Scottish

Traditionally, political leaders at least try to say nice things about the people who elected them, so McConnell’s outburst might seem a little surprising. What might be more surprising is that very few people disagreed with his attack. Scotland has long been called “the sick man of Europe”: our health statistics are quite shocking. Last year we finally shook off the dubious record of having the highest number of cancer deaths per capita in Western Europe, but we’re still near the top of the table for coronary heart disease. Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, has the UK’s lowest life expectancy and remains the only part of the UK where the average man does not live to be 70. Overall, people live for a shorter time in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. Politicians, doctors and statisticians are generally in agreement about the causes of all this: cigarettes, alcohol and fatty foods.

A number of new initiatives are now being tried to tackle these problems. For one, the Scottish Parliament banned smoking in all Scottish pubs, clubs and restaurants, in 2006. Similar bans were recently introduced in both New York and Ireland; in both cases it’s too early to see if they will be effective, but they have certainly increased the number of people standing outside pubs, clubs and restaurants. Some people have suggested it’s a little ironic to offer us the chance to poison our livers in a smoke-free environment.

There is a great deal of concern in Britain as a whole about “binge drinking”, or drinking large amounts of alcohol in short periods. Our biggest brewing company, Scottish & Newcastle, has begun putting health warnings on its products, advising us that “responsible drinkers don’t exceed 4 daily units (men) and 3 units (women).” The average pint of lager contains approximately 2.3 units of alcohol. It’s only fair to point out that Scottish & Newcastle has also spent recent years promoting the consumption of stronger lagers with higher alcohol content. Meanwhile, the drinks industry as a whole has launched a new website, with the aim of “ensuring that people who choose to drink alcohol can understand fully the responsible drinking message, and can make well-informed choices as a result.”

But does the problem really lie in our inability to understand the “message” about health? Not according to a 2001 survey of consumer attitudes conducted by the Food Standards Agency Scotland. This survey found that, while 48% of Scots were fully aware of what constituted a healthy diet, only 23% actually ate healthily – the rest were “unable or unwilling to bridge the gap between awareness and actual behaviour”. The survey concluded that giving dire warnings about health simply does not work. People understand the theory, but can’t or won’t translate it into practice.

So, how can we persuade this rather unhealthy nation to give up their cigarettes, alcohol and fried food? Personally, I have no idea. But I should admit that, as I wrote this, I smoked two cigarettes and drank one cup of sweet, milky tea. My dinner tonight will be a healthy vegetable dish, but today’s lunch was most certainly fried. I checked my last Saturday night’s alcohol consumption on the “Drinkaware” website, and I’m afraid to say I wasn’t a responsible drinker.

Evidently I’m a living stereotype. I’m one of the at least 25% of Scots who are fully aware of what a healthy lifestyle is, but can’t “bridge the gap between awareness and actual behaviour.”

Sea monsters

sailors have been telling stories about giant creatures of the sea for hundreds of years. The monsters that sailors and fishermen describe are all slightly different but it's often an animal like a giant snake, at least 30 feet long, with an enormous head and neck. It sometimes actually attacks the ship. Some of these sea monsters turned out to be big pieces of seaweed or wood, but other stories are not so easy to explain. So what can these monsters be?

They could be sharks
There is an unusual type of shark that is shaped like an eel. It has a frill around its neck, which could look like a lion's mane. But the biggest one ever caught was only 25 feet long. Another type of shark, the 'basking shark', can grow to about 40 feet in length. In the 1970s a Japanese fishing boat caught an enormous dead 'monster' with a long neck. Scientists tested some small pieces of the animal and discovered that it was a basking shark. When these sharks die, parts of them rot very quickly, which gives them a very strange shape. But this doesn't explain stories about living, moving sea monsters.

They could be just very big snakes
The biggest snake in the world is the anaconda. One was found in the 1940s measuring 35 feet but there are no photographs to prove it. South American Indians tell stories of even bigger ones. The problem with this theory is that the anaconda is native to South America and can't survive in cold water.

