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Musicality -- which dancers have the best?


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When Jerome Robbins was choreographing "Dances at a Gathering" to Chopin piano music, he wrote that choreographers -- and, by extension, dancers -- have to "make every chord, every rest, each bar, phrase, confluence of sounds, your skin, your hair, your finger, your sweat, your [edited, but refers to sexual organ], your toes -- the soles of your feet."

All dancers move TO music. But which dancers, in your opinion, have that quality of expressing music deeply, from within, and uniting with it so personally? And what do they actually DO?

I have a few ideas based on names that have come up on recent threads -- Allegra Kent (I'm currently remembering her unique symbiosis with Tchaikosky's music in Balanchine's Act II, Swan Lake long ago) and Suzanne Farrell on her best days. But I'm not too knowledgeable in this area and really look forward to learning from your responses.

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From the tiny bit that I've seen, I think Carla Fracci had this quality. However, I also think that if the music "describes" the choreography, and the dancer fully inhabits his/her role, that type of unity with the music will just happen.

While I doubt that I ever expressed the music deeply in my own performances, I do know that it is more important to listen to the music as a melody/melodies rather than counts. Obviously, the counts are important, especially in terms of communicating clearly when staging a ballet, but it's usually easy to tell which dancers onstage are thinking, "one, two, three, four," and which are going beyond that so they sing with their bodies. Counting obsessively immediately makes the dancing (I don't really know how to put this, but "cerebral" comes to mind), whereas really moving dancing is much more primal--the music and movement connect on a physioemotional (I think I just made up a word!) level with the brain being involved in a different way. At least that's how it seems--more "right-brained" (creative, emotional) as opposed to "left-brained" (analytical).

I think it would be really interesting to do a study on dancers to find out which parts of their brains are active while dancing, especially to find out if there's a difference between those who dance to counts as opposed to those who dance directly with the music.

There's also the issue of the purely technical performance that is moving because by virtue of being so stripped down it allows only the emotion inherent in the choreography to come through, but that's another thread. :angry2:

Editing to add a little anecdote regarding how dancers approach music:

I remember a story one of my friends told me from when she was a student at the Royal Ballet School. She was choreographing a piece for the RBS choreography competition to Bartok, and when her dancers asked her what the counts were, she said, "You can't count it, you just have to listen." They did not like this idea and kept pestering her for counts. However, in some of the later rehearsals something happend (I forget what) that made it necessary to replace part or all of the cast. When the original dancers taught the new ones the part, their advice was, "You can't count it, you just have to listen." :wallbash:

Edited by Hans
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Great topic as this ought to be the most important quality in a dancer. I'd give a Grand Prize to Evelyn Hart, with honorable Mentions to Kolpakova (a Nutcracker adagio struck me, she was so musical in it) and Mezentseva (in the Kirov Swan Lake PDD w/Zaklinsky, she pliés right on with the harp in perfect sync, the other ballerinas I saw would plié too early or too late... I'm forgetting who discussed how important it was to descend/rise on toes with the music... Fokine maybe? Even among dancers it is a rare quality to be able to stretch your movement tempo in sync with the orchestra's and accompany the numerous layers of symphonic music and not only its beat or its main melody, and we won't mention classes where it is often absent, even with square music played by a single instrument.

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When Jerome Robbins was choreographing "Dances at a Gathering" to Chopin piano music, he wrote that choreographers -- and, by extension, dancers -- have to "make every chord, every rest, each bar, phrase, confluence of sounds, your skin, your hair, your finger, your sweat, your [edited, but refers to sexual organ], your toes -- the soles of your feet."

It reminds me of an anecdote: when my husband and I saw "Dances at a Gathering" a few years ago performed by the NYCB at the Edinburgh Festival, at one point he somewhat naively asked me "was the score composed on purpose for the ballet ?" :)

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Ashley Bouder in Who Cares?

But isn't this a tricky question, in that one dancer's musicality might glow in softer choreography while another's might be more striking in big vibrant movement?

I only saw the movie once, but I remember thinking Galina Ulanova was very musical in her Romeo & Juliet.

Some dancers dance to music; some are the music; some are pulled by the music; some are in front of the music... and then there are those who feel they should be independent of the music, as if that made them the superior artist in control of their medium... I don't mind any of the above except for those who seem clueless about the music.

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Some dancers dance to music; some are the music; some are pulled by the music; some are in front of the music... and then there are those who feel they should be independent of the music, as if that made them the superior artist in control of their medium...    I don't mind any of the above except for those who seem clueless about the music.

