OK, perhaps I should have said "half of the *count* before it" and not "half of the *beat* before it". As I recall, I brought this up a couple times in my group classes because one or both of the teachers I've had seemed to count S& with a QQ timing. That is instead of saying "slow, [pause], and", it came out like "slow, and" in an even rhythm. To me, that even verbal count implied that the S& was being treated as QQ. I forget if I saw a difference like that when the teacher danced it, but I remember it in verbal counts. So when I asked about it, I think one of them told me that the & can be considered to be half of the preceding count. I may have worded things wrong before, but the end point was what I meant; the explanation kind of turned S& into QQ and I don't completely agree with that.

A short PS since I had to make an edit anyway: Keh, you may be in the minority by not counting &s and a's as durations. As noted before, I'm pretty sure they took the idea from musical verbal counts and they have definite meanings there, they don't change with the song you're playing. As for splitting actions, I agree you can do it and I've been told to think that way on a few steps before. But I think I'd count them as &s and not a's because they're normally an even split of the beat. There we go, back to standard &s and a's that don't change with the dance.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall

[This message was edited by Dronak on 01-17-02 at 08:14 AM.]

[This message was edited by Dronak on 01-17-02 at 08:14 AM.]