They could be giant squid
This is an interesting theory. Scientists all accept that the giant squid really exists but we don't see them very often because they live in deep, cold water. They can be up to 50 feet in length and have the biggest eyes in the animal kingdom - over one-foot in diameter. And there are reports of much bigger ones too. They have a strong mouth like a bird's beak that can cut through steel cables and five pairs of arms, or tentacles. One pair is longer and thinner and is used to catch food. People have seen giant squid attacking whales for food. In the 1960s some Russian sailors reported watching a fight between a whale and a giant squid. Both animals died; the whale was found dead with the squid's arms wrapped around its neck, and the squid's head was found in the whale's stomach. There are also reports of giant squid attacking ships, maybe thinking that they were whales. So stories of giant sea snakes wrapped around ships could actually be one or two arms of a giant squid.

They could be giant octopuses
These creatures also exist. There are varieties of octopus with bodies as big as 23 feet around. But there are also stories that there may be an unknown variety that grows much, much bigger. An enormous animal was found dead and rotting on a beach in Florida in the 1890s. Parts of it seemed to be huge arms - over 30 feet long. Scientists tested a small part of the body but couldn't agree whether it was a whale or an octopus. The giant octopus has a strong mouth like the giant squid, but only has eight arms. They live at the bottom of the sea and use their arms to move around over the rocks. This explains why we don't see them very often.

They could be ancient sea animals, which have survived from the time of the dinosaurs
We know that strange animals lived in the sea during pre-historic times and many of them were very big indeed. They didn't look like fish and they had to come up to the surface of the water to breathe air. Perhaps when the dinosaurs died out, these sea creatures survived and have lived in the oceans ever since. Is that possible? Well maybe it is. In 1938 a strange fish was caught in the Indian Ocean. Scientists eventually identified it as a coelacanth (pronounced 'seel-a-kanth') which everyone thought had died out over 70 million years ago. And another type of coelacanth was found in the 1990s in South East Asia.

So, do any of these explanations convince you? Or do you think that deep down at the bottom of the sea, where we have never explored, there are strange creatures that are still completely unknown to science?

rainforests

Despite occupying a relatively small area, rainforests have a colossal role to play in maintaining the world as we know it. Tropical rainforests are home to a rich, colourful variety of medicinal plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain! 480 varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest. These forests sustain around 50% of all the species on Earth, and offer a way of life to many people living in and around the forest.

Rainforests are the lungs of the planet – storing vast quantities of carbon dioxide and producing a significant amount of the world’s oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival; the tall trees make a canopy of branches and leaves which protect themselves, smaller plants, and the forest animals from heavy rain, intense dry heat from the sun and strong winds.

Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is a deliberate tactic to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects like caterpillars. To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump, fly or glide across the gaps. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled leaves and bushes, like in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where leaves decompose into food for the trees and other forest life.

They are not called rainforests for nothing! Rainforests can generate 75% of their own rain. At least 80 inches of rain a year is normal – and in some areas there may be as much as 430 inches of rain annually. This is real rain – your umbrella may protect you in a shower, but it won’t keep you dry if there is a full rainstorm. In just two hours, streams can rise ten to twenty feet. The humidity of large rainforests contributes to the formation of rainclouds that may travel to other countries in need of rain.

Worryingly, rainforests around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate, thanks to deforestation, river pollution, and soil erosion as land is being claimed for agriculture and trees are felled for wood. A few thousand years ago, tropical rainforests covered as much as 12% of the land surface on Earth, but today this has fallen to less than 5.3%.

We can only hope that the world governments work together with environmentalists and businesses to use their environmental knowledge and power to preserve the rainforests – awe-inspiring, beautiful and vital for our existence.

Kenya

Diversity, it seems, is a key word. It is a useless exercise to try and pigeonhole Kenya and Kenyans. They spill over, whichever category you put them into, with their different languages - Gikuyu, Swahili, Luo, religions - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, tribal and urban traditions, food, music and styles of clothes.

