Music and Dance

Introduction to Music
October 18, 2012
Music Perspective Two

We know that dancing has been around just about as long that music has. There is no factual evidence of what types of particular dances there were in early ancient times, but only a guess. Dancing and music go hand and hand. Music is a crucial part of dance and always will be. Having taking dance lessons for twelve plus years, I have learned a lot about how music and dance affect each other. With dancing, you have to do more than just move your body into different positions. You have to listen to the music and have a clear understanding of it, so that the dancer will be able to express their emotions to the best of their abilities. The dancer must stay on beat with the music so the steps will not be off count. A connection with the music must be made in order to perform the best and to fully get the message across. Swan Lake is a beautiful representation of how music and dancing go hand in hand. Swan Lake was written by Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky. This play is still being redone today over a twenty year time period. This obviously makes a statement of how remarkable it is. The music sets the scene of the ballet. The dancers of the ballet use the tone of the music to determine the emotion of the dance. The music and the choreography use each other to convey the story of the ballet. Tchaikovsky decided to use a more symphonic approach when writing Swan Lake (Chiego, pg.83). In Swan Lake, the ballerinas use a dance technique called “on pointe”. “On pointe” simply is when the ballerinas dances on the tips of their toes. There are special shoes that must be worn if a ballerina is going to use this technique. In the ballet when the music is softer, the ballerinas dance in a flow type of motion. It is peaceful and you expect it to be because the music is peaceful as well. When the music changes to a more harsh type tone, the ballerinas change their style of dancing. Their dancing becomes very dramatic and sharp. Dancing and music have definitely evolved over the last hundreds of years, but what remains the same is the bond that the two share. Without music, dancing would be nothing. I learned during my dance lessons that dance is a way to express your emotions. The same applies to music, the composer of songs use the emotion they that are feeling at the time and put it into a song. There are so many types of music and dancing but we as people share the love for some type.