![]() ![]() 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 And where viral moments once made for unexpected hits, in 2021 we saw them revitalize older songs from the likes of Kali Uchis and Italian rock revivalists (not to mention reigning Eurovision champs) Måneskin.Putting Musicality Into Words David Morse rehearses one of his ballets at Cincinnati Ballet. Elsewhere, we saw hip-hop and drill music continue to dominate our charts, as female country artists continued to be major creative forces and dance-pop continued to thrive. Add to that the ascent of Doja Cat, whose kaleidoscopic vision of pop was fully realized on this year’s appropriately titled Planet Her-an album that felt like the radiant present and near future all at once, liquefying elements of rap, reggaetón, Afropop, R&B, dance music, and so much more. ![]() It was just a week into January that Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” arrived, a debut single so immediate and so relatable that it quickly became a pop cultural landmark, a Song of the Year-level statement that felt like a confirmation: Here was a singer-songwriter poised if not destined to define the next decade just as naturally as she would the rest of the year. To witness the birth of a star is a rare thing-but in 2021, we witnessed two. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |