Piano Circus | open dialogue about music in ballet and contemporary dance classes
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Piano Circus | Ballet
Arkadiy Figlin | Christopher Hobson | Alexandra Time
Dance teachers are Francesca Malacarne (Liceo coreutico Vittorio Emanuele II) and Fabrizio Podaliri (Liceo coreutico Vittorio Emanuele II) |
Piano Circus | Contemporary
Robert Boston | Paolo Demitry | Quentin Tolimieri
Dance teachers are Teri Weikel (AND), Dino Verga (AND) and Giordano Noviell |
Three musicians present their own musical "reading" of the movement, through accompanying dance exercises shown live. The musicians' individual approaches, comprised of both improvisation and repertoire's reprocessing will be the spark to wonder about musical strategies to be enacted: meters, colours, dynamics, styles, minimalism, complementarity, illustration, chance operation, dancers producing music and so on. The talk will be open to the participants who may propose their own ideas.. The "Piano Circus Ballet" will progress according to the traditional structure of a ballet class; the "Piano Circus Contemporary" will proceed more freely, exploring dynamics and aesthetical features of different techniques.
Chaconne
Kristen Foote, dance | Alberto Bologni, violin
performance
José Limón choreographed his landmark dance Chaconne (1942) to Bach’s famous “Chaconne” from the Partita n. 2 for solo violin.
Staging this piece is what we wanted to open the conference. Music returning itself to Dance, Theme and Variations at its finest. A magnificient tribute to the relationships by which Music and Dance, hundred of years apart, are able to interact and move us.
performance
- October 31, 18.30 | Teatro
José Limón choreographed his landmark dance Chaconne (1942) to Bach’s famous “Chaconne” from the Partita n. 2 for solo violin.
Staging this piece is what we wanted to open the conference. Music returning itself to Dance, Theme and Variations at its finest. A magnificient tribute to the relationships by which Music and Dance, hundred of years apart, are able to interact and move us.
Dance/Music Relationships in José Limón’s Chaconne
Kristen Foote | Allen Fogelsanger
lecture-performance
In this hour-long lecture/demonstration we present a choreomusical analysis of the work, and in particular aim at articulating the method of choreographic variation embodied in the dance. We break down the choreographic components and the dance’s variations in terms of the thematic motifs, and examine how the dance relates to the musical score. Additionally we touch upon the intersections among choreographic design, music visualization, and dancer interpretation. This compositional understanding provides a common ground from which dancers and musicians can launch original approaches to this and similar dance works. Features a live performance of Chaconne.
lecture-performance
- November 2, 14.30-16.00 | Teatro
In this hour-long lecture/demonstration we present a choreomusical analysis of the work, and in particular aim at articulating the method of choreographic variation embodied in the dance. We break down the choreographic components and the dance’s variations in terms of the thematic motifs, and examine how the dance relates to the musical score. Additionally we touch upon the intersections among choreographic design, music visualization, and dancer interpretation. This compositional understanding provides a common ground from which dancers and musicians can launch original approaches to this and similar dance works. Features a live performance of Chaconne.
Pause and Repeat: Real-Time Movement/Sound Composition
Alan Good | Allen Fogelsanger
lecture-performance
Our latest work, When In..., comes out of a two-year series of experiments in performed composition. These pieces realize our own particular synthesis and development of 20th/21st century abstraction with improvisation, and go hand-in-hand with an evolving conceptual framework for presenting movement and sound, dance and music, as visual and auditory material worthy of close attention from an audience whose time is deeply respected. Our primary artistic strategy is to employ pause and repetition as tools for framing rudimentary gestures and phrases and revealing underappreciated elements and qualities. The audience responses to our fomalist compositional designs so far have surprised us. People still sense narrative; they see or hear images. These reactions subvert and build on what remains the open non-linear temporal architecture of our performances. We use various configurations of dancers and musicians. The project started in January 2017 at University Settlement in New York and has continued with shows at The West End Theater in New York and at Scholes Street Studio in Brooklyn.
