Tuesday 26 February 2013

Quickstep: The ballroom dance powered by fast-paced music and footwork

Very much like the Foxtrot’s quick version, the Quickstep Princeton is a type of ballroom dancing which is composed of quick stepping and extremely syncopated with the fast paced music and rhythms of dancer’s feet. Although Quickstep is extremely difficult to dance and get mastery, this is full of energy and fun to perform and watch. In fact, this dance form is elegant, glamorous, and smooth enough which brings the energy in your dancing. The dancers of quickstep look very light on their feet. This dance seems like the dancers touch barely the ground. The dancers are required to strive for getting elegance and this is very much like the Foxtrot dancing. Throughout each movement of the dancer, the body posture should be strong and straight enough on the upper side.

Action of Quickstep dancing
The 4/4 dance style, Quickstep is a ballroom dance which possesses basic rhythms of “slow-quick-quick and slow-quick-quick with one or two beats of “slow” rhythm and three or four beats of “quick-quick” on the balls of feet and most “slow” steps on the heel.

History of Quickstep
The Quickstep is a dance form developed in the suburbs of New York City during the World War I period. Initially, the African and Caribbean dancers was already performed Quickstep. On the American platform of stages, the debut of this dance form was eventually made and become popular in ballroom. In this regards, the Quickstep and Foxtrot belong to the same origin. In the 1920s, many bands came who played the slow beats of Foxtrot much faster and they developed it in two dance forms eventually. Quickstep becomes the fast-paced version of Foxtrot and the tempo of Foxtrot slowed down. On the development of Quickstep, lots of influence has arrived in the fever of Charleston.

As a progressive dance style which is danced without using the kicks, the Quickstep was performed from the Charleston as its origin. There was always stayed a debate why quickstep becomes popular more in Britain as compared to other countries. Quickstep involves quicker footwork which is like running a mile within the recorded time. The quickstep was termed as ‘joy’ ballroom dance for the modern world.  The carefree interpretation of the rhythm looks brighter with the whole character and the tempo of music and the basic figures and quite simpler.

Steps of Quickstep
Apart from up-and-down, the Quickstep dance involves rise-and-fall of swinging moves performed at the fast pace. Here are distinctive steps of Quickstep:
1. Rise and fall
2. Lock step
3. Running finish
4. Natural Hairpin
5. Outside Change
6. Hover Corte
7. Chasse
8. V-6 Combination

Conclusion
Quickstep is said to be the most widely performed ballroom dance along with the progressive two-step Princeton. This is quite a very amazing dance form which is full of enough energy and fun for the dancers. The exercisers also love this dance form very much. Usually jazz or swing music is used with a brisk tempo in Quickstep with the speed of around 50 beats per minute. 

Via

Quickstep Princeton

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