As a musician myself, when I listen to ballroom music, I realized that
some ballroom songs can be done to more than just only one dance. With
this, let me talk just a little bit on ballroom
music that can cross-over to two, three, or even four ballroom dances:
1. "A mover la colita", sung by Wilfrido Vargas, is originally a merengue,
but the rhythm I hear sounds almost like a samba.
2. The recent song "Smooth", sung by Rob Thomas, is originally a cha-cha.
But it also has a little straight-eighth west coast swing in it as
well. (The Purdue Ballroom Club, as I saw in one competition, loves to
do more straight-eighth WCS then the shuffle-style WCS.)
3. "Hit me baby, one more time", sung by Brittany Spears, is originally a
Nightclub 2-step song, but it can also be danced to West Coast Swing
and even American cha-cha, but it would not be really good for Inter-
national cha-cha, for no salsa rhythm is in the song.
4. "Sweet Home Chicago"(by the Blues Brothers Band), a pretty common
ballroom song, is originally a WCS song, but it can be done to Lindy
Hop, triple ECS and, in some cases, single ECS. It may also be done to
foxtrot but the music is perhaps too 'swingy' for that type of dance.
What can be learned is that if especially you are preparing for dance
competitions, you can, for example, dance "A mover la colita" to practice
on the samba, then
rewind the tape again, and dance the same song again to practice the
merengue. You can do that with a fairly large amount of songs, especially
if you love a ballroom song so much that you want to hear it again.
-------------------------
Charles Joseph Smith
cjsmith2@students.uiuc.edu
(217)332-2425
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