Hey everyone. I am trying to learn the dances but I don't know what CBMP means. Can some please tell me?

lia,

thanks for your effort.

who says a thread has to just answer the original question.

why can't it lead in other directions as well?

why this discussion could go in the direction of what constitutes loutish behaviour.

keep 'em coming!

OB

First, what a non-dancer does is irrelevant. Who cares if they do it wrong, they're not dancing and that's what we're discussing. And if a dancer does it wrong then they're screwing up their frame. You might get away with the wrong action by yourself, but with a partner it won't work properly and you'll soon figure out the right way to do it. I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to put the wrong side fwd like that while dancing with a partner -- I'm guessing you'd end up unbalanced to some degree.



OK, a total beginner may not get it right away. But he/she will be taught how to do it correctly from the start since it's a basic technique. Beginners aren't going to be allowed to take the wrong side forward and if they do it anyway they'll find out soon enough why they shouldn't. Maybe "naturally" isn't the ideal word for 100% of the cases, but when talking about dancers, it's going to hold true for just about everyone who's out of the absolute beginner stage and has learned CBM(P) already. I think the overall percentage of absolute beginners is small enough that my statement was still pretty accurate.

P.S. -- the actual phrase was "pretty naturally". I specifically avoided saying "naturally" alone to imply that there's a chance it won't be completely natural for everyone, all of the time.

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

This is probably more than Tara Tot107 was expecting to hear but I'd like to come back on Dronak's comments comparing CBM and CBMP.

Yes the last part of each phrase is the important part. CBM is a Movement. Moving the opposite side of the body towards the moving foot provides the body swing needed to turn so CBM is always used to initiate a turn.

CBMP is a Position and doesn't have a turning movement. The opposite side of the body is already "leading" and the foot is placed on or across the line of the standing foot to retain that body position. I don't believe that the act of placing one foot in line with the other would naturally result in CBMP, not from a standing square, feet together, starting point anyway.

Just to confuse things even more, some steps require both CBM and CBMP.

Such things are better seen demonstrated than described Tara, so try to get a teacher to show you the difference, and also to let you feel the result.

Howard

It stands for Contra(ry) Body Movement Position.
Checkout the Dance Dictionary in the Learning Centre on this site.

It's normally used when stepping Outside Partner (also in the dictionary) to maintain body contact so that the couple dances as one, not two people side by side.

HTH

Oh Boy!
Just when I thought we had it clear

Yes, so the first answer stated what "CBMP" stands for.

That doesn't help the person who asks the question! If they don't know what it stands for, they don't know what it is, how to do it, and how to use it! The posts that followed went into that actually useful information, and you trashed them!

And then you try to hide behind your gender or intimate that you're being bashed because of your gender - neither! You were trashing people giving extremely helpful information, and shouldn't get away with that!

guest,



i can't understand what you find so offensive about this response.

it's true and rather gracious imo.

ob

Here's some food for thought:

If you stand with your feet together and step absolutely straight forward, the feet are on two separate, albeit narrowly spaced tracks. Therefore to place one foot along or across the track of the other is to shift sideways, even if only very slightly.

Now you might think that you're facing squarely to the direction you are stepping, but that's not actually true. If you face LOD and step foward with your left foot in CBMP, your movement is almost, but not quite, down LOD. It's actually on just a slight diagonal towards the wall. Now although you're facing squarely to the LOD, with respect to the direction you're traveling, you're not quite square. You do in fact have your right side just slightly in front of your left.

So one could indeed reasonably argue that any step taken with one foot along the track of the other is in CBMP, even when the body and feet are perfectly in line with each other.



Jonathan

Tara asked a simple question with the potential for a complex answer. My simple reply was intended to enable her to take the first step and find the entry in the dance dictionary (where it appears against the full name not the abbreviation) and thus make use of the excellent resources provided by Jonathan.

I should probably have added at that point that a book definition is not the best way to learn dancing, and that a good teacher could show in a few moments what may take days of discussion and still not be clear.

The ability for threads to expand and evolve is what makes these forums interesting, even if the original questioner gets left way behind.

The nuances of CBM and CBMP can be confusing for many people which is why it seems to be a standard question in all professional exams.

Long may these threads meander round the dancefloor evoking discussion, but lets keep it constructive so that everybody gains.