Choreomusical Conversations: Facing a Double Challenge

Abstract

Introduction D ance is virtually always music-and-dance, unavoidably interdisciplinary and ready for "marriage," or so the familiar metaphor tells us (Du Manoir 1664/1985; Humphrey 1959,164). Apart from a few notable exceptions from within modern dance-like the silent dances of the 1920s and 1930s or the flamboyant rejections of musical tyranny by Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer from midcentury-the centrality of music within dance and the "musicality" of the dancer have long been considered unquestioned facts of life. Yet traditionally, there have been fundamental differences in practice and conceptual frameworks between these two art forms or (within the academy) "disciplines."Music has a history of being thought "alone" and uncontaminated by matter outside itself. Often, it needs no other partner. Then, in dance, the performer is central-as Yeats famously wrote: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" 1-while in music, the score object, written by a composer, has been central and the performer, until quite recently, relatively marginalized. Today, it is timely to review the two disciplines, noting that they are becoming more mutually permeable, and in relation to their shared interdisciplinarity. Now, we might consider how music theory becomes dance theory and how dance and the body, using the principle of somatic engagement, can impact on musical experience and thinking about music. I will also suggest how intermedia theory becomes a theory of "choreomusical" interrelations. 2

How Down is a Downbeat? Feeling Meter and Gravity in Music and Dance

“…Our sense of motion in music may be constrained by our own training, what we can do, or have experienced, or can imagine doing, or the kinds of movement that we feel the music "invites us" to do. If that is the case, then watching dance gives us the opportunity to re-hear music, alerting us to things that we might hardly notice otherwise (Jordan, 2011). This extends even to what might usually be considered structural analysis: Agawu (2006) makes a strong case for the importance of understanding dance as a contribution to music analysis.…”

Instrumental gesture as choreographic practice: Performative approaches to understanding corporeal expressivity in music

“…To date, choreomusical research has been used as a means to forge new relations between music and dance from a primarily choreographic perspective and has been used as an analytical framework for examining the relations between sound and movement in existing dance theatre works (Jordan 2011(Jordan , 2012. The earliest use of the term can be ascribed to the dance practitioner Eva Gholson in her book Image of the Singing Air: Presence and Conscience in Dance and Music Collaboration (2004).…”

“…Informing potential future collaborative work between the fields of music and dance, such research invites the possibility for new modes of understanding the nature of gestural expression and how this might impact on performative approaches to the choreographic re-appropriation of 'every-day' movement. This new modality of interdisciplinary practice-led enquiry offers a new and exciting departure for creative work within the recently emerging field of 'choreomusical' research (Jordan 2011).…”

Audiovisual Aesthetics of Sound and Movement in Contemporary Dance

“…Congruent choreomusic parallels such as intertwining rhythms of movement and music are a common feature of contemporary dance and choreography (Jordan, 2011). Yet, postdramatic forms of dance and choreography (Lehmann, 2006) also apply incongruent movement/sound relationships that appear unconnected and do not exhibit any obvious or intended choreomusical parallels, that is, in the collaborations between choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage (Cunningham & Lesschaeve, 1985).…”