Geography may have much to do with this. Kenya is on the equator and the coast is hot, humid and tropical. Moving inland it rapidly becomes dry and arid. The north east, particularly along the border with Somalia, is desert, inhabited by nomads and camels. In the south is the Masai Mara, vast, open savanna, teeming with game. Just over the border in Tanzania, but floating in the sky and dominating the landscape for hundreds of miles is Kilimanjaro. To the north of Nairobi it becomes higher, more and more rugged and greener until you get to the jagged peak of Mount Kenya, a completely different shape from the famous volcano but also capped in snow. Splitting the country right down the middle is the Rift Valley, that runs from the Red Sea to the Zambesi, with its string of long deep lakes. Lake Turkana, surrounded by desert in the north, is one of these but the biggest lake of all, Victoria, in the east, is not.

What a fantastic, incredible part of the world this is!
One of the best ways to understand a place is to read what writers have to say about it.

Binyavanga Wainaina, winner of the Caine Prize for African writing 2002, tells, with good humour, how astounded he is, when reading literature by Europeans in his country, “by the amount of game that appears for breakfast at their patios and the snakes that drop into baths and cheetah cubs that become family pets. I have seen five or six snakes in my life. I don’t know anyone who has been bitten by one”.*

Karen Blixen or Isak Dinesen, was, of course, the most famous European writer with her novel Out of Africa. Both the book and the film were heavily criticised for over romanticising the colonial way of life. This in reality was not nearly so “noble and dignified” but in fact extremely debauched and sordid, full of racist, small minded people. Nevertheless many loved it, and those who know Kenya know that the beautiful photography was no exaggeration. Some also hold on to that vision of African nobility, dignity and beauty, maintaining that it is not something patronising or elitist but indeed still something worth striving for.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s books are set in that same fantastic landscape, yet focus firmly on the people and the characters are as wonderful or nasty as in real life. He is famous for writing in his own language - Gikuyu - and for telling the story of the fight for independence as it really was, not simply heroic black stereotypes against the nasty, oppressive British. The traumatised characters in “A Grain of Wheat” are victims of atrocities by their own people vying with each other for power. His later books, particularly “Petals of Blood”, speak of the post independence slide into corruption, nepotism etc. and he ended up in exile in the USA for many years.

So no, black writers, it seems, do not have to shoo elephants off the veranda or lie in bed listening to lions roaring outside the window. Their preoccupations are entirely different. While whites yearn for vast, empty landscapes, blacks love their kith and kin, their extended families and close knit communities. Whatever this says about their differences Kenya is certainly big and accommodating enough for all.

Or is it?
As the population expands the country seems to shrink. It is increasingly difficult to get lost in the vastness of Africa. Wild life habitats are shrinking as people take up more and more space and pressure is increasing from all directions. Nairobi, aptly nicknamed Nairobbery, is a sprawling, chaotic, dangerous place with its famous mutatus (mini buses), prostitutes, armed gangsters and flying toilets. (If you don’t have a proper one you just do your business in a plastic bag and fling it as far as you can out of your yard into some else’s). Some complain that lack of physical space also means lack of mental space. There is less room for new ideas. The poor don’t have time to think at all. People in power use fundamentalist rhetoric to keep themselves in power, ganging up on critical diplomats, homosexuals, journalists, the Anglican church in Britain and the USA etc. Many may not like what they see but are afraid to stick their necks out.

Dr Richard Leakey, the renowned paleonanthropologist and environmentalist who later became head of Kenya’s Wildlife Department and embarked on a crusade to save its natural resources, particularly the African elephant, came into conflict with all sorts of powerful people and ended up losing his legs in a plane crash that many say was no accident.

