My mother‘s dream was to become a professional dancer. She told me that when she was in college in 1978 she wanted so bad to be a ballerina. Unfortunately she was not able to fulfill her dream