To go directly to the homework for a part in this series, use the following links:
Part 1: Gathering the Senses
Part 2: The Creative Element
Part 3: The Emotional Element
Part 4: The Somatic Element
Part 5: The Relational Element
Part 6: The Improvisational Element
Part 7: Harnessing Musicality
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There are questions and exercises to accompany each part of this series. The goal is to experience the greatest possible engagement with your own ideas about musicality as well as with this material. If you don’t have a dance journal, now is an excellent time to start! Writing down your thoughts instead of keeping them in your head will clarify them and allow you to track how they change over time.
Learning about each other’s ideas about musicality also makes for a great discussion, so if you are interested in sharing any of your answers or other thoughts on musicality please leave a comment below. If you choose not to do all or any of the homework, don’t worry because it is not required to read and enjoy this series. This is just an added bonus for those who want to dig a little deeper!
Let’s begin!
Recommended Homework for Part 1
If you haven’t already, read Part 1: Gathering the Senses, then return to this page.
I deliberately did not name the five elements in Part 1. This is to enable you to explore the personal definition of musicality you currently hold (you have one even if you have never articulated it) before I start filling your head with other ideas.
We will be returning to your answers and working with them throughout the series, so be sure to keep them close. You can write as little or as much as you like. If you have time, I encourage you to write down your initial thoughts, pause to reflect, then write some more. This method usually gets us past our surface ideas and into creative/discovery mode where our best thinking takes place. You may also wish to reflect on these questions throughout the week, especially after an evening of dancing, and add any additional ideas to your answers.
Okay, here we go! There are five questions this week:
- If you had to write a definition of musicality to be published in a community dictionary, what would it be?
- What “elements” are essential to musicality? If you had to define the five senses we possess as human beings and knew nothing about the traditional senses we are taught about, what would make your list? Think outside the box on this one!
- How do you know when you or someone else is dancing musically? What does it look and feel like? Take time this week to watch your favorite dancers, locally and/or on YouTube, to help with your answers.
- How musical do you think you are? How satisfied are you with your musicality? What are your musical strengths and weaknesses? What, if anything, seems to turn on – and turn off – your musicality?
- Reflect on how you felt as you read Part 1: Gathering the Senses. Read it again if that’s helpful. Does the concept of “gathering the senses” resonate with you? Why or why not? List any experiences, questions, or objections that came up for you during the reading. (P.S. I would love to read your answers on this one. If you feel like sharing, please leave a comment on Part 1!
Recommended Homework for Part 2
If you haven’t already, read Part 2: The Creative Element, then return to this page.
There are four homework exercises this week: two journaling exercises to explore your thoughts on the five elements and two practical exercises to develop awareness of how we use frames in the creative element of our musicality. If you don’t have time to do all four exercises, choose the one(s) that resonate with you the most and leave the others for another time.
- What impressions come to mind when you read the list of five elements? Which of the five do you feel the most, and the least, interested in?
- Looking ahead to the second element which will be covered next week, what role do you think emotions play in musicality? How do emotions make it into our dancing?
- Select a video of any partnered dance that you like for its musicality. Watch the video all the way through first and just see what you notice. Then watch the video five times, each time using a different “movement frame” for watching the dancers. Here are five suggested frames you can use: 1) rhythm changes, 2) movement through space, 3) body shaping, 4) use of level changes (up/down) and direction changes (linear/rotational), 5) leader/follower relationship (i.e., when they move in sync with each other vs. when they move in complementary or contrasting ways). Try to focus on which music frame goes with the particular movement frame you are focusing on. After watching using the five frames, watch the video a final time without any frames and see if you notice anything new about the dancers’ musicality.
- The next time you go dancing, pick a dance where you feel comfortable enough with your partner and the music to do a little experiment. As you are dancing, try to track (naming it in your head is helpful) which music frame you are focusing on at various points in the dance. Examples include a rhythm, an instrument, or an accent. You may also be able to name the movement/body frame you are using to express the music frame. Examples include a pause, a body roll, or a level change. For this exercise, try to track the frames without letting it affect your dancing. The goal is to bring awareness to the frames you use, not to completely understand them or to do something different. Above all, be attentive to your partner and to the floor of other dancers. Not only is it safe, it should bring awareness to the ways they influence your frames!