A BBC headline recently read “Little to celebrate as Kenya turns 40”. December 12 is “Jamhuri Day” and lavish celebrations are being planned but there has been a fierce row over this. The government plans to spend a million dollars on 12 days of ceremonies but many say the money should be spent on other things - drugs for Aids patients for example. Only two years ago, in December 2002, there was dancing in the streets as the new National Rainbow Coalition under Mwai Kibaki took over from Daneil Arap Moi who had been in power for 24 years. Yet so soon after disillusionment has set in. Many say he has not done enough to get rid of corruption. Unemployment and crime continue to rise, basic infrastructure such as roads, phones, railways and electricity continues to deteriorate.

Looking on the bright side, Kenyans have recently played a very important role in both the Sudanese and Somali peace processes with, it seems, some long awaited success.

And there is Wangari Maathi! To her complete surprise she won the Nobel Peace Prize this year for her environmental and human rights work, the first African woman to do so. She is the Deputy Environment Minister and is known as “The Tree Woman” because of her campaign to plant trees. The Green Belt Movement has done much to slow deforestation and so long as Kenyans have people like her perhaps they need not be so pessimistic.

But, then, Kenya has so many people like her! There is so much talent - writers, musicians, sports people, business entrepreneurs, wild life experts, farmers, teachers, the list is endless. And there are probably even more in the Diaspora. It is hard to imagine how so many clever people cannot succeed if they work together. Now is the time to start really moving ahead, for all the qualified and talented people abroad to come home, for everyone to get on with developing the country. Kenyans, on their 40th anniversary of independence, need to unite in celebration of their vast human resources – talent, knowledge, expertise and, above all, diversity.

*Discovering Home, Binyavanga Wainaina.

IKEA

We got onto the bus and it drove over the bridge across the River Neva and out of the city. One passenger had her dog with her. We saw the big yellow letters IKEA on a blue background from far away, they are on a sign which is higher than the trees. The same design is on the side of the building, a very big blue box with a car park all around it. We got out of the bus and walked along a special route to the entrance with a roof over it. We went into the shop through a big door that turned like a wheel. About ten people can walk inside one section of the wheel. IKEA shops are very popular everywhere in the world, and they are made to serve very large numbers of people.

Most places in Russia have a cloakroom where you can leave your coat. On this day there were too many people, so only children could leave their coats. I had a rucksack and they said that I should leave this in the cloakroom and carry my coat. If you have a child aged 3 to 6 you can leave him or her in a play room…usually for 2 hours or just one hour on busy days. They give parents a piece of paper with the time of collection written on it so that they don’t forget. I don’t know what people with dogs do.

The first place we went was up the stairs to the café. Here everything is self-service. You take a tray and ask people to serve you food, for example traditional Swedish meat-balls. If you want coffee, tea or a fizzy drink you pay for a cup and afterwards you fill it from a machine. While you eat and drink you can study the catalogue. They say that 160 million copies of the catalogue are printed all round the world – where I live, they delivered a copy to each flat. People who want to buy a lot of things can take a big yellow plastic bag to put them in. There are also different sorts of trolley. One has a seat for a small child and a place to hang the big yellow bag.

The area next to the café is for special offers. Then, there are a lot of pictures in frames and mirrors. After that, you come to a place where there are different rooms which you can walk into and sit down in. When you know what you want to buy, you have to look at the code on the price tag. This code tells you the place on the ground floor where you should go to collect the pack with the parts you want inside it. All Ikea furniture is in cardboard boxes and you have to put the parts together when you get home.

One of the main problems of life in Russia is the small amount of living space that people have in their flats. It is very unusual for a family to have a room that nobody sleeps in. So the idea of a “living room” or a “sitting room”, as we call it in English, is a bit different. Most people have a room with a sofa-bed that they open out in the evening to sleep on. I think it’s quite a good idea for Russian flats to have the bed on tall legs with enough space for a sofa under it. You can buy one in IKEA for about £200. On my visit to IKEA I didn’t buy anything because I live in a rented flat with lots of furniture in it. I just like looking.

DNA

Well, the pub was the Eagle, in Cambridge, the date was Feb. 28th 1953 (fifty years ago this week) , and the men were British biochemist Francis Crick and his American colleague James Watson. They worked at the Cavendish laboratories down the road. And they were not exaggerating. Soon their names were known not just to scientists, but to the wider world, and biology had changed beyond recognition.

