Nightclub two-step

Nightclub two-step (in the rest of this section simply called two-step) is a romantic dance to slow pop music. Most patterns are stationary, but traveling patterns exist too.

Music	Dance
	Counting the basic, Other dances with this rhythm

The music

Nightclub two-step music is slow, between 60 and 90bpm, usually with a steady backbeat on the snare drum, and a characteristic rhythm in the bass and bass drum. There can be sixteenth notes in the hi-hat or cymbal rhythm.

Nightclub two-step music shares with most popular music a steady backbeat rhythm, that is, the snare drum plays on 2 and 4. However, the bass and bass drum play a variation on the usual hits on 1 and 3. The 1 is there, but the note on 3 is not. One way of looking at the Two-step rhythm is to think that the note on 3 has been shifted forward to just before 3. (Movie; big, small.)

Below there is a discussion of dancing N2S on either the 1&2 3&4 or 12& 34& beats. Is there any indication in the music which is the "right" count? The best you could say is that the 2& beats are played on the drums, which seems to favour the 12& theory.

Some people use doo-wop ballads, which have a 12/8 beat.

The dance

Nightclub two-step patterns are mostly based on a single rhythm, which has two eighth notes and a quarter note. This rhythm is known as a triple rhythm unit. It appears in other dances, such as swing, as a triple-step. It is also the same rhythm as the chassé in cha-cha. Together, these three steps make up two quarter notes, or one half of a measure. Since three is an odd number of steps, you need two of these half measures to get back on the same foot. People usually consider two of these triple units to comprise a single pattern.

Counting the basic rhythm

If you thought the above explanation of the basic rhythm was simple, then here come the complications. There are three ways of dancing the basic rhythm.

• By putting the eighth notes on the first beat you get 1&2 3&4. You can verbalise this as QQS QQS. This way each bar of music has two triple rhythm units. Given how natural triple rythms are, this is a very obvious way of counting, and the dance is taught this way by several Californian teachers, including Buddy Schwimmer, who has some claim to being the inventor of this dance (Here is an interview with him that addresses the matter.). However, some people find it hard to start the dance this way.
• By putting the eighth notes on the second beat you get 12& 34& as the basic rhythm of the dance. You can verbalise this as SQQ SQQ. Now we don't have regular triple rhythm units anymore. One advantage of this count is that it is easier to start the dance with a sweeping slow step than immediately going into the quick quicks. This count has been adopted as the official count by the UCWDC. Proponents of the QQS count don't like the SQQ one. The argument seems to be that you mentally pause on the break from one pattern to the next, and with the SQQ count that is after the second quick. Since this is a far less natural place to transition from one pattern to the next, it breaks the continuity of the movement.
• You can also take the second rhythm, and instead of thinking SQQ SQQ on the 1&2 3&4, think QQS QQS on 2&3 4&1. A little like cha-cha. Using this count you again get triple rhythm units, which lead to a better flowing dance, but this time the second unit straddles the bar line, like the chassé in cha-cha. To start the dance, you could try to start dancing on beat two, but that is somewhat tricky, so take a prep step on beat 1.

Other dances with similar rhythms

There are other dances that have a similar basic rhythm. Both salsa and (American style) rumba can be counted quick quick slow. Now, usually a quick corresponds to a quarter note and a slow to a half note, but that law is not written in stone, so we can with some justice pronounce the triple rhythm in nightclub two-step as quick quick slow too.

There are more resemblances. If you exchange the slow and the quick quick, you get slow quick quick, which is the basic rhythm for (International and silver level American style) foxtrot. Furthermore, the basic rhythm of the nightclub two-step is like samba, but with the rhythm smeared out.

There are a few implications to all these resemblances:

• You can steal moves from all these dances for your two-step material. For instance, you can borrow foxtrot moves to incorporate travel, you can do rumba spot turns, or samba shadow bota fogos.
• You can dance two-step to other kinds of dance music that have the right tempo. The simplest case is where you take a slow bolero number, which would be around 90bpm, and dance two-step to it. However, the bolero dancers are now stepping 12 3 4, while you are stepping 1&2 3&4, that is, you take six steps in the time that they take three steps. You can also take slow samba music, and dance two-step to it. Now you are stepping at the same speed as the samba dancers, just with a different feel. The Grace Jones song La vie en rose can be used this way for both two-step and samba; the Double song Captain of her heart, as well as Marc Anthony's When I dream at night is two-step or bolero/international rumba. Those last songs show the limitations of this idea: your two-step can become a real workout if the tempo gets too far from the comfortable range.
• You can dance other dances to two-step music. For instance, by double-timing slow two-step music you can dance foxtrot or rumba to it. If the (nightclub) two-step music is faster, you can double-time it, and dance country two-step to it.

This file is part of "Feel The Beat", a musicology course for dancers, by Victor Eijkhout (victor at eijkhout dot net), who appreciates being sent additions or corrections on the material in this course. Copyright 2000/1 Victor Eijkhout.

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Last modified on: Sunday, May 29, 2001.