Bollywood Schottisches

Several years ago, someone in the Bay Area dance community (maybe Deb Henigson) had the brilliant insight that the rhythms of bhangra, a folk music and dance from India, and schottische, a Bohemian dance popular in Victorian ballrooms, were the same. So here's some schottische music from India. It's worth noting that all three songs are, in true Bollywood fashion, over 5 minutes long. They're also fast, so I'd advise both shortening and slowing them down for dancing.

• Sadhna Sargam et al - Maahi Ve
  I was introduced to bhangra at Decadance's Spring Show 2005, where they performed a bhangra-schottische fusion to "Maahi ve." That piece is still one of my favourite Deca numbers, and you can see it at around 1:20 in this video. After checking out the music video for "Maahi Ve" on YouTube and finding out that it was from the film Kal Ho Naa Ho, I actually watched the whole movie to see this colourful, extravagant production in context.
• Shankar Mahadevan - Pretty Woman
  Turns out out most Bollywood films are long (we're talking over 3 hours) and chock full of singing and dancing. Here's another song from the Kal Ho Naa Ho soundtrack, and I definitely recommend watching the clip(below) if you want a taste of how over-the-top these song-and-dance numbers can be. Graham did a nice edit of "Pretty Woman" which we played at Friday Night Waltz in June.
  
• Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan, Mahalaxmi Iyer - Rock N Roll Soniye
  This is the "Bollywood schottische" that Richard Powers plays most often. I think "soniye" means something like "pretty girl" or "my love" -- it's a term of endearment.

Swing Music from Dublin

There's nothing to connect these two songs except that I first heard them when I went swing dancing in Dublin last year. I was editing the first one this morning and it made me think of the second.

• Lisa Stansfield - Why Do We Call It Love? (180 bpm) (Amazon CD)
  My favorite part of this one has got to be the horns popping in mid-chorus. I also heard this one last week played as a quickstep for a ballroom competition on PBS.
• Eileen Ivers - The Rights of Man (128 bpm) (Amazon MP3)
  Leave it to Eileen Ivers to turn an Irish hornpipe into something you can swing to. Maybe more of a bluesy swing, but still.

West Coast Swing Favorites

Speaking of the Stanford Dance Weekend, I made a point of taking all of Michelle Kinkaid's West Coast Swing classes there. I didn't pick up any specific new songs to dance to, but it's as good an excuse as any to post a few of my favorites I've had waiting around for a while in a draft. These are all ones I first encountered when I took some WCS classes at the Dance Spectrum several years ago.

• Robben Ford & the Blue Line - Start It Up (126 bpm) - Amazon
  I remember Richard Kear teaching a whole class on different things to do to the breaks in this song. (Previously seen on Rowyn's Leap Day set list.) Update: Here's a video of Richard dancing to this song. Well worth watching, in addition to letting you hear the whole thing.
  
• Cake - Short Skirt, Long Jacket (122 bpm) - Amazon
  This one is interesting because the timing of the "short skirt and a long jacket" line is different every time around. Really keeps you on your toes.
• Chris Anderson and DJ Robbie - Last Night (122 bpm) - Yahoo, Amazon, video
  If you like wacky, unintelligible vocals -- and I do -- this song has 'em. (At least on DJ Robbie's portion of it.)

Stanford Dance Weekend

This past weekend was the 2008 Stanford Dance Weekend, a total immersion in social dance — "waltz, swing, salsa, vintage dances, club dances and more." In addition to learning new moves and dancing with nice people, we also picked up some new songs to waltz to!

• Tsuumi Sound System - Tuulin ja Hannun häävalssi (Wedding waltz) (140 bpm) This is a lovely Finnish waltz which Lilli Ann Carey played in her class on musicality. It has some nice syncopations which I imagine would work well for canter pivots.
• Peter Gabriel - Down to Earth (117 bpm) (Amazon | imeem) This new cross-step waltz comes fresh off the soundtrack of Pixar's new film Wall-E, which opened last Friday. Richard Powers played it for the first time this weekend in his cross-step classes. There's a few bars in 4/4 time in the middle which need to be edited out, and it's too long to play as is, but otherwise it's a fun new song to dance to.
• Kepa Junkera - Santimamiñeko Fandangoa & Ioaeoe (130 bpm before editing) (Amazon | last.fm) New to my collection, though Richard's been playing this lively, cheerful waltz for a while. He speeds it up and plays it as a rotary waltz which also works for redowa. I haven't tried it editing the song yet, but it probably needs to be shortened even after increasing the tempo.

Redowa II

Last month I shared some favourite redowa songs, but if you attended Friday Night Waltz in Palo Alto last week you may have noticed that we didn't play any of them! Here are the ones we did play:

• Nordman - Stormens Öga (170 bpm):  I love this song.  It lacks the extra-salient percussion that graces some redowa tunes, but it's so energetic that you'll probably want to redowa anyway.  The link is unfortunately to Swedish iTunes store, which probably isn't very useful, so you can get the album on Amazon or listen to a full preview on YouTube
• Mango Groove - Two Hearts (150 bpm):  At a much mellower tempo than the other two, this up-beat Afropop hit let's you stretch out those long steps on beat two.  Though fairly obscure to American listeners (I couldn't find the song by searching for the lyrics when I first tried and also turned up no full previews online), the band is apparently a "household name in South Africa."
• Winifred Horan - Giants Fall (180 bpm) (Amazon | eMusic | YouTube) New to us a few months ago, this is a fast waltz -- I recommend cutting it down at least a minute or it'll tire out most dancers.  Love the fiddle and the driving beat!

Friday Night Waltz Set List

Update: Due to technical difficulties, the order of the two schottisches was reversed. Also, we found time for a bonus one step (Belleville Rendez-Vous) in the last set. If you liked or disliked anything in particular, please let us know. Thanks to everyone who came and danced in that icky heat!

Vienna Teng

A lot of us Stanford-types are fans of Vienna Teng. If you're in the area, she's performing in San Francisco this Friday and Saturday (details). Here are some of her songs you can dance to:

Waltzes:

• Anna Rose (121 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  A lovely cross-step.
• Between (135 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  Blue Caravan (136 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on last.fm
  A couple in-between tempo waltzes. You might slow "Between" down a tad for cross-step, or just deal with it (especially if you want to keep the title accurate). "Blue Caravan" might sound good sped up slightly to rotary tempo. I haven't actually danced to it yet.
• Recessional (145 bpm, sort of) - Amazon, full preview on last.fm
  The tempo is approximate because it has a lot of fermatas and ritards and tricky things like that. Beautiful song, and a good challenge for paying attention to the music.
• Drought (157 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  An honest-to-goodness rotary waltz.

Rhumba:

• Unwritten Letter (140 bpm) - Amazon
  Not being a rhumba-er myself, I'm taking this one on faith. :-)

In addition to the Amazon links above, some (but not all) of her albums are available on eMusic.