What they had found was the structure of dioxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the substance which is in every cell in our body and carries the genetic code for all living things. If not exactly the stuff we're made of, it's the stuff that makes the stuff we're made of.

A few months after their excited announcement in the pub, they would publish a rather more tentative article in the journal Nature. Hidden away near the end was a single, cautious sentence which scientists regard as the understatement of the century : "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." Translated into less scientific language? Well, "We've found the secret of life!" might just do it.

A design for life
The beauty of their discovery was hidden in that modest sentence in their article. They had not just found the structure of a complex molecule, in the days before electron microscopes (Watson worked by cutting out cardboard shapes and fitting them together), but they had guessed that the form and function were linked. In finding the shape, they had discovered how DNA worked - how the genetic code is passed on. And they were proved right. The double helix of DNA (a shape famous enough to have been made into jewellery and perfume bottles) unravels into two strands and makes copies of itself. In this way, the DNA instructs our cells to produce more cells, each containing an exact copy of the original code. "It's beautiful, so beautiful!" - as Watson was later to remark.

A detective story
The tale of the race to find DNA has all the ingredients of a detective story. Colourful characters, human error, false clues, and academic competition all played a part, as rival teams of scientists converged on the elusive answer. And, as in a good detective story, the answer surprised everyone with its elegance and simplicity.

An unsung heroine
In stories like this, we like a moment when the scientist shouts "eureka!" and the DNA story has one. In fact, this moment excites controversy to this day. At King's College, London, Watson saw anX-ray crystallography picture of DNA ("Exposure 51") taken by the brilliant English scientist Rosalind Franklin. Franklin did not mix easily in the male-dominated environment of the labs, and it was her boss Maurice Wilkins (not on good terms with Franklin) who showed Exposure 51 to Watson, without Franklin's knowledge.

Franklin's photograph was Watson's "eureka" moment, when out of many possible shapes for DNA, he narrowed it down to the double helix. He sketched the shape on a scrap of paper and headed back to Cambridge "with pulse racing" to get back to work with his cardboard. The role of Franklin and Exposure 51 was not fully credited at the time, and she is an icon for female scientists to this day who feel that her work was undervalued by her male colleagues.

Rosalind Franklin died of cancer tragically young, and so was not to share the Nobel Prize with Crick, Watson and Wilkins in 1962.

Science fiction becomes science fact
Fifty years on, DNA is not only inside us, it's all around us. Genetics is big news. Debates rage over the ethics of cloning, the safety of genetically-modified vegetables, the right of insurance companies to gather genetic data about their clients. DNA fingerprinting is already used by police. Recently, the British arm of the Human Genome Project won a court case preventing private companies from patenting genetic discoveries. A rogue Italian scientist and a bizarre cult are claiming that the first human clones have already been born.

We hear a lot about the dark side of genetics, but medical researchers are optimistic that our new knowledge of the human genome will bring huge medical advances. Follow the links below to get informed about the latest issues.

Meanwhile, the Eagle pub is to unveil a metal plaque this week to celebrate that famous lunchtime in 1953. A modest marker of a moment that is still changing our world.

Glossary
biochemist (n) : a scientist studying the chemistry of living things
cautious (adj): careful
cell (n): the small parts into which all living matter is divided
cult (n): a group of people with strange or extreme beliefs
electron microscope (n): an electronic piece of equipment with which scientists can see extremely small things, such as molecules
exaggerate (v): say something is bigger, better or more important than it really is
genetic (adj) : related to genes - the characteristics we inherit from our parents and the way we inherit them
helix (n): a spiral shape ( one which winds round and round)
patenting (gerund): legally registering your ownership of an idea, design, product or piece of information
rogue (adj): acting alone and independently, without the approval of others
tentative (adj): careful and hesitant
unravel (v): to separate into different strands
unsung (adj): playing an important role in events, but not recognised for it
unveil (v): reveal to the public
x-ray crystallography (n): a scientific procedure for taking photographs which suggest the shapes of molecules

