Dance and Music

Keep it in the Family

In a drama post, I stated that music and drama are cousins, but dance and music are sisters.

Music influences how we dance. This was shown by one of our student presentations in Dance class in the last few weeks. We discussed mirroring and flocking, but they scaffolded it by teaching us basic dance moves we could fall back on. They used certain genres and styles of music to influence how we danced with those certain moves.

In Music class last year, we used scarfs while dancing certain rhythms and forms to show our understanding of what we were hearing in the music.

Element-ary, My Dear Watson

Choosing appropriate music to accompany a dance is important, but it can also be useful for inspiring dance. Music and dance have their own elements. Elements in music will impact the use of the elements of dance in planned or improvised. The elements of music are Elements: duration, pitch, dynamics and other expressive controls, timbre, texture/harmony, and form and the elements of dance are Elements: body, space, time, energy, and relationship. Now, if we unpack these elements a little bit we can make connections.

Duration = Time

Pitch/Dynamics = Body (Large movements vs small), Space (wide or condensed movements) and Energy (quality of movements)

Timbre = Energy (quality of movements)

Texture/Harmony = Relationship

Form = The form of music influences the shape of the music, and the form of dance influences the shape of dance.

Student might unpack these elements and compare as an activity, and then dance examples. The relationship is clear between the two. Consider if you go to a dance party and listen to a variety of music. When a slow, melodic ballad comes on, everyone sways and moves in connected, fluid movements. An energetic techno song will have people dancing in fast, sudden movements. An epic rock song may invoke more strong, intense movements.

Exploring the relationship between music and dance is important for students to recognize when creating their own dancing and choosing accompanying music, as well as representing certain musical concepts such as form, rhythms, tempo etc.