Recommended Homework for Part 3
If you haven’t already, read Part 3: The Emotional Element, then return to this page.
There are five homework exercises this week: two journaling exercises to explore your thoughts on the five elements and three practical exercises to develop awareness of how primary emotions affect our musicality. The three practical exercises progress from beginning to more advanced, but I encourage you to do all of them in order if you haven’t tried them before. If you don’t have time to do all five exercises, read through them quickly and choose the one(s) that resonate with you the most.
- If you did Exercise #2 from last week’s homework, reread your response now. What similarities and differences are there between your response and my article on the emotional element? How has your thinking changed (or not) as a result of reading Part 3? List any impressions, questions, and experiences you have.
- Looking ahead to the third element which will be covered next week, what connotations does the word “somatic” bring up for you? Feel free to look it up in the dictionary to get more ideas flowing. How do you think our creative ideas and emotional feelings are physically manifested in our dancing?
- Commit to one day of checking in with yourself every hour or so (set an reminder on your phone or computer if that’s helpful) and asking yourself how you feel, answering only with physical or visceral sensations: where in your body you feel relaxed and where you feel constricted, where and how your breathing feels effortless or stuck, how grounded or light you feel, etc. Avoid intellectualizing or categorizing your emotion. Just take a 30-second body scan and allow that to be the measure of how you’re doing.
- Watch the video Argument to Beethoven’s 5th. As you do, pay attention to two things: 1) the subtle and overt gestures and expressions that reveal how the characters’ emotions are flowing in time, and 2) how you feel physically in your body moment by moment as you follow this flow. Try to get caught up in the argument as if you were participating and notice when and where you feel physical and visceral sensations (i.e., constriction or expansion in your breathing, a feeling in the pit of your stomach, groundedness in your legs, tension in your forehead, etc.). No movement is required for this exercise; you are trying to notice subtle feelings that may not be visible on the outside. Be patient with yourself if you do not notice anything right away; for some people this awareness takes time.
- The next time you go dancing, pick a dance where you feel comfortable enough with your partner and the music to do a little experiment. As you are dancing, try to track (and perhaps even name in your head) when and where you feel the music inspire any subtle impulse in your body that isn’t necessary to strictly carry out your movements. Examples include subtle but clear changes in breathing, muscle tone, and sensations of groundedness or weightlessness. If you feel you may struggle with this, do Exercises #2 and #3 before you go dancing and just focus on finding a few moments where the music inspires an impulse. For those who feel these impulses frequently and would like additional insights, focus on finding the connection between these impulses (i.e., the flow that moves you from one impulse to the next) or whether/how your impulses are communicated to your partner and whether/how your partners responds. For this exercise, try to track these moments without changing them or judging them. The goal is to bring awareness to your primary emotions, not to completely understand them or to do something different. Above all, be attentive to your partner and to the floor of other dancers. Not only is it safe, it should bring awareness to the ways they influence your primary emotions!
Recommended Homework for Part 4
If you haven’t already, read Part 4: The Somatic Element, then return to this page.
There are five homework exercises this week: two journaling exercises to explore your thoughts on the five elements and three exercises to develop awareness of the somatic element specifically.
- If you did Exercise #2 from last week’s homework, reread your response now. What similarities and differences are there between your response and my article on the somatic element? How has your thinking changed (or not) as a result of reading Part 4? List any impressions, questions, and experiences you have.
- Looking ahead to the fourth element which will be covered next week, how do you think the musicality of the leader and follower influence each other in the partnership? List any ideas, questions, and experiences you have.
- Recall a time when a new dance movement or technique suddenly “clicked” for you. Journal what that experience was like: what circumstances (instruction, practice, meditation, etc.) led up to it, what the moment felt like, and the evolution of your dancing as a result of that discovery, focusing as much as possible on your bodily experience. Then recall or reread the quote from Greg Downey’s book in Part 4 and write down the similarities and differences between his experience – and his conclusions about its meaning – and your own.