Lets Dance

Ballet

Ballet is a specific academic dance form and technique which is taught in ballet schools according to specific methods. There are many ballet schools around the world that specialize in various styles of ballet and different techniques offered. Works of dance choreographed using this technique are called ballets, and usually include dance, mime, acting, and music (usually orchestral but occasionally vocal). Ballet is best known for its unique features and techniques, such as pointe work, turn-out of the legs, and high extensions; its graceful, flowing, precise movements; and its ethereal qualities. These carefully organized movements tell a story or express an idea.

Wikipedia: Ballet

Ballroom dancing

Ballroom dance, refers collectively to a set of partner dances, which originated in the Western world and are now enjoyed both socially and competitively around the globe. Its performance and entertainment aspects are also widely enjoyed on stage, in film, and on television.

While historically ballroom dance may refer to any form of formal social dancing as recreation, with the eminence of dancesport in modern times the term has became much narrower in scope, usually referring specifically to the International Standard and International Latin style dances (see dance groupings below). In the United States, two additional variations—"American Smooth" and "American Rhythm"—have also been popularized and are commonly recognized as styles of "ballroom dance".

Wikipedia: Ballroom dance

Break dancing

Breakdance, breaking, b-boying or b-girling is a street dance style that evolved as part of the hip hop movement among African American and Latin American youths in the South Bronx of New York City during the early 1970s. It is normally danced to funk or hip hop music, often remixed to prolong the breaks, and is arguably the best known of all hip hop dance styles.

Breakdancing is generally unstructured and highly improvisational, allowing the incorporation of many different elements. A basic routine might include toprock, a transition into downrock, a display of power moves, and finally a climactic freeze or suicide.

Wikipedia: Breakdance

Capoeira

Capoeira is an African-Brazilian fight-dance, game, and martial art created by enslaved Africans during the 16th Century. Participants form a roda (circle) and take turns playing instruments, singing, and sparring in pairs in the centre of the circle. The game is marked by fluid acrobatic play, feints, subterfuge, and extensive use of groundwork, as well as sweeps, kicks, and headbutts. Technique and strategy are the key elements to playing a good game. Capoeira has three main styles, known as "regional", "Angola", and the less-well defined "contemporânea".

Wikipedia: Capoeira

Flamenco

El baile flamenco is a highly-expressive solo dance, known for its emotional sweeping of the arms and rhythmic stomping of the feet. While flamenco dancers (bailaors and bailaoras) invest a considerable amount of study and practice into their art form, the dances are not choreographed, but are improvised along the palo or rhythm. In addition to the percussion provided by the heels of the dancers striking the floor, castanets are sometimes held in the hands and clicked together rapidly to the rhythm of the music. Sometimes, folding fans are used for visual effect.

Wikipedia: Flamenco

Foxtrot

The Foxtrot (also: "Fox trot", "foxtrot", "fox trot") is a ballroom dance which takes its name from its inventor, the vaudeville actor Harry Fox. According to legend, Fox was unable to find female dancers capable of performing the more difficult two-step. As a result, he added stagger steps (two trots), creating the basic Foxtrot rhythm of slow-slow-quick-quick. The dance was premiered in 1914, quickly catching the eye of the talented husband and wife duo, Vernon and Irene Castle, who lent the dance its signature grace and style. It was later standardized by Arthur Murray, in whose version it began to imitate the positions of American Tango.

Wikipedia: Foxtrot

Indian Dancing

Indian classical dance is a misnomer, and actually refers to Natya, the sacred Hindu musical theatre styles. Its theory can be traced back to the Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni (400 BC).

Dances performed inside the sanctum of the temple according to the rituals were called Agama Nartanam. This was a spiritual dance form.

Dances performed in royal courts to the accompaniment of classical music were called Carnatakam. This was an intellectual art form.

