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Line Of Dance
Direction of travel around the floor.
Line Of Dance (LOD) is the direction of travel for partner and couples dances that progress around the dance floor. This direction is counter-clockwise. Reverse Line Of Dance (RLOD) is the opposite direction, or clockwise.
The Dreaded Second Wall
The four walls of line dance.
The pattern for each line dance is repeated until the song is over.
Every time the dance begins with the start of the pattern, you will be facing one of four directions.
This is called the "wall" or, sometimes, the "corner."
For some reason, it is a common experience among dancers that learning the same pattern facing a new direction, or new wall, is almost like learning a new dance.
This is the dreaded second wall. Now you know.
What do you do when the music stops?
For most line dances, the ending is simple.
As the music fades, you stop dancing and wait for the next song to begin.
Then you either walk off the floor or start the next dance.
However, recently, there is a trend for choreographers to add an ending to their dances.
The ending is a tag -- an addition or modification to the dance -- executed when the music ends.
Usually, it consists of introducing a turn so that, as the music fades,
the dancer ends facing the front, or starting, wall.
This also allows the dancer an opportunity to add an improvised flourish.
Making space for two line dances.
Splitting the floor is when two different line dances are done to the same song at the same time.
This is most often done when there is an easy dance and an intermediate dance for the same song.
The DJ will announce that one dance will be done on one side of the dance floor and
the other will be done on the other side.
In other words, the floor is split between the two (or more) dances.
This lets the people doing the same dance get together on the dance floor,
and helps to eliminate collisons between two different dances.
Another reason this is done is if there is more than one very popular dance being done to a particular song.
And that's where the line dance starts.
Some choreographers will use a clock face as a reference point for the direction or wall to face
when doing their line dance.
12 o'clock is the direction you face at the beginning of the pattern.
This represents the current wall.
When facing forward, or your 12 o'clock position, turning to your right gets you to 3 o'clock.
When facing your 12 o'clock position, turning to your left gets you to 9 o'clock.
And, of course, everyone knows where their six is.
The choreographer may annotate the step description with the time on the clock face.
This represents the direction you should be facing, usually, at the end of that sequence of steps.
With more advanced dances, knowing which direction you end up facing can help you decode the step description correctly.
When you face a new wall to start the line dance from the beginning again,
that becomes your new 12 o'clock.
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Ending The Dance
Splitting The Floor
It's 12 O'Clock Somewhere
Phrasing And Music
Learn why you care about phrasing - if you don't already know.
Music is phrased. This can lead to line dances choreographed to follow the phrasing of a particular song. If you've always wondered why choreographers complicate their dances with little extras then read on.
Phrasing in music is a little like paragraphs in writing. The music flows to a point and then gathers itself for another flow. The simplest example is the verse and the chorus parts of most songs. The verse is a phrase (which may have phrases - sentences inside the paragraph - within it) and the chorus is another phrase.
To better understand phrasing, listen to the song Dance Above The Rainbow.
This sometimes gives choreographers problems because the phrases aren't always the same number of counts… Or sometimes the artist adds a few measures here and there which changes the phrasing in parts of the song. Music that has the same phrasing throughout is called evenly phrased. Music that has phrasing that is not the same number of counts throughout or has extra measures thrown in willy nilly is not evenly phrased.
To better understand what is meant by phrasing, listen to the song Dance Above The Rainbow by Ronan Hardiman (from the CD titled Feet of Flames). This song is evenly phrased in sets of 32 counts, starting after the 16 count intro. (For our students, the line dance we typically do to this song is called Stealing The Best choreographed by Rosie Multari.)
Music that is not evenly phrased sometimes leads to dances that have tags, restarts, breaks, and/or parts. Of these, tags and restarts are seen the most often.
A tag is an extra set of counts introduced into a dance to match the phrasing of a song. The tag can be one count, two counts, eight counts, or more. Some choreographers like to call these bonus steps. That way the glass is half full.
A restart is where the choreographer begins the dance pattern again somewhere in the middle of one pattern. So, for example, the first 16 counts of a 32 count line dance are executed, but then, instead of finishing with the last 16 counts, the dance starts over from the beginning of the pattern. Again, this is to keep the dance phrased with the music. Often following the bridge of a song —the part where the artist stops vocalizing— the restart occurs when the artist begins singing again.
A break is where the music stops, often with a few counts of silence, and then starts in again. Sometimes, a break requires a hold, or a pose. Other times, you can just keep dancing and if you keep the beat, you will be with the music when it starts again. Sometimes a choreographer will make up some 'business' for dancers to do that goes with the words, if the artist is speaking during the break in the music. The term break is also used in dance to mean an accent in the music (as in "hitting the break").
As an example, the line dance, Cute! Cute! Cute! choreographed by Kathy Gurdjian for the song Brand New Girlfriend by Steve Holy, has three tags and a break.
A part is one of several different patterns within the same line dance that go with different parts of the music, phrased with different numbers of counts. For example, often the chorus and verse have different phrasing. The chorus might have 32 counts and the verse might have 48 counts. So the choreographer might choreograph Part A to go with the verse and Part B to go with the chorus, and maybe even a Part C as a tag.
Then the dance might be done in the following order: A A B C B A B. (These dances are sometimes called "AB Dances" or "ABC Dances".) The pattern means to dance Part A twice (perhaps to go with two verses), then Part B once (chorus), then Part C once (tag), then Part B (chorus), Part A (verse), and Part B again (chorus).
Many of these dances are fun to do — once learned — since they fit the music so well. For an example of such a dance, I suggest checking out Go Greased Lightning choreographed by Michele Burton.
Some artists record songs that are evenly phrased throughout because they understand it is easier to dance to line dances choreographed for these songs. Scooter Lee is one such artist. She and choreographer Jo Thompson Szymanski have teamed up to create great music and wonderful dances together.