Today I have been speaking with members of the Royal Scottish County Dance Scotland about Dance-Intensity.

Dance-Intensity is a concept to measure how much dancing a person, couple or couples perform during a dance. The amount of dancing varies between position: normally an active couple will dance more than an inactive couple (in EFDSS terms the First couple generally dances more than the Second couple, but not always and sometime it’s equal). In Scottish dance, the set set-up and progression style is different than that employed by the EFDSS.

I will use this concept in my paper to measure the change of Dance-Intensity between Karpeles 1931 description and the one described by Nibs Matthews in 1972. Karpeles’ Dance-Intensity was 80% while Matthews’ 1972 description it had increased to 95%.

The maths works like this. The number of bars a person/couple/couples dance is divided by the number of music bars, multiplied by 100 to give a percentage. Using Nottingham Swing as an example, and concentrating on the first couple. The first couples activity is equal at 12 bars, and the dance is 16 bars long. So 24/32 x 100 = 75% [Actual dancing time per dancer/actual music length per round = Dance-Intensity]

Dances where everybody in moving all the time, for example Childgrove or Newcastle, Dance- Intensity would be 100% for all dancers once through the dance. Nottingham Swing would return 62.5% Dance Intensity, while Levi Jackson Rag returns 81.25%. (Remember! Men stand still for 4 bars in a full Ladies’ Chain! However, if you determine that men are always moving in the chain, it increases to 87.5%) .

Watch out, it good fun and addictive.