Now here’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. I started going to salsa dancing lessons fairly regularly this fall, but am having a hard time remembering the long sequences of complex moves that I learn in the MIT lessons (which are great, by the way). Even when I can remember them, it’s hard to do them on the dance floor with a girl who doesn’t also know what is coming, while staying on the beat, etc. etc. So, at some point this fall, I thought to myself that there must be a better way to learn enough sequences of moves not to bore a good follower to tears.
As I thought about the problem, I realized that salsa dancing (and most partner dances) is really a finite-state machine. We have X number of states (the positions that you end up in on beat 1), and transitions between the states (twirls, etc.). Naturally, I thought of creating a diagram with states and transitions and tracing paths through the diagram to come up with new sequences. This way, if I could memorize a few positions and all the different transitions between them, I could come up with lots of sequences on my own without ever having to memorize a two-minute series of steps. Each set of steps would be at most 8 or 16 beats long.
Still, I didn’t know exactly what to call each state, what precisely is considered a transition, or most importantly, how to present this information in a usable manner. Last week, I was again thinking about this and realized that since a finite-state diagram is also a directed graph, and the web is a directed graph, a webpage made perfect sense for a presentation mechanism. Moreover, if I used a wiki, I could start adding pieces very easily, even if I don’t know the best terminology or have the perfect definition of each state. Plus, other people can add their own moves to the wiki and eventually, we can all learn from each other.
Thus, yesterday morning, I started a new website: salsa.wikidot.com. So far it’s not much; I have a few positions and moves described, and I plan to add more. I feel a little bit like I shouldn’t actually be the one adding content, since I’m so new at dancing and don’t really know how to describe everything. However, I also think that a lot of times we just need to start doing something even if we don’t know how, so there it is. I have it set up so that it will be easy to add photos and videos of the steps if I ever get that far. Should be fun. Hopefully this helps someone someday.
January 7, 2008 at 1:17 pm
this is soooooo geeky. but clever. and i like it.
September 25, 2010 at 8:13 am
Interesting post – It’s something that i’ve been thinking about – how to learn moves, how they link, and being able to link them together, and pull moves that fit at the time, remembering a move or moves to do in time.
My take on it is that the finite states are say the end of the 8th beat, and the end of the 4th beat (if dancing on1) – ie just ready to start a new move, and midway through. So the finite positions (open hold, closed hold etc), with the basic being a fundamental looping state.
My initial thought was that you’ve got a visually displayable graph with the nodes capable of being displayed as a photograph /visual description of the state say of a move just before it starts. – the line being the move, with length of line showing the time to finish the move (likely 8 beats).
Beginners know some – the open position/closed position to start/end the basic/mambo, cucaracha, open break for example. A hammerlock would be where you go from one state to another.
Not sure about the wiki dot site – I was thinking something akin to musicplasma, but with videos for each node (with the initial frame showing the starting position of the move).
Any thoughts?
September 25, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Hey Tom – I hadn’t heard of musicplasma before; looks like it’s down now? I saw an article on it, though, so I think I know what you’re referring to.
Unfortunately, since I started the salsa wiki, none of my girlfriends have been interested in dancing at all, so it’s sort of languished along with my dancing. Feel free to take over! Or even switch to something else; I never liked wikidot much…
I think a nice visualization of each of the states and their connection would be awesome. You could even have a filter so that you can choose the level of moves, etc., so that the display doesn’t become overly crowded, then you could print it out.