lecture-performance
- November 1, 14.30-16.00 | Teatro
Our latest work, When In..., comes out of a two-year series of experiments in performed composition. These pieces realize our own particular synthesis and development of 20th/21st century abstraction with improvisation, and go hand-in-hand with an evolving conceptual framework for presenting movement and sound, dance and music, as visual and auditory material worthy of close attention from an audience whose time is deeply respected. Our primary artistic strategy is to employ pause and repetition as tools for framing rudimentary gestures and phrases and revealing underappreciated elements and qualities. The audience responses to our fomalist compositional designs so far have surprised us. People still sense narrative; they see or hear images. These reactions subvert and build on what remains the open non-linear temporal architecture of our performances. We use various configurations of dancers and musicians. The project started in January 2017 at University Settlement in New York and has continued with shows at The West End Theater in New York and at Scholes Street Studio in Brooklyn.
Blind date
performance
The encounter between two people - a musician and a dancer who don't know each other - can be a ground of fertile creativity for their artistic languages, and a chanche to experience unusual performative paths. Each session consists of seven meetings. Open to all participants of the conference (musicians or dancers). Subject to specific registration.
- November 1, 16.30-18.30 | Teatro
- November 2, 16.30-18.30 | Teatro
The encounter between two people - a musician and a dancer who don't know each other - can be a ground of fertile creativity for their artistic languages, and a chanche to experience unusual performative paths. Each session consists of seven meetings. Open to all participants of the conference (musicians or dancers). Subject to specific registration.
The embodied ensemble: devising methods for music and dance collaborations
Guy Harries
lecture-workshop
In this workshop/lecture Guy Harries will share a range of methodologies he has used and developed for creating collaborative pieces for an ensemble of music and dance practitioners. Drawing on physical theatre, Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening, Ann Bogart’s Viewpoints and various devising methods, the workshop will include a process of ensemble building, exploration of sound and movement materials, and the creation of a short piece by the participants. From the outset, musicians and dancers go through the process together, bringing to the process their own experience and expertise.
Guy will also discuss how this method can be used to facilitate the creative process in a range of contexts: in interdisciplinary artistic practice as well as working with postgraduate students, community groups and the general public.
lecture-workshop
- November 2, 11.30-13.00 | Aula Rosa
In this workshop/lecture Guy Harries will share a range of methodologies he has used and developed for creating collaborative pieces for an ensemble of music and dance practitioners. Drawing on physical theatre, Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening, Ann Bogart’s Viewpoints and various devising methods, the workshop will include a process of ensemble building, exploration of sound and movement materials, and the creation of a short piece by the participants. From the outset, musicians and dancers go through the process together, bringing to the process their own experience and expertise.
Guy will also discuss how this method can be used to facilitate the creative process in a range of contexts: in interdisciplinary artistic practice as well as working with postgraduate students, community groups and the general public.
Acts of Musical and Choreographic Creation
I. Acts of Transformation: Strategies for Choreographic Intervention in Settings of Existing Music
Stephanie Jordan
lecture
In this presentation, Stephanie Jordan will discuss the use of existing music by choreographers, in what might be called ‘music dances’, dances initially stimulated by their music. A key theme is the transformation, intervention, even subversion of music, so that new meanings are introduced and musical structures are heard in a new way. Examples are taken mainly from the work of the American choreographer Mark Morris, who is exceptional in his range of choreomusical explorations, to music by composers from the baroque to the 20th century. The very different ‘freer’ choreomusical style of the British choreographer Richard Alston will also be introduced, in the context of a Chopin Mazurka. At the end, a surprise choreography is likely!
Stephanie Jordan
lecture
- November 1, 11.30-13.00 | Teatro
In this presentation, Stephanie Jordan will discuss the use of existing music by choreographers, in what might be called ‘music dances’, dances initially stimulated by their music. A key theme is the transformation, intervention, even subversion of music, so that new meanings are introduced and musical structures are heard in a new way. Examples are taken mainly from the work of the American choreographer Mark Morris, who is exceptional in his range of choreomusical explorations, to music by composers from the baroque to the 20th century. The very different ‘freer’ choreomusical style of the British choreographer Richard Alston will also be introduced, in the context of a Chopin Mazurka. At the end, a surprise choreography is likely!
