There aren’t many people I know who lack these abilities. I believe that, even with zero formal musical background, if a person can count to 4, clap their hands and hum a basic tune, then they can learn to appreciate music to a reasonably sophisticated level. Some people believe that beginners can’t understand or appreciate music, or that they will be bored by it. Too often I’ve observed musicality classes and workshops targeted at more advanced dancers. I have heard some teachers say that it’s not possible to teach music to beginners, that they won’t get it. After all, the key word in musicality is music. So what can teachers do about this? While I don’t believe it’s possible to teach musicality, I absolutely believe it’s possible to teach about music. A great teacher can open doors, but each individual must step (or is that dance) through the door themselves. However, the actual expression, and learning this process, can only be undertaken by the individual. The best any teacher can do, is expose student to various possibilities, and provide channels through which to access these ideas, feelings and emotions. Expression of music is a highly subjective and personal experience. Wait a minute, how can something be learned, but not taught? I believe that the expression of all of the ideas, feelings and emotions that music evokes can be learned (or perhaps discovered is a better word), but I don’t believe that any teacher can teach musicality to an individual. However, I believe musicality (music) can be learned. Even if one can make a case that musicality does in fact exist, I don’t believe it can be taught. The second idea I’d like to challenge is that musicality can be taught. There is no separation between the dance and the music. Musicality is dancing, and dancing is musicality. If you are dancing without acknowledging the music, then you are not dancing. It’s not a module or class you take as part of a dance qualification, after you’ve completed dance 101, 201, and 301. In my opinion, it is only because the way that dance is commonly taught has been bastardised, and this has caused the people within the dance industry to perpetuate concepts such as musicality. By the same token, you can’t extract musicality (music) from dancing, process it, add music back in later, and expect the quality not to be affected. You can’t remove essential nutrients from food, process it, add some nutrients back in later, and expect to have the same healthy, quality food source. It sounds like it’s healthy, but it’s really not. This is a bit like bread with added fibre. The way dancing is commonly taught today, the musicality (music) in dancing is separated out from the physicality of dancing, processed, and then, musicality (music) is considered and added back in, after the fact. Then it occurred to that the idea of musicality only exists because, for some people,dancing has been distilled down to a set of steps, techniques and/or movement patterns. Aren’t these concepts what dancing is supposed to be about anyway? In other words, if you’re not doing any of these things, are you even dancing in the first place? I mean, do you even dance? I think it’s fair to say there’s some truth to most, if not all, of these ideas, and that these ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Dancing as another instrument of the band.Dancing to a particular instrument or vocal in the music.Accentuating the breaks and/or hits in the music.Ideas that are commonly mentioned in reference to musicality are: When I talk to other dancers about musicality, despite the the lack of a universally agreed definition, some common threads emerge. If we can’t agree on what musicality actually is, how can anyone argue that such a thing even exists? For me, this was enough to start ringing alarm bells. However, everyone I speak to has a different definition of what musicality means. What first prompted me to start questioning the whole concept of musicality is that, every time I have a discussion with another dancer about musicality, at some point we get down to defining terms. I invite you to consider the notion that musicality does not exist. This is something that has been nagging at me for a while now, but I feel that I’ve consolidated my thoughts sufficiently to write something about it.
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