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Selecting music for dance composition
The concepts of music
As you develop your skills in dance composition, it is important for you to have a basic understanding of the concepts of music. Understanding musical concepts will assist you when making musical selections for your work, as well as giving you a range of ways to manipulate and form movement.
The Stage 6 Music 1 syllabus gives the following definitions for the concepts of music. The Stage 6 Music 1 syllabus can be downloaded from the Board of Studies 
website.
Duration
Duration refers to the lengths of sounds and silences in music and includes the
aspects of beat, rhythm, metre, tempo, pulse rates and absence of pulse.
Pitch
Pitch refers to the relative highness and lowness of sounds. Important aspects
include high, low, higher and lower pitches, direction of pitch movement, melody,
harmony, indefinite and definite pitch.
Dynamics
Dynamics refer to the volume of sound. Important aspects include the relative
softness and loudness of sound, change of loudness (contrast), and the emphasis on individual sounds (accent).
Tone colour
Tone colour refers to that aspect of sound that allows the listener to identify the
sound source or combinations of sound sources.
Texture
Texture results from the way voices and/or instruments are combined in music.
Structure
Structure refers to the idea of design or form in music. In organising sound the
concepts of duration, dynamics, pitch and tone colour are combined in some way for a particular purpose. Structure relates to the ways in which music sounds the same (or similar) and/or different.
Starting points for manipulating movement using the concepts of music
Duration
Listen to a piece of jazz music that contains a combination of short staccato sounds and longer sustained sounds. Improvise a range of movements to interpret the short staccato sounds and the longer sustained sounds.
How can sound and silence be interpreted through movement?
Devise a short phrase of movement that could be used to interpret the pulse of a piece of music.
Pitch
Use a pencil and paper to draw a line that indicates the direction of pitch movement in a piece of music. Use the drawing as a choreographic map, by using the line as a pathway direction on the floor or for a specific body part moving through space.
Listen to a piece of music that contains harmonies. How can the lines of pitch in the different harmonies be interpreted using two or more dancers? How can the lines of pitch in the harmonies be interpreted using different body parts?
Dynamics
How can dynamics in movement reflect dynamic changes in music?
How can contrasts in the dynamics of the music be interpreted through the body?
What words can you use to describe the dynamics of a piece of music? Use the same words to stimulate improvisation.
Listen to a piece of music that contains definite accents. How can accents be demonstrated through the movement?
Tone colour
Listen to a piece of world music and identify the sound source material (for example wood, skin, vocal, electronic). Think about ways that these could be represented through movement. For example, certain portions of the performance space, or different body parts could be used to depict different sound source materials.
Texture
Listen to a piece of music that has a number of layers. How many layers can you identify? How could you use space in dance to interpret the musical layers?
Structure
Devise a phrase of movement to complement a phrase in a piece of music.
Listen to a piece of classical music. Identify a motif in the music. How has it been manipulated throughout the piece? Create a movement motif that explores similar manipulations through the body.
Listen to a piece of world music. Identify the patterns in the music. Create a movement pattern to complement what you hear in the music.
TASK
Visit the iTunes store and go to the left hand menu called Genres. You need to ensure that the Music tab at the top is selected before the Genre menu appears.
The iTunes store is located within the iTunes application. If you don't have iTunes installed on your computer, it can be downloaded for free from http://www.apple.com/au/itunes/download .
Select the World or Soundtrack genre. Try to select a genre that contains music that you may be unfamiliar with.
Browse the music in the genre and listen to the previews until you make a selection of one of the tracks that you find interesting. What is it about the track that is interesting to you? Write a list of words to describe the feelings that the excerpt of music evokes.
Write the six concepts of music across a sheet of paper. Write your observations about the piece of music you have selected in relation to each of the concepts of music.
Consider purchasing the track of music that you selected from the iTunes store. Listen to the whole track and continue to brainstorm words to describe the music.
Take your dance journal with the music brainstorm into the dance studio. Use the words that you wrote about the music as well as the words that you associated with the concepts of music to improvise movement. NB do not use any music for the improvisation.
Make selections from the movement that you improvise to form a series of short phrases. Burn the music track that you downloaded to a CD and play the music while you perform the phrases of movement. Check if any of the phrases need to be modified to work with the phrasing and dynamics of the music. Look at the ideas presented for manipulating movement using the concepts of music. Are there ways you can further modify the movement in relation to the concepts of music?
Journal reflection
Write a reflection in your dance journal that addresses the following:
- Did you work in a new way to construct the movement phrases (i.e. starting from a word brainstorm about the music rather than beginning with the music itself)? If so, how did the process of constructing a movement phrase differ to the way you would normally construct movement?
- How did the movement change when performed with the music as opposed to being performed in silence? What modifications or changes were made?
TASK
View the dance excerpt from Dialogo at Article 19
Dialogo - which means dialogue, is a collaborative work between the UK based Brazilian dancer/choreographer Jean Abreu and musician Attab Hoddad who is known for playing multiple instruments including the oud. The work investigates the relationship between sound and music with both artists performing live on stage.
Do you think that the work is live improvisation, a formed composition or a combination of the two? Why or why not?
Does the music follow the dancer or does the dancer follow the music? Use examples from the work to justify your position.
What do you notice about the movement of the dancer in relation to the phrasing of the music?
Identify a portion of the work where the dancer changes levels in response to the changing pitch of the music.
Can you identify recurring shapes/movement patterns/motifs in the movement of the dancer?
Can you identify recurring patterns/motifs in the music?
How is duration in the music interpreted by the dancer?
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