II. Choreographers, Composers and Collaborations
Stephanie Jordan
lecture
This presentation covers composer-choreographer collaborations from scratch. Stephanie Jordan discusses their working processes and the products of those processes, although questioning whether working methods necessarily give rise to particular results. I examine several Stravinsky ‘collaborations’, where dance scores were commissioned by Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes and for George Balanchine at New York City Ballet, then side-track to Yvonne Rainer’s 2006 arrangement—the choreographer as a kind of composer in her meditation on the 1957 Stravinsky/Balanchine collaboration Agon.
The concluding discussion addresses recent collaborations instigated by Shobana Jeyasingh and by the performance duo Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion, before final thoughts about the place of music within contemporary dance discourse.
Stephanie Jordan
lecture
- November 3, 15.00-16.15 | Teatro
This presentation covers composer-choreographer collaborations from scratch. Stephanie Jordan discusses their working processes and the products of those processes, although questioning whether working methods necessarily give rise to particular results. I examine several Stravinsky ‘collaborations’, where dance scores were commissioned by Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes and for George Balanchine at New York City Ballet, then side-track to Yvonne Rainer’s 2006 arrangement—the choreographer as a kind of composer in her meditation on the 1957 Stravinsky/Balanchine collaboration Agon.
The concluding discussion addresses recent collaborations instigated by Shobana Jeyasingh and by the performance duo Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion, before final thoughts about the place of music within contemporary dance discourse.
Evolutionary investigations and perspectives of Music for ballet class
I. Evolutionary Investigations: Music for Ballet Class 1900-Present
Suzanne Knosp
lecture
The history of the evolution of music for ballet class is a long and rich one. Music for the dance classes of Louis the XIV was developed by dancer/composer Jean Baptiste Lully and was based on musical forms and dances of the time. The accompaniment was provided by musicians playing the lute, harpsichord, violin, or small string ensembles. The great Danish ballet master, August Bournonville, not only taught dance but played the violin to accompany class exercises. Bournonville played classical music and popular dance tunes for his classes. Eventually, Ludvig Theodor Schmidt (a.k.a Louis Forgeron) retired from Bournonville’s company and began to play violin with Bournonville during class. Schmidt finally began to compose, document and arrange the violin music for piano and the music for the Bournonville Daily classes was created.
The purpose of this presentation is to identify and analyze the music composed for ballet class in order to trace the evolution of this music from 1900 to the present. First, I will use the scores from my extensive collection of music written specifically for ballet class to identify the historic record of this music and the ballet technique that influenced the creation of this music. Second, I will analyze the musical elements used for composing the music and limit this analysis to ballet barre exercises. Finally, I will consider what an analysis of this music might reveal about the evolution of music for ballet technique classes.
Suzanne Knosp
lecture
- November 1, 9.30-11.00 | Aula Rosa
The history of the evolution of music for ballet class is a long and rich one. Music for the dance classes of Louis the XIV was developed by dancer/composer Jean Baptiste Lully and was based on musical forms and dances of the time. The accompaniment was provided by musicians playing the lute, harpsichord, violin, or small string ensembles. The great Danish ballet master, August Bournonville, not only taught dance but played the violin to accompany class exercises. Bournonville played classical music and popular dance tunes for his classes. Eventually, Ludvig Theodor Schmidt (a.k.a Louis Forgeron) retired from Bournonville’s company and began to play violin with Bournonville during class. Schmidt finally began to compose, document and arrange the violin music for piano and the music for the Bournonville Daily classes was created.
The purpose of this presentation is to identify and analyze the music composed for ballet class in order to trace the evolution of this music from 1900 to the present. First, I will use the scores from my extensive collection of music written specifically for ballet class to identify the historic record of this music and the ballet technique that influenced the creation of this music. Second, I will analyze the musical elements used for composing the music and limit this analysis to ballet barre exercises. Finally, I will consider what an analysis of this music might reveal about the evolution of music for ballet technique classes.
II. Composing new Music for Ballet Class
Kim Helweg
lecture
According to the choreomusicology the music for ballet class has a historical development of its own. The pieces we hear in the class room are not all the same as 50 years ago. Jazz music, rock music, pop music, world music and so on has found their way in to this established area full of rules and traditions and has brought new aspects to ballet technique.