- Select an object from the room you are in and spend five minutes writing down as many affordances as you can for that object, not stopping with the obvious but getting as creative as you can. For example, a pen can be used to write my thoughts for others to read, to poke my sister so I can annoy her, to extend my reach to get something from under my bed, to touch something dirty that I would rather not touch myself, to hold my place in a book, to scratch an itch on my arm, to offer to my cat as a toy, etc. You may notice that the first affordances you list are the most obvious, but that as you get past those first impressions a whole new world of affordances opens up. If you don’t have this experience, don’t worry because this exercise is quick and easy to repeat. In fact, you may be amazed at how often you find affordances other than the original intended affordance for a variety of objects in your everyday life. The purpose of this exercise is to open your perception to see these affordances. Dancing is impossible without them!
- Select a video of dancing from any genre and write down as many affordances as you can for at least five minutes. A good way to write these down is to list the “object,” which in the case of dancing will likely be a body part or an aspect of the partner connection, then list the “action” being taken with that object, and finally list the “musical affordance” (i.e., to hit an accent, to reflect the smoothness of a melodic line, to bring out something in the lyrics) of that object/action combination. If you have time, watching the video multiple times is a great idea to get past the most obvious affordances and find some you may not have noticed the first time. Also, feel free to get creative and explore affordances that don’t resemble the examples I have given. And you get special bonus points if you can connect these affordances to the creative and emotional elements we discussed in Parts 1 and 2. I hope you find this exercise fun and enlightening. The whole point is to expand your perception so you can see and feel all the affordances that make our beautiful dances possible.
Recommended Homework for Part 5
If you haven’t already, read Part 5: The Relational Element, then return to this page.
There are four homework exercises this week: two journaling exercises to explore your thoughts on the five elements and two exercises to develop awareness of the relational element specifically.
Let me know what you discover with these exercises by leaving a comment below!
- If you did the Exercise #2 from last week’s homework, reread your response now. What similarities and differences are there between your response and my article on the relational element? How has your thinking changed (or not) as a result of reading Part 5? List any impressions, questions, and experiences you have.
- Looking ahead to the fifth element which will be covered next week, how do you think improvisation relates to musicality? What do you imagine I might write next week? List any ideas, questions, and experiences you have.
- Select a dance video you like for the couple’s musicality. Watch it at least three times. First, watch the leader and pay special attention to his musicality. Second, watch the follower and focus on her musicality. Third, watch both leader and follower at the same time, paying attention to places where their musicality is greater than the sum of each of them together. Try to break apart what is happening in these instances and what makes the choices of one complement the choices of the other. Bonus points for finding moments where the leader and follower are responding to different parts of the music.
- The next time you go dancing, pick a dance where you feel comfortable enough with your partner and the music to do a little experiment. As you are dancing, try to track how you are letting your partner know that you “hear” them, i.e., how your movement changes as a result of something they’ve done with the music. This could be mirroring them, complementing (different from complimenting!) them, or some type of call-and-response. Then try the opposite: track how you know your partner hears you using the same guidelines above. For this exercise, try to track these moments without changing them or judging them. The goal is to bring awareness to how musicality is communicated and shared, not to completely understand it or to do something different. Once you’ve explored your default, feel free to start exploring. This isn’t just an exercise; this should be happening all the time when you’re dancing with your partner, although usually in a less conscious way.
Recommended Homework for Part 6
If you haven’t already, read Part 6: The Improvisational Element, then return to this page.
There are four homework exercises this week: three journaling exercises to explore your thoughts on the five elements and defining musicality, plus one exercise to develop awareness of the improvisational element specifically.
- If you did the Exercise #2 from last week’s homework, reread your response now. What similarities and differences are there between your response and my article on the improvisational element? How has your thinking changed (or not) as a result of reading Part 6? List any impressions, questions, and experiences you have.
- If you did Exercise #2 from Part 1, reread your response now. If you didn’t do the exercise, reread it now and think back to what your response would have been before reading this series. How do the senses/elements you identified compare with the five I have identified in this series? What areas of musicality, if any, does my series illuminate that were missing from the elements you identified? What areas of musicality do you think my series has missed that are present in the elements you identified?