Darbari Aatam form of dance appealed more to the commoners and it educated them about their religion, culture and social life. These dances were performed outside the temple precincts in the courtyards.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi currently confers classical status on eight "dance" forms: Bharatanatyam; Kathak; Kathakali; Kuchipudi; Manipuri, Mohiniaattam; Odissi and Sattriya

Wikipedia: Indian classical dance

Line dancing

A line dance is a formation dance in which a group of people dance in one or more lines, executing the same movements. Certain line dances may be considered variations of circle dances, where people are joined by hands in chain, e.g., the Dabke dance of the Middle East. In fact, most circle dances may be danced in a line formation, rather than in a circle; this is most common when only a small number of dancers are available.

Wikpedia: Line dance

Salsa

Salsa refers to a fusion of informal dance styles having roots in Cuba and the Caribbean, Latin America and North America. Salsa is danced to Salsa music. There is a strong African influence in the music and the dance.

Salsa is usually a partner dance, although there are recognized solo steps and some forms are danced in groups of couples, with frequent exchanges of partner. Improvisation and social dancing are important elements of Salsa but it appears as a performance dance too.

Wikipedia: Salsa (dance)

Samba

Samba is a lively, rhythmical dance of Brazilian origin in 2/4 time danced under the Samba music. However, there are three steps to every bar, making the Samba feel like a 3/4 timed dance. Its origins include the Maxixe. There are two major streams of Samba dance that differ significantly: the Brazilian Samba music has been danced in Brazil since its inception in the late 19th century. There is actually a set of dances, rather than a single dance, that define the Samba dancing scene in the country; thus, no one dance can be claimed with certainty as the "original" Samba style.

Wikipedia: Samba (Brazilian)

Square dancing

Square dance is a folk dance where four couples are in a square beginning with Couple 1 (the couple facing away from the music) and going counter-clockwise until getting to Couple 4. Couples 1 and 3 are known as the head couples, while Couples 2 and 4 are known as the side couples. Each dance begins and ends each sequence in a square formation, with one couple on each side of a square. This is called being in your "sets-in-order". The dance was first described in 17th century England but was also quite common in France and throughout Europe and bears a marked similarity to Scottish Country Dancing. It has become associated with the United States of America due to its historic development in that country. Nineteen U.S. states have designated it as their official state dance.

Wikipedia: Square dance

Tango

Tango is a social dance originating in Buenos Aires Argentina. The musical styles that evolved together with the dance are also known as "tango".

Early tango was known as tango criollo, or simply tango. Today, there are many tango dance styles, including Argentine Tango, Uruguayan Tango, Ballroom tango (American and International styles), Finnish tango, Chinese tango, and vintage tangos. The Argentine tango is often regarded as the "authentic" tango since it is closest to that originally danced in Argentina and Uruguay, though other types of tango have developed into mature dances in their own right.

Music and dance elements of tango are popular in activities related to dancing, such as figure skating, synchronized swimming, etc., because of its dramatic feeling and its cultural associations with romance and love.

Wikipedia: Tango (dance)

Tap dancing

Tap dance was born in the United States during the nineteenth century, and today is popular all around the world. The name comes from the tapping sound made when the small metal plates on the dancer's shoes touch a hard floor. This lively, rhythmic tapping makes the performer not just a dancer, but also a percussive musician (and thus, for example, the American composer Morton Gould was able to compose a "concerto for tap dancer and orchestra"). The Encyclopedia Britannica definition for tap dance is: A style of American theatrical dance using precise rhythmical patterns of foot movement and audible foot tapping.

Wikipedia: Tap dance

Waltz

A waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in 3/4 time, done primarily in closed position.

The waltz first became fashionable in Vienna around the 1780s, spreading to many other countries in the years to follow. The waltz, and especially its closed position, became the example for the creation of many other ballroom dances. Subsequently, new types of waltz have developed, including many folk and several ballroom dances.

In the 19th century the word primarily indicated that the dance was a turning one; one would "waltz" in the polka to indicate rotating rather than going straight forward without turning.

Wikipedia: Waltz