Keeping the tradition must go hand in hand with new creative aspects of the daily training both for the professional dancers as well as for the dance students just as it is the case on stage where new pieces are performed together with the old classics.
But how can this interaction between todays music and the exercises in the ballet class be reinforced?
This lecture will give an overview of the development in the relationship between music and ballet in the last 50 years and discuss the possibilities of generating new composed music for class.
Kim Helweg
lecture
- November 2, 14.30-16.00 | Aula Rosa
According to the choreomusicology the music for ballet class has a historical development of its own. The pieces we hear in the class room are not all the same as 50 years ago. Jazz music, rock music, pop music, world music and so on has found their way in to this established area full of rules and traditions and has brought new aspects to ballet technique.
Keeping the tradition must go hand in hand with new creative aspects of the daily training both for the professional dancers as well as for the dance students just as it is the case on stage where new pieces are performed together with the old classics.
But how can this interaction between todays music and the exercises in the ballet class be reinforced?
This lecture will give an overview of the development in the relationship between music and ballet in the last 50 years and discuss the possibilities of generating new composed music for class.
Post Modern Dance in the United States: the freeing of forms
Christian Cherry
lecture
This presentation will examine some effects of the Judson Dance Theater, Trio A and subsequent models in dance collaborations. The effects on music and dance in the post-modern artistic movement have been well documented by Banes, especially in her book Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism. This presentation will present reflections on this topic since Banes, based on collaborations and observations. An emphasis will be placed on collaborative process and its changing modes through the revolution of postmodernism, hip hop processes and the agency of streaming audio. The presentation will outline a changing role for music in dance on concert dance as it adapts vernacular processes.
lecture
- November 1, 11.30-13.00 | Aula Rosa
This presentation will examine some effects of the Judson Dance Theater, Trio A and subsequent models in dance collaborations. The effects on music and dance in the post-modern artistic movement have been well documented by Banes, especially in her book Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism. This presentation will present reflections on this topic since Banes, based on collaborations and observations. An emphasis will be placed on collaborative process and its changing modes through the revolution of postmodernism, hip hop processes and the agency of streaming audio. The presentation will outline a changing role for music in dance on concert dance as it adapts vernacular processes.
Translucent Borders: The “Mother-Tongue” in Collaborative Music and Dance
Andy Teirstein
lecture/workshop
A border can be represented by a line. But it can also be viewed more expansively, as its own space, fertile with the potential for either confrontation or learning and evolution. This study examines ways that music and dance can engage cultures across borders, in the absence of a common spoken language. Focusing on Translucent Borders, a three-year investigation at New York University, we consider various uses of improvisation at points of cultural juxtaposition. Translucent Borders is a project exploring ways that dancers and musicians act as catalysts for creative engagement across geographic and cultural borders. Beginning in refugee camps in Lesbos in 2016, Translucent Borders has facilitated global conversations between dancers and musicians in Israel, Palestine, Greece, Cuba, and Ghana through interviews, knowledge-sharing circles, improvisation, and performance. The project is a Working Group of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study. In 2018, the world master dancers and musicians with whom the project has been working came to the United States for a series of encounters resulting in world premiere performances at the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, Lincoln Center, and New York University. This presentation articulates some of the inherent tensions in the use of improvisation over the course of the project and its performances. For instance: bringing together composers who use written notation, with master musicians who work primarily in a non-notational environment, can raise many challenges to both representative contingents, not just in the various aspects of sound production, but psychologically and territorially.
Workshop (1 hour)
The Translucent Borders project developed a series of improvisation techniques as tools to explore music and dance in dialogue across cultures. Workshop participants will be guided through a series of improvisations drawn from the Translucent Borders experience.
