Music Fundamentals for Dance is a text for student dancers, choreographers, and dance educators written by an experienced educator and choreographer. This book presents foundational knowledge of the elements of music and describes their application to dance performance, choreography, and teaching. It includes a web resource offering exercises, activities, projects, downloadable examples of music, and web links that provide a range of active learning experiences.
Teck explores the creation and performance of music for ballet, modern concert dance, and musical theater dance in 20th-century America. The author writes from her perspective as a professional musician with a graduate degree in composition and extensive experiences as an accompanist for dance. Dividing her study into four sections (Creation, Performance, Silent Artists Speak, and Toward the Future), Teck investigates issues that arise in music and dance collaborations. She presents personal interviews with composers, choreographers, conductors, and performers of both music and dance along with her own reflections on a number of interesting and rarely addressed issues. Two of the most engaging are `What is musicality in a dancer?' and `How does one obtain new music for choreography?' Choice Music is the most constant partner for the dancer in America today, yet it is often the one least written about, least understood, and most challenging to work with effectively. This book is an exploration of contemporary musical collaboration for the dance in 20th century America. It offers an overview of music for theatrical dance in both the creative collaboration and performance of ballet, modern dance, and show styles. Written to be understandable to most theater-goers, this engaging study is based on exclusive personal interviews with outstanding artists in the field of dance, including choreographers, composers, instrumental performers, and dancers themselves, and it presents information that will be helpful to students and professionals as well. Focusing on some of the more practical aspects of music and dance production, the book addresses a number of important questions, such as how choreographers choose music for their dances, how composers know what to write for a ballet, how conductors accommodate the needs of dancers, what dancers need to know about music, what musicality is in a dancer, and how electronic sound technology has been used artistically for dance. Music for the Dance deals with the creative collaborations of choreographers and composers, elements of musical performance, the aesthetics and experiences of dancers in regard to music, the musical training of dancers, and current trends in theatrical dance music. It examines, through the experiences of practicing professionals, the various relationships of sound and movement, and presents a broad view of the art of dance as it is today. This definitive work will be read with interest by dance students and teachers, musicians, theater goers, and patrons and managers of dance companies and arts organizations.
Choreography is the highly creative process of interpreting and coordinating movement, music and space in performance. By tracing different facets of development and exploring the essential artistic and practical skills of the choreographer, this book offers unique insights for apprentice dance makers. With key concepts and ideas expressed through an accessible writing style, the creative tasks and frameworks offered will develop new curiosity, understanding, skill and confidence. The chapters cover the key areas of engagement including what is a choreographer; getting started; improvisation and ideas; context, stage geometry and atmosphere; movement as dance in time and space; solo, duet, trio and group choreography and finally, structure and the 'choreographic eye'. This is an ideal companion for dancers and dance students wanting to express their ideas through choreography and develop their skills to effectively articulate them in performance. It is superbly illustrated with 143 practical colour and black & white photographs and diagrams. Kate Flatt has over forty years' experience as a choreographer, mentor and teacher.
Internationally renowned dancer, choreographer and teacher Jonathan Burrows explains how to navigate a course through the complex process of creating dance. He provides choreographers with an active manifesto and shares his wealth of experience of choreographic practice to allow each artist and dance-maker to find his or her own aesthetic process.
Before Ralph Ellison became one of America’s greatest writers, he was a musician and a student of jazz, writing widely on his favorite music for more than fifty years. Now, jazz authority Robert O’Meally has collected the very best of Ellison’s inspired, exuberant jazz writings in this unique anthology.
Daniel Lewis's legacy as a hugely influential choreographer and teacher of modern dance is celebrated in this biography. It showcases the many roles he played in the dance world by organizing his story around various aspects of his work, including his years at the Juilliard School, dancing and touring with the Jose Limon Company, staging Limon's masterpieces around the world, directing his own company (Daniel Lewis Dance Repertory Company), writing and choreographing operas and musicals, and his years as dean of dance at New World School of the Arts. His life has spanned a particular period of growth of modern and contemporary dance, and his biography gives insight into how the artistic and journalistic perspectives on modern dance were influenced by what was occurring in the broader dance and arts communities. The book also offers rarely seen photographs and interviews with unique perspectives on many dance luminaries.
Wildly fun and full of laugh-out-loud antics, this interactive sing-along is a zany romp sure to capture fans of Giraffes Can’t Dance and Dragons Love Tacos. Shell we dance? Taco-bout irresistible! Jam out to the catchy, toe-tapping tune “Raining Tacos” from YouTube sensation Parry Gripp, featuring everyone’s favorite treat! This spec-taco-ular, goofy song, with new, never-before-sung lyrics, is perfect for sharing, so grab a few friends—young or old—and get ready to crunch your way to a good time! It's raining tacos, from out of the sky. Tacos, no need to ask why. Just open your mouth and close your eyes. It's raining tacos!
Of any choreographer working today, the American Mark Morris is most often cited for emphasis on musical values and standing within the music profession. This book is the first detailed study of Morris's use of music, revealing an unmatched range of approaches to music and strategies for making us hear musical scores in new ways.
Making Music for Modern Dance traces the collaborative approaches, working procedures, and aesthetic views of the artists who forged a new and distinctly American art form during the first half of the 20th century. The book offers riveting first-hand accounts from innovative artists in the throes of their creative careers and provides a cross-section of the challenges faced by modern choreographers and composers in America. These articles are complemented by excerpts from astute observers of the music and dance scene as well as by retrospective evaluations of past collaborative practices. Beginning with the careers of pioneers Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, and continuing through the avant-garde work of John Cage for Merce Cunningham, the book offers insights into the development of modern dance in relation to its music. Editor Katherine Teck's introductions and afterword offer historical context and tie the artists' essays in with collaborative practices in our own time. The substantive notes suggest further materials of interest to students, practicing dance artists and musicians, dance and music history scholars, and to all who appreciate dance.
