This goes back to dance. Most songs are in 8 beat groupings. So you time your moves to go with the beat. So the first Beat of the song is beat 1. You could 5, 6 ,7 ,8 because you don’t need a full 8 counts of lead in to get ready to dance so you only count the second group of beats so you start dancing at 1.
Most of their movements is in counts of 8. So while chairing they are internally counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, … When they count in they are starting this count out loud so that everyone know where in the rhythm they are. But it takes a long time to count from 1 to 8, and it is not needed to get the rhythm. They therefore start the count at 5 to shorten the count inn.
Most dancers count their choreography from 1 to 8 (a lot like how musicians are constantly counting as well). Their vocal count is just to make sure everyone is in time before the first bar (first time they count “1”).
They don’t need to start counting all the way from 1, cuz that’s just tedious. So they give the last half of a bar [1234]5678 to get in time before the first bar.
Measures of music are usually in groups of four. So musicians usually will start a song with 2, 3, 4, not 1, 2, 3 because the measure starts over after four. Dancers usually group two measures together for dance steps, so they think more in terms of counts to 8. They count out 5, 6, 7, 8 because the next beat is beat 1 in the set of 8.
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