Film and Talk (45 minutes)
Filmmaker Oresti Tsonopolous created the documentary film Translucent Borders, which gives an overview of the NYU Translucent Borders research project. The film (25 minutes) will be followed by a talkback/discussion.
lecture/workshop
- November 3, 11.30-13.15 | Teatro
A border can be represented by a line. But it can also be viewed more expansively, as its own space, fertile with the potential for either confrontation or learning and evolution. This study examines ways that music and dance can engage cultures across borders, in the absence of a common spoken language. Focusing on Translucent Borders, a three-year investigation at New York University, we consider various uses of improvisation at points of cultural juxtaposition. Translucent Borders is a project exploring ways that dancers and musicians act as catalysts for creative engagement across geographic and cultural borders. Beginning in refugee camps in Lesbos in 2016, Translucent Borders has facilitated global conversations between dancers and musicians in Israel, Palestine, Greece, Cuba, and Ghana through interviews, knowledge-sharing circles, improvisation, and performance. The project is a Working Group of NYU’s Global Institute for Advanced Study. In 2018, the world master dancers and musicians with whom the project has been working came to the United States for a series of encounters resulting in world premiere performances at the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, Lincoln Center, and New York University. This presentation articulates some of the inherent tensions in the use of improvisation over the course of the project and its performances. For instance: bringing together composers who use written notation, with master musicians who work primarily in a non-notational environment, can raise many challenges to both representative contingents, not just in the various aspects of sound production, but psychologically and territorially.
Workshop (1 hour)
The Translucent Borders project developed a series of improvisation techniques as tools to explore music and dance in dialogue across cultures. Workshop participants will be guided through a series of improvisations drawn from the Translucent Borders experience.
Film and Talk (45 minutes)
Filmmaker Oresti Tsonopolous created the documentary film Translucent Borders, which gives an overview of the NYU Translucent Borders research project. The film (25 minutes) will be followed by a talkback/discussion.
The influence of the Spanish Music and Dance in the Classical Ballet and its accompaniment
Juan Mata
lecture
The Spanish Dance is the result of the diverse cultures and peoples that have been populating the Iberian Peninsula over the centuries. It has been a source of inspiration for classical ballets repertoire due to its character of enormous temperament and emotional charge. It consists of four specialities: the Bolero School, Folklore, Stylized Dance and Flamenco; and each one had a specific vocabulary.
This Style has a special communion with his music and has spread its diversity and influence around world thought the time; from regional dances (such the Jota), the famous Cachucha that amazed Europe, the influence in the works of Petipa and Tchaikovsky, the fruitful relations of composers like Manuel de Falla with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the collaborations between Massine and "Argentinita", until the last fusions of the purest flamenco with even Jazz and Contemporary.
The Spanish dance dancer is often a virtuoso percussionist through castanets, zapateado and body percussion, and it is because of this rhythmic idiosyncrasy that the accompaniment demands essential guidelines in the choice of music, the repertoire, improvisation, and a very special close collaboration with the dance teacher. Such attitude and examples could be quite interesting for any style of dance and its proper accompaniment.
lecture
- November 3, 11.30-13.15 | Aula Rosa
The Spanish Dance is the result of the diverse cultures and peoples that have been populating the Iberian Peninsula over the centuries. It has been a source of inspiration for classical ballets repertoire due to its character of enormous temperament and emotional charge. It consists of four specialities: the Bolero School, Folklore, Stylized Dance and Flamenco; and each one had a specific vocabulary.
This Style has a special communion with his music and has spread its diversity and influence around world thought the time; from regional dances (such the Jota), the famous Cachucha that amazed Europe, the influence in the works of Petipa and Tchaikovsky, the fruitful relations of composers like Manuel de Falla with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the collaborations between Massine and "Argentinita", until the last fusions of the purest flamenco with even Jazz and Contemporary.
The Spanish dance dancer is often a virtuoso percussionist through castanets, zapateado and body percussion, and it is because of this rhythmic idiosyncrasy that the accompaniment demands essential guidelines in the choice of music, the repertoire, improvisation, and a very special close collaboration with the dance teacher. Such attitude and examples could be quite interesting for any style of dance and its proper accompaniment.
Writing exercises
I. Quaderno del Pianista al Ballo
Barbara Cocconi
lecture
This book collects notes, materials and ideas for a methodology aimed at promoting and enhancing a fruitful approach to play for a ballet class. The variety of topics is the result of the multiplicity of elements that combine to form the figure of the pianist "al Ballo" (in Dance). Alongside the dance teacher he has to be considered as a key figure in the relationship with the dancers, both students and professionals, as well as an all-round presence in the dance studio. This book doesn't consist of simple precepts or ready-to-use materials; rather it is potential roadmap to facing a knowledge process towards the achievement of a professionalism from a wide range of perspectives, within the dance class.
