 The other day I got the chance to sit down with ballroom dance instructor Tony Sterling who, with Renae Lowe, runs New Smyrna Beach Ballroom in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
I met Tony at the Latin Grooves and the Artisan Foods event I did with Soul Survivors this past September. There we talked about all things music and oh yeah, how he can PREDICT LIGHTNING STRIKES IN A STORM!!! I was naturally fascinated by this so I had to sit down with him and find out how he does it. Tony and Renae invited me to their New Smyrna Beach dance studio on Canal street and the following conversation ensued. But first I want to give you an idea of what you’ll learn in this post.
Harry: OK. So, let's jump right into it. You told me, last time we spoke that you had a really unique way to be able to predict the timing of lightning. Tony: Yeah. Harry: And I found that super interesting, so can you tell me how did you come to find out that you could do that? Tony: Well, a long time ago, for some reason, I became fascinated with timing. Harry: Yeah. Tony: Like, being able to count the seconds on a clock and keeping it accurate for long periods of time. So, before I was a dancer or anything, I've always had a fascination with timing and seeing if I could keep rhythm and keeping it right on with the clock as per second-wise. And then whenever I became a dancer, I quickly learned that most things are written in eight-count beats: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And I was just watching a lightning storm one time with a friend of mine and he's an amateur photographer, really good. And we're just talking and I just was wondering if there was a natural rhythm to lightning. And I stood, we stood out there for a long time. It was quite a big storm front and we were on a balcony and the storm was well away from us and the lightning was heavy, so ... Which was a good thing. There was a lot of lightning. I started counting and it's a very sporadic rhythm. It doesn't always go through full sets of eight. But if you count enough sets of eight, things start to come back around and loop at a certain period of time and within a second or so, I can predict when and where the lightning will strike. Now that is probably one time out of twenty guesses. Harry: Gotcha. So it's not like an exact science? Tony: It's not an exact science yet. I haven't studied that much lightning. But there is definitely some type of rhythmic cycle to lightning, provided it's a big enough storm front and you can see it on a wide enough angle, far enough away from you. Harry: Interesting. Yeah. Tony: So, I don't know if the rhythm changes with the northern winds or the eastern winds, but I do know that I counted a front, several fronts here as well. And one time out of twenty or so I was able to guess when and where the lightning was going to strike and point at it when it struck. Harry: Right. But when you're counting, is it more like a one Mississippi, two Mississippi-type count? Or is like … Tony: It's a count that involves a portion of my inhale and/or exhale that I have kind of perfected that's difficult to explain. One ... Then you breathe, then you count with your breaths and you limit your breathing to that particular rhythm. Harry: Interesting. Tony: And I do everything in eights. So what occurs over several eight counts begins to build a particular pattern. Harry: So, what is that ... I know you said it's hard to articulate in words, but is it like, you're inhaling for a few beats and then you're exhaling for a few beats too? Tony: No, an inhale is one beat and an exhale is another beat. So it's ... Harry: And how long does an inhale last? Tony: Approximately one one thousand. Harry: One one thousand ... beats per minute? Tony: No, no just when you say, one one thousand, you know, one one thousand, two one thousand. Harry: Oh, I see, I see. Yeah. Tony: So, a one one thousand is the approximation that it lasts. Harry: So, OK, so one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, that kind of thing, until it gets to about eight, and then a lightning strike happens? Tony: No, no, no. There are several sets of eight. Harry: Ah. Tony: And then a lightning strike or several lightning strikes happen inside of several sets of eight. Harry: Gotcha. Tony: And you keep that track in your mind of how many sets of eight you've gone through between how many lightning strikes and what beat on that particular set of eight in that set occurred. Harry: So, in a particular storm, if you can find within like sixteen beats that lightning has struck ... Tony: No, I usually count large beat structures and keep track of large beat structures in my head. Like, thirty-two counts of eight. Harry: So like, thirty-two counts of eight. So that's thirty-two times ... Tony: Eight. Harry: ...That you're counting eight. Tony: Yes. Harry: OK. And so, wow. Tony: Because that's typically the length of a square rhythm-formatted song, is thirty-two sets of eight, or ... you know, for two minutes. Harry: So that's what, like, five minutes? Tony: Two minutes or so. Harry: Two minutes or so. OK. And then, how many times lightning strikes within that depends on the storm? Tony: Yes. Typically, but I have also noticed that most storm lightning patterns can be ... not the same, but you can count most of how long it's going to take ... Because lightning strikes click, click, click, click, click, click, you know. The clicks are representing the lightning strike. But, it can go click and wait for a while, and then click, you know. So you have to keep rhythm of so many of those particular instances to be able to find a rhythm to go, "It's going to strike right there." Harry: Right. So you need to already see a few strikes ... Tony: Oh, many strikes. You need to see many strikes. Harry: ... Before you can go, OK, now it's going to happen here. Tony: Yes. Correct. I can't just look at it and go, "Oh, lightning's going to strike there. Lightning's ..." No, I have to study the front for some time before ... Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I wish I had. Harry: No, this is really cool though. Tony: I could bet in Vegas on that, you know? I wouldn't bet on the count because it's so few and far ... But sometimes I do, "It's going to go right there." And it's a little quicker than the average person because I've had another person go, "OK, let me try to do it too," and then, you know. So I guessed a lot more than the other person that didn't study the rhythmic aspect of the lightning storm, so to speak. Harry: Right, OK, OK. So, that's funny because it seems like different storms have different tempos. Tony: Yes. Different BPMs. LSMs, lightning strikes per minute. Harry: Yeah, that's really, really, really cool. Because I ... Tony: Yeah, we can call that LSMs. Lightning strikes of minute. (laughs) Harry: I've never thought of it in that way at all. Tony: And now the spacing of the rhythm doesn't necessarily equal seconds, or minutes, or hours. It's rhythm ... that is counted, you know? And so it's not a correct representation of one second. It's a particular rhythm that I have perfected. Like, the average rhythm of a song, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. OK? So, you know. Or a slower song, so to speak. Not a fast one, one two three four five ... But it's a slower, one ... two ... three ... four ... five ... And you know, however I count it depends on the tempo of that lightning storm. So lightning storms will vary slightly, but they're not all exactly the same on how many lightning strikes per minute happen. So far as I've noticed. OK? So, I don't study every lightning storm that comes through, so ... Harry: No, of course. But now it's going to have me thinking next time a lightning storm comes through, I'm going to be like ... Tony: Count your own rhythm to it ... Harry: Start counting, yeah ... Tony: ... And see if you can start to figure out, OK, it's going to go there, or it's going to go there. Harry: I would imagine that a lot of trial and error goes ... Tony: A lot of trial and error. Harry: ... In the beginning to get the rhythm in the first place. Tony: Absolutely. You have to take a lot of guesses before. But you also have to count it and the way that I do it is I count it and just collect data, so to speak, for a while, before I start trying to guess and then, once you start looking at it, you can go, "There is a particular rhythm to this front." You know? And a lot of it depends on dissipation of the rain and things like that. Or how heavy it is in a particular moment. It has to be a fairly heavy storm that you can see off in the distance rolling across a body of water or away from you, you know? Harry: Now how long have you been doing this again? Tony: Lightning, counting lightning? Harry: Yeah. Tony: Fifteen years. Harry: Fifteen years. And have you noticed, are any two storms alike? Tony: I don't know ... Harry: As far as the rhythm is concerned? Tony: They're all similar, but they're not all the same. Harry: They're not all the same. Very cool. Tony: Yeah. Harry: Crazy, wow. You pretty much touched on how precise this is and that it's not an exact science or anything. Tony: Yeah, correct. Harry: Now, let's move into the realm of dancing. Why is it so important to have rhythm, as a dancer? Tony: I feel the importance of rhythm as a dancer is extremely important. However, the focus of the topic is knowing that rhythm ... I mean, a heartbeat has a rhythm. A car has a rhythm. Somebody's walk has a rhythm. And that all stems from instinct. Everybody has a instinctual rhythm, so to speak. So, I think it's important that people learn to recognize rhythm, more important than it is to have rhythm, because everybody has rhythm. I have not met one person in my entire career that I cannot teach rhythm to fairly quickly. Harry: Now what do you mean the instinctual rhythm? Like, each individual person has their own rhythm? What do you mean by that? Tony: Well, let's go back to where dance and rhythm was started, originated. Harry: Oh, OK. Tony: Now this is all an opinion that I've formulated over the years. Harry: Of course. That's why we're here. Tony: Some of it has come from people speaking in jest and me thinking about it and some of it has come from people talking about historical things that happens. And I like to think back to one of the earliest civilizations, is the African civilization. Harry: OK. Tony: And I believe that whenever you have different hertz ... You understand hertz? Harry: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Tony: And bass and treble when you go from a high hertz to a lower hertz. Harry: OK. Tony: Everybody has a natural reaction to any sound or noise that's below twenty hertz. Boom, boom, boom. That's on a lower scale. And why is that, do you think? Harry: I don't know. Tony: I believe that when you had African civilizations or aboriginal civilizations, whatever old civilizations there are. I'm not a historian by any means. However, you have a particular reaction to a particular tone because we were not always the top of the food chain. Harry: OK. Tony: So whenever you're smaller than an animal ... And still, if we didn't know how to use weapons and things like that, we would still be