Amy, this is one brilliant observation. :blink:

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I think that dancers who seem to have the best musicality have studied music in their youth or come from a musical background. Some are born with a good musical sense, others have to work hard to "hear" the music or even count the music. I think it would be hard to be a dancer without good knowledge of music. I know SAB used to make their students take piano lessons to better their musical understanding. I'm not sure if they still do this today, but I think they were on the right track.

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Suzanne Farrell had no technical knowledge of music, so I don't think that requirement is absolute, but it can only help -- especially, I would think, for those whose innate musical sense is not that strong, but could be developed.

I admired Joanna Berman, late of the San Francisco Ballet, for this quality. Elizabeth Miner of SFB has it, too, I think.

Outside of ballet, it's an obvious choice, but watching Fred Astaire is the best introduction to musicality in dancing you could have.

Thank you for starting the topic, bart!

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My pleasure, Dirac. My first thought was Astaire, :flowers: too. It appears so effortless, though we all know what a hard-working perfectionist he was. Compare this with Rogers, also a wonderful dancer in my book, but one who appears to have to concentrate and who seems to ride the wave of the music -- beautifully, but definitely from the outside.

I guess a general rule of thumb for me is that I suspect someone is "musical" if their dancing makes me listen more carefully to the music and to discover things in familiar music I did not know was there.

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The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, by Arlene Croce, has a special feature -- flip pages that show a phrase or two of two of two Astaire-Rogers numbers. Even in that crude format, the pulse of Fred's waltzing (from "Waltz in Swing Time") is quite vivid.

I agree that Astaire is the gold standard. In abstract terms, though, I think musicality, at its utmost, defies definition. It will vary from ballet to ballet, depending on score, choreography and even dancer. But like Justice Potter Stewart on another kind of display of bodies in motion, "I know it when I see it." :flowers::wink:

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Oh, I would say Gene Kelly, hands down.

I don't see any ballet dancers regularly enough but I saw Emily Patterson of Joffrey Ballet from the time she was a young teen and always admired her musicality. Haven't seen enough of her now that she's in Chicago, but the little I've seen would seem to prove that's still true.

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In addition to Ulanova, I also want to add Nikolai Tsiskaridze to the list of most musical dancers. In the cases of both these dancers, I get the impression that the music is flowing through them, or even emanating from them, rather than that they are dancing to the music. In Ulanova's case, however, I'm judging purely from video performances. It's interesting to note that Tsiskaridze was a pupil of Ulanova. I wouldn't have thought this type of musicality is teachable, but maybe it is ?!?

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Fiona Tonkin when she danced didn't only move to the music, she moved as the music. She made it seem asthough the music was coming from her. Every emotion, look, movement was in perfect unison with the music. Whenever she wasn't in time with the music, you could tell that she was deliberately holding back slightly to emphasise not only her movements, but the music aswell!

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I've enjoyed reading this topic, but also think there are dancers in every company who possess this special connection to the music. So much so, an audience is able to "see" or hear the music with greater clarity due to the artistry of these dancers. I'd be very interested in learning who the current "crop" of musical dancers are from each of the companies represented here on BT.

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Since you've asked for names, I'll offer a few of my "most musical" principals and soloists.

NYCB: Kistler, Ansanelli, Ringer, Woetzel, Bouder

ABT: Cornejo (both Herman and Erica), Part, Gomes, Carreno, Corrella (Angel), Wiles, Meunier

I find Bouder's idiosyncratic brand of musicality very intriguing. Often, she does not "express" the music or "let it carry" her, but rather engages in a conversation with it, like the soloist in a concerto. It's a big part of her attraction.

The other night, in Peasant pas de deux, Herman Cornejo actually lost the music for a bar or two :jawdrop: . It was jarring, because I'd never seen him less than perfectly synchronized with the orchestra.

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Vagansmom, I must respectfully disagree. Kelly isn’t unmusical by any means, but his relation to the music is less complex than Astaire’s (the latter loves syncopation, for example, while Kelly tends to stay right on the beat).

Rogers wasn’t as good a dancer as Astaire, but then she didn’t really want to be, and her dancing improved greatly over the course of the series. (You are right, bart, there are places where she’s clearly working hard.) It may also be worth remembering that the dances were worked out with Hermes Pan and Astaire while Rogers, an increasingly valuable asset to her studio in drama and comedy, was doing other things. Although I’m sure the two men worked with her in mind, the dances might very well have been shaped differently, and in ways more flattering to Ginger, if they had been made directly on her.

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Yes, the choreography might have been more flattering to her had she been part of the process, but I don't doubt that adjustments were made as she learned the dances.

One reason why she may look better in the later films was that by that time, Pan and Astaire knew her so very well that she didn't have to be there to "be there".

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