The Universal Unit System

     This semester I took a Ballroom class at my university and it was fascinating. Not only did we learn the dances (Country Two-Step, Cha Cha, Waltz, Tango, Nightclub Two-Step, and some others) but we learned about the Universal Unit System which is a way that you can measure music to make it easier to learn. It was designed by Skippy Blair and it is a pretty awesome way to learn difficult dances. 

     We had to write a paper to show we understood the concepts from class, here's some of it: 

     The Universal Unit System is designed to describe the weight changes in dance. Each two beats of music is one unit and the weight changes can be described in three ways: single, double, and triple. A single unit is one where there is only one weight change in the two beats. A double is two weight changes in those two beats, and a triple is three weight changes in two beats of music. There are two different types of single unit: a standard and a delayed single. A delayed single differs from the standard or regular single in that the weight change is on the second beat of the unit, rather than the first. There is also an empty unit where the dancer does not have a weight change.

     How these measurements appear on paper is with dots and slashes. The single unit will have either a dot and slash or a slash and dot—the dot is a weight change while the slash is a hold of some sort: a tap, ronde, or some other movement that does not shift weight from one foot to the other. The double unit will have two dots for a single unit, and the triple will have two large dots with a smaller one in the middle. This smaller dot means the triple step is syncopated: it doesn’t have an even distribution of the time between steps. The steps are placed against cards measured for the beat of the song. In the case of a Country Two-step, the dance is set to 4/4 time (4 beats of music with the quarter note determining the beat) and the steps are single, single, double. It looks like:  The “&a” between each count is how the space between each beat is measured. How 

this is counted is a “slo-ow, slo-ow, quick, quick, slo-ow, slo-ow, quick, quick” saying each syllable on a beat. The difference in the notation between a slow in Country Two-Step and a staccato dance like Tango is a smaller dot below the dot like musical notation has a small dot to indicate staccato.

     I really enjoyed the class and this system is something I think I'll be able to use in the future when I try to learn new dances.

Just a thought...

Stephie