not the top on the food chain because a bear one-on-one could eat us or a lion or a tiger, unless you're a massive human being, or you know, whatever. But, I believe women have a better reaction to rhythm because rhythm is written in particular tones and there are particular tones that are used ... For instance, whenever you hear something going boom, boom, boom, boom, you're kind of going to turn around and look to see what's walking toward you, at a very minimum. And that's a natural reaction. So, whenever you hear a particular rhythm, boom, boom, boom, boom, we have to react twice as fast to that rhythm to stay ahead of what's coming after us. And that's a natural instinctive reaction to tone. And when we write modern music, wordsmithing typically runs in a square rhythm and the tone, the one, is typically accompanied by a lower hertz beat or a higher hertz beat because you can hear it. It's more recognizable. So, when you bob your head to the music, that's rhythm, OK? And whenever you have a natural reaction ... So whenever you had the African camps or the older civilization camps at night, they would stretch the animal skin over a barrel and beat on it because it made a big sound and made them sound bigger than what was outside of the camp. And they lit fires and danced. And the reason why they danced is they made the big masks and jumped up and down with the fire so the animal could see that there's bigger animals and could hear that there's bigger animals in the camp. And it would help actually physically protect them from the tigers coming in and taking them while they sleep. So this is typically why, in my opinion, why they would have these at night, to scare off predators and things out of the camp to make sure that the animals knew that they are the alpha civilization wherever you're living in that part of the world. And so women have a tendency to go faster than the rhythm, so they have a very ... much quicker reaction to rhythm because typically ladies outsmart prey. They run. Or they hide or they get away. Men don't typically do that. The natural reaction for men is to stand and fight. Or to defend. And the other people listen to the rhythm of what's coming and stay ahead of it. And the men kind of like ... Rhythm is a little bit slower because they inspect the situation first, see what's going on. Ladies and children typically kind of move out quicker. Because ... Now there are some ladies that will stand and fight too, don't get me wrong. (Laughs) I don't want to get in trouble here. But instinctively I think that there is a natural reaction to particular tones because of something chasing us and eating us. Harry: That's also really interesting when you consider battles in history, they have war horns or they have drums. So just to announce their coming. “Hey, we're coming”, you know? And they're beating drums and marching. So the enemy will hear that and the men will defend. The children and the women will go to safety. But yeah, that's really, really interesting. Tony: Yeah. Not only that but cadence. Rhythm and cadence as practiced in militaries with marching and running and you run in a particular cadence so the entire group can move as one. When the entire group moves as one, it makes a louder vibration on the earth and helps just like the war horn or the war drum. When you walk in rhythm, it typically gives a bigger noise to the enemy, yeah. So there's protection in rhythm, so to speak. Or protection in music, I guess (laughs). Harry: So, in that, when you say that the men's responses are a little bit slower than the women's, are you saying that typically it's harder to get men up to speed with rhythm? Tony: Between three and seven times faster, the ladies learn rhythm. Or, when I say learn, I say recognize rhythm. Because I've not met anybody that I can't make them learn to recognize rhythm very quickly. When you're talking about ... Harry: How quickly are you talking? Tony: Within minutes. Harry: Really? Tony: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Typically. Harry: Somebody that has absolutely no rhythm? Tony: That has absolutely no rhythm and knows nothing about rhythm, I can put on a song and have them following rhythm and counting the rhythm within a few minutes. Because it's about recognizing it. Because rhythm is instinctual. It's not something that's learned. It's something that you have to learn to recognize. Harry: Now how about to get them to actually dance in rhythm? Tony: To actually dance in rhythm. That takes a bridge that you have to cross. However, whenever you dance in rhythm, you teach people how to walk in a straight cadence first. Five, six, seven, eight. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. And then you teach the person to recognize that rhythm, at which point you can either take one step on two beats, which creates a slow. Or you can take two steps on one beat, which creates a syncopation. I'm sure as a musician you understand those terms. Harry: Uh-huh (affirmative). Tony: One, two, slow ... quick, quick, slow ... quick, quick. So that's all eight counts. One, two, three, four ... Or if you say one and, they step twice. Step step. So there are certain drills that you can do to make people recognize rhythm in their feet. Yeah. So, but you have to recognize rhythm in your head and have to be able to count the music and find the one first, before you can learn how to step to it. Harry: OK. So let's say, from zero to dancing, what is the curve? What's the learning curve there? How long will it take somebody with zero rhythm and that can't recognize it, to you getting them to recognize it, to them dancing it regularly? Tony: Regularly? Harry: Yeah. Tony: It depends on what you define as regularly and I'll give you a scale here. When you're talking, let's say merengue. Merengue is a straight one, two, three ... and you go march, march, march, march, march, march. That I can have them doing within minutes. Harry: OK. Tony: OK? When you're talking about a syncopation like, for instance, cha-cha ... One, two, three, four and one, two, three ... When you say "four and," that means you step twice on the four. That means the four is syncopated. One, two, three, four and, one, two, three. So, with that, I can have them doing that in place within, you know, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. And then actually having them ... I can have them dancing it front of me within one lesson. However, them going away and the retention of the ... the ability to retain the actual movement to that particular rhythm, if there's a syncopation or several syncopations inside of one four-beat sequence, it can typically take a few days if the person is adamant about practicing it here and there. When you're talking about practicing rhythm and movements, it doesn't necessarily mean practicing for hours. Just going over it here and there when you think about it and keeping it fresh between lesson to lesson. That's one of the things that I practice is that, when you have somebody recognizes syncopation, that's actually a big breakthrough with a student-to-teacher relationship. Whenever somebody learns the cha-cha or the East Coast Swing, and they go away and they learn to recognize it on their own and then come back and dance it in front of their teacher, that's a pretty big deal. It doesn't take much, but it does take paying attention to. Harry: Gotcha. So, when they are ... So I guess regularly would be more defined as, it's ingrained in them now, it's second nature now? Tony: OK. That takes approximately twenty hours of exposure. Harry: Twenty hours of exposure. Tony: That's either in front of me ... Now, the exposure has to be, when I say the twenty hours of exposure, you know, ten hours of that exposure being in front of an instructor. The other ten being at parties or practicing at your own rec room classes. Harry: They have to do just as much on their own, that they do with you. Tony: Exactly, exactly. Harry: So ... Tony: And rhythm and recognizing different rhythm sequences and all of the dances is practice for all of the dances. So all of the dances go together because when you learn how to recognize rhythm in one, it becomes much easier to recognize rhythm in the other. For instance, I teach merengue rhythm or salsa rhythm first. And then I can go into a swing rhythm or a cha-cha rhythm. And then, let's say, a salsa rhythm for instance. You have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now, there are several different ways of dancing salsa and some people have their favorites. But the most typically, widely recognized used salsa is that you start on the one and you hold for the four. You start on the five and you hold for the eight. So, one, two, three, hold, five, six, seven, hold. That's not a syncopation. That's where you get involved into almost a slow, but you're going to hold your foot for one rhythm. Typically, that's the most difficult rhythm at first to show someone and for them to recognize over and over and over, again and again. So when you're talking about dancing, you're talking about the two forms of Latin dancing that can be used to teach rhythm the most. The number one is merengue, because it teaches a straight cadence first. And then the last one is the salsa because it's a little more difficult because you're still holding for that one beat. After people typically learn how to move walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk for the merengue to go on to walk, walk, walk, hold ... walk, walk, walk, hold. Or walk walk hold. OK? So, to becoming second nature it takes about twenty hours of exposure on any particular given style. Talking about cha-cha versus East Coast Swing versus salsa versus merengue. Merengue is easier to recognize, you know, just a few hours on that. But the salsa, the cha-cha, it takes a little bit of exposure in order for them to be able to count it and it becomes second nature. Harry: Awesome. Yeah, that's a good gauge, I think. People can look at that and go, "OK." So, do you have anything coming up? How can people connect with you? How can people know what you're doing? Tony: There's a lot of different ways where people can connect with myself and/or Renae. We teach here out of Canal Street with New Smyrna Ballroom here at 421 Canal Street, which is in New Smyrna Beach, Florida of course. They can contact me by phone, 407-409-9251. E-mail, which is [email protected]. We have group classes on Tuesdays at 7:00pm EST, Thursdays at 6:30pm EST. We have a practice party for one hour every week on Mondays at 7:00pm EST for our members, as well as everything is open to the public. Drop-ins are available. Harry: Great, great, great. And then you have a Facebook page too, right? Tony: Yes. NSB Ballroom. Two Bs. NSB Ballroom. Some people accidentally put NS Ballroom, but it's really NSB Ballroom. Harry: OK, I'll make sure to put a link in there. Tony: Yeah, cool. Thank you. Harry: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Interested in getting gigs? Download my Gigging Starter Kit. It’s completely free. Enjoy!
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Harry L. RiosFounder of HarryLRios.com Archives
January 2020
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