Hold your fifth position a millisecond longer than you would have. “Play with your phrasing, play with your accent. Ready to get started? These exercises can help you discover insights and artistry that you’ll bring back to the studio and the stage.īarre is a great place to experiment with your musicality, says Brandt. It just happens because you are letting yourself move,” says Schreier. “When musicality is really in your body, you’re not thinking about it.
“You might have your counts on 1 and 2 and 3,” says Needham-Wood, “but how you play with all those little ‘ands’ is how your musicality comes out.”Īs empowering as those building blocks are, the most compelling artists infuse their musical knowledge and technical mastery with something innate and, yes, undefinable.
Along with entry points into the score a choreographer has chosen, that understanding can provide anchors for your interpretation of their choreography.
#EXAMPLES OF MUSICALITY IN DANCE FREE#
Take advantage of free online resources, like, Signals Music Studio’s YouTube demos and ’s section on reading music, to familiarize yourself with time signatures, concepts like tempo and phrasing, and forms like sonata and minuet. “Even in the ‘Waltz of the Snowflakes’ in The Nutcracker, there’s a part where we would count a 12 or a 13 after counting 8s.” “You can have a Stravinsky score that is so hard to count-there’s a 13 and a 9 and an 11,” she says, referring to the complex time signatures found in many Balanchine works. Her ability to read music and quickly grasp time signatures has been critical to mastering the Balanchine oeuvre. Fadeley, for instance, grew up playing piano and flute. And that comes from exploring their relationship to the music and falling in love with it in their own way.”Ī basic understanding of music can be an inroad into greater self-expression. “What we really get drawn to is that freedom. “The dancers we look up to are the ones who bring their true selves to every step through their musicality,” says Schreier. These examples demonstrate a deeply personal element that each dancer can find within themselves. And enjoy it-that’s what will really shine through.” “You have to listen to the music and just dance. “But our rehearsal pianist came up to me afterward and said, ‘That was one of the most musical performances of that ballet I’ve ever seen,'” says Fadeley. Miami City Ballet principal soloist Lauren Fadeley remembers feeling caught off guard when MCB’s orchestra played unexpectedly slowly during Balanchine’s La Valse. Most of those choices are made in rehearsal, but sometimes they reflect a dancer’s spontaneity. They could not be more different, in large part due to those small increases and decreases in speed.”Ĭlaudia Schreier rehearses her ballet Passage with Dance Theatre of Harlem. With Marianela, there is an airiness in arriving at the next position, more like a sustain across the beat. “When she goes from Point A to Point B, there’s power on the front end and then a suspend. “Natalia has this punch behind everything,” he says. He cites Royal Ballet principals Natalia Osipova and Marianela Nuñez in the Black Swan variation as a good example. “I connect musicality to rhythm, phrasing, tonality and mood-all these elements that allow the body to inhabit music from the inside out,” says Atlanta Ballet choreographer in residence Claudia Schreier.Ĭomparing two dancers in the same role can help make it clearer, says David Morse, a Cincinnati Ballet soloist, choreographer and class accompanist. Musicality could be loosely described as a dancer’s unique emotional and intellectual relationship to a piece of music, as expressed in their execution of choreography. Jennifer Denham, Courtesy Cincinnati Ballet Putting Musicality Into Words David Morse rehearses one of his ballets at Cincinnati Ballet.
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