This book collects notes, materials and ideas for a methodology aimed at promoting and enhancing a fruitful approach to play for a ballet class. The variety of topics is the result of the multiplicity of elements that combine to form the figure of the pianist "al Ballo" (in Dance). Alongside the dance teacher he has to be considered as a key figure in the relationship with the dancers, both students and professionals, as well as an all-round presence in the dance studio. This book doesn't consist of simple precepts or ready-to-use materials; rather it is potential roadmap to facing a knowledge process towards the achievement of a professionalism from a wide range of perspectives, within the dance class.
II. The Art of Class
Karen MacIver
lecture
How do we as musicians working in Moving Image understand our skills more deeply and how can we pass them on to the ever increasing music-for-dance courses now being run out worldwide.
In 2006 Scottish Ballet Music department approached the Piano Department of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to take part in one of the biggest collaborations in music and dance of its time. Karen MacIver was given the position of teacher and mentor of students learning the skill of playing for a professional Ballet Company and to gain the first qualification of its kind; Master of Music for Piano in Dance.
Over the past 12 years , Karen has documented her pioneering work - whilst metaphorically holding the hands of this next generation of brave young musicians learning classical improvisation in the context of dance. The resulting audiovisual e-book ,The Art of Class, is a practical manual of skill development for professional players and a detailed presentation of ideas for this emerging sector of pianists who wish to learn how to apply their knowledge in the field of dance.
This practical workshop celebrates some of our natural talent whilst identifying key issues that we, as musicians, may find challenging in the dance studio.
Barbara Cocconi
lecture
- November 1, 16.30-18.30 | Aula Rosa
This book collects notes, materials and ideas for a methodology aimed at promoting and enhancing a fruitful approach to play for a ballet class. The variety of topics is the result of the multiplicity of elements that combine to form the figure of the pianist "al Ballo" (in Dance). Alongside the dance teacher he has to be considered as a key figure in the relationship with the dancers, both students and professionals, as well as an all-round presence in the dance studio. This book doesn't consist of simple precepts or ready-to-use materials; rather it is potential roadmap to facing a knowledge process towards the achievement of a professionalism from a wide range of perspectives, within the dance class.
This book collects notes, materials and ideas for a methodology aimed at promoting and enhancing a fruitful approach to play for a ballet class. The variety of topics is the result of the multiplicity of elements that combine to form the figure of the pianist "al Ballo" (in Dance). Alongside the dance teacher he has to be considered as a key figure in the relationship with the dancers, both students and professionals, as well as an all-round presence in the dance studio. This book doesn't consist of simple precepts or ready-to-use materials; rather it is potential roadmap to facing a knowledge process towards the achievement of a professionalism from a wide range of perspectives, within the dance class.
II. The Art of Class
Karen MacIver
lecture
- November 2, 16.30-18.30 | Aula Rosa
How do we as musicians working in Moving Image understand our skills more deeply and how can we pass them on to the ever increasing music-for-dance courses now being run out worldwide.
In 2006 Scottish Ballet Music department approached the Piano Department of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to take part in one of the biggest collaborations in music and dance of its time. Karen MacIver was given the position of teacher and mentor of students learning the skill of playing for a professional Ballet Company and to gain the first qualification of its kind; Master of Music for Piano in Dance.
Over the past 12 years , Karen has documented her pioneering work - whilst metaphorically holding the hands of this next generation of brave young musicians learning classical improvisation in the context of dance. The resulting audiovisual e-book ,The Art of Class, is a practical manual of skill development for professional players and a detailed presentation of ideas for this emerging sector of pianists who wish to learn how to apply their knowledge in the field of dance.
This practical workshop celebrates some of our natural talent whilst identifying key issues that we, as musicians, may find challenging in the dance studio.
The interaction of musical and ballet traditions in Tchaikovsky’s musical scores and in today's forms of musical practice in Vaganova Academy
Galina Bezuglaya
lecture
The session is devoted to face the issue of the relationships between music and dance which entail the relationships between musicians and the dancers or choreographers. What is the ballet's musical culture? How did dancers traditionally interact with music? How did they collaborate with composers? What are the ballet rules and laws, established for the music of ballets? How this affects the relationship between musicians and dancers today?