- If you did Exercise #1 from Part 1, reread your response now. If you didn’t do the exercise, reread it now and think back to what your response would have been before reading this series. Has your personal definition of musicality changed since reading this series? Why or why not? If it has, in what way(s) has it changed? Write down your updated musicality definition.
- Make an “improvisation inventory” of your dancing. You can either think of your dancing in general terms or take an inventory after an evening of social dancing. Make a chart with three column headings (improvisational, rigid, and chaotic) and three row headings (physical, mental, and emotional), then start populating the chart with specific examples where you were either able or unable to go in a particular direction that the dance was calling for. As you work through the chart, you will start noticing trends, such as tending more towards chaos than rigidity or noticing that emotional issues rather than physical issues dominate your thinking. It is helpful to remember that the physical, mental, and emotional are interdependent, so be open to finding connections between them instead of worrying about trying to keep them separate. The purpose of separating them in this exercise is to get you thinking about all three levels. Please also remember that the goal here is to identify what pulls you out of a life-giving improvisational process so that you can get to know yourself better and find areas for improvement, so be gentle with yourself and don’t use the chart to criticize yourself. In reality, every single dancer has areas of chaos or rigidity on every single level. Improvisation is a life-giving process that we are always aspiring to; it is not something we either have or don’t have. That said, this chart is an excellent guide for designing your dance practice. Identify specific areas where you can develop greater stability and flexibility on the physical, mental, and emotional levels.
Recommended Homework for Part 7
If you haven’t already, read Part 7: Harnessing Musicality, then return to this page.
If you did the homework for the entire series, take it out and keep it close because you will be referencing it for several of these exercises. Just be sure to completely finish your response to part (a) of each question before moving on to part (b). If you didn’t do the previous homework, don’t worry because you can still benefit from answering these questions; you can just skip all the (b) sections.
Okay, here we go! There are five journaling questions for the finale. The first three questions focus on the series as a whole and include a comparison with previous homework responses (if applicable). The last two questions apply specifically to Part 7.
- a. How do you know when you or someone else is dancing musically? What does it look and feel like? Take time this week to watch your favorite dancers, locally and/or on YouTube, to help with your answers.
b. Read back through your answer to question #3 from the homework for Part 1. What is similar and different about your response then versus your response now? - a. How musical do you think you are? How satisfied are you with your musicality? What are your musical strengths and weaknesses with each of the five elements described in this series? What, if anything, seems to turn on – and turn off – your musicality?
b. Read back through your answer to question #4 from the homework for Part 1. What are the similarities and differences between the two responses? Are the differences due to improvements you’ve made, changes in your goals, or something else? For the similarities, do you feel like you’re learning and improving? Why or why not? - Read back through all of your responses for the homework for Parts 2 through 6. (If you haven’t done the homework for Parts 2 through 6, it’s not too late!) Which questions and exercises yielded the greatest insights? Which ones were difficult, puzzling, or disappointing? Which ones would you like to revisit or, if you haven’t done them before, which ones would you like to try?
- Reflect on how you felt as you read Part 7: Harnessing Musicality. Read through it again if that’s helpful. Do these ideas resonate with you? Why or why not? List any experiences, questions, or objections that came up for you during the reading. If you would like some further guidance on where to start, comment on the following three statements:
a. “Music and dance forms have stood the test of time because they have been designed for us, by harnessing human capacities that we all possess.”
b. “A lack of musicality is not natural. Rather, it is a normal response to a culture that separates body and mind, and a dance culture that separates movement and the music from which it developed. Part of teaching/learning musicality is removing the blocks created within the context of our disconnected and disembodied culture.”
c. “It is difficult to distinguish musicality from dancing. The fate of one is tied to the fate of the other.”
P.S. I would love to read your answers on this one. If you feel like sharing, please leave a comment on Part 7! - Going forward, what steps will you take and what goals will you make to harness your musicality? If you need help with this, think about what drew you to read this series on musicality and how you responded to it. What interested you about it the most? What do you want to explore more of? You can also reference your answers to questions #2 and #3 above. Approach this question from your personal interests and questions.