Musicality is…showing multiple instruments, at the same time. Or it could be jumping between instruments, such as segueing from the end of a melody phrase back in into the underlying rhythm, that’s always waiting there underneath the music, ready to greet us when we return home.
It can be as simple as switching off between multiple instruments in a call-and-response manner (typical of jazz-inspired music), representing different “voices” of instruments differently in our dance (hands vs feet, left vs right, big vs small, dainty vs strong, etc). Musicality is…showing multiple instruments. Whether it’s using multiple levels, the physical size of the movements, the fluidity of the movement, or where in the physical space around us we choose to represent them, there are many ways to make the unique properties of the music clear to our audience, beyond just the rhythms. Musicality is how we choose to capture those differing sounds in our dance, and how we choose to represent them in our movement.
High vs low pitches, drawn-out and legato vs short and staccato, strong and accented vs timid and subdued, or loud and fortissimo vs quiet and pianissimo. And in addition to capturing the timbre of the instrument, musicality is also capturing the way those instruments are played. A flute sounds different than a trumpet sounds different from a violin. Each instrument has a timbre, that differentiates it from other instruments playing the exact same melody. Musicality is….dancing to more than just the rhythm. Opening notes and rhythms of James Brown’s “I Feel Good” We can dig deeper into the song to find the softest instruments and rare instruments, that are never heard unless one searches for them, or a dancer draws them out to show them to you. We can practice our listening skills, trying to isolate out single instruments and rhythms in the song, and hold them, resisting the temptation to fall back into the flow of the stronger melodies. If we just dance to rhythms, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we have the rhythm when we don’t, and forcing ourselves to clap or tap out a rhythm helps us improve our ability to capture those rhythms. We can practice by clapping out these rhythms with our hands, to ensure what we hear from our hands matches what we hear from the music.
Whether it’s the foundational boom-clap of popping music, or the melody of a singer or lead instrument, there’s rhythm in every instrument in our music. Musicality is expressing the rhythm of notes from an instrument, through our bodies. Musicality is…dancing to the instrumental rhythms.