These questions introduce two topics for discussion.
I. The music scores of Tchaikovsky's ballets.
What are the results of Marius Petipa’s influence, that could be detected in Tchaikovsky’s ballet scores? What is the «foreign» music, which exists there? What are the features of the piano arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s ballets and how could we perform music of Tchaikovsky’s ballet on a piano?
II. How have pianists been taught at the Vaganova Academy for 20 years?.
What are the most important skills, needed to any pianist who works in the field of dance? What are the elements of music that can help the musician to create the image of the movement, to illustrate and visualize the shape of dance in the space of music? How do we develop the ability to improvise? What tips do we apply when practicing?
lecture
- November 1, 14.30-16.00 | Aula Rosa
The session is devoted to face the issue of the relationships between music and dance which entail the relationships between musicians and the dancers or choreographers. What is the ballet's musical culture? How did dancers traditionally interact with music? How did they collaborate with composers? What are the ballet rules and laws, established for the music of ballets? How this affects the relationship between musicians and dancers today?
These questions introduce two topics for discussion.
I. The music scores of Tchaikovsky's ballets.
What are the results of Marius Petipa’s influence, that could be detected in Tchaikovsky’s ballet scores? What is the «foreign» music, which exists there? What are the features of the piano arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s ballets and how could we perform music of Tchaikovsky’s ballet on a piano?
II. How have pianists been taught at the Vaganova Academy for 20 years?.
What are the most important skills, needed to any pianist who works in the field of dance? What are the elements of music that can help the musician to create the image of the movement, to illustrate and visualize the shape of dance in the space of music? How do we develop the ability to improvise? What tips do we apply when practicing?
Egyptian fundamentals - Feet and Music
Hjalmar Öhrström | Annika Koskinen
lecture/workshop
The traditional Egyptian dance is an improvised art form, where the musician and the dancer interact closely, achieving the unity of thier personal expressions. Annika Koskinen is specialized in Egyptian dance, Hjalmar Öhrström is an improviser in the afro-american musical tradition. Within and without the traditional boundaries, they will expand the possibilities of the traditional Egyptian dance language, with music improvisation.
lecture/workshop
- November 2, 9.30-11.00 | Aula Rosa
The traditional Egyptian dance is an improvised art form, where the musician and the dancer interact closely, achieving the unity of thier personal expressions. Annika Koskinen is specialized in Egyptian dance, Hjalmar Öhrström is an improviser in the afro-american musical tradition. Within and without the traditional boundaries, they will expand the possibilities of the traditional Egyptian dance language, with music improvisation.
Pulse as fundamental and complex aspect of music and dance
Hjalmar Öhrström | Katarina Lundmark
lecture/workshop
Music and dance are multifaceted expressions with both differences and similarities. Rythm is one of the dimensions that binds them together. Pulse is an aspect of rhythm, dance and music that is fundamental, but easy to regard as static and predictable. This workshop challenges this and treats pulse as something dynamic, inspiring and complex.
Through presentations and practical examples workshop will show how physical skills related to pulse can be formulated and experienced and how working with movement and pulse can be made playful and challenging. This will lead to a theoretical and a practical approach to the physical relation between pulse and groove. The last part of the workshop will develop the relation pulse-dance-music with focusing on how the physical experience of pulse can be articulated and deepened in the musician and the dancer. The workshop is practical.
lecture/workshop
- November 3, 9.30-11.00 | Aula Rosa
Music and dance are multifaceted expressions with both differences and similarities. Rythm is one of the dimensions that binds them together. Pulse is an aspect of rhythm, dance and music that is fundamental, but easy to regard as static and predictable. This workshop challenges this and treats pulse as something dynamic, inspiring and complex.
Through presentations and practical examples workshop will show how physical skills related to pulse can be formulated and experienced and how working with movement and pulse can be made playful and challenging. This will lead to a theoretical and a practical approach to the physical relation between pulse and groove. The last part of the workshop will develop the relation pulse-dance-music with focusing on how the physical experience of pulse can be articulated and deepened in the musician and the dancer. The workshop is practical.