazing feeling to have a satisfying conversation like this one without using even one spoken word.  I'm always heartened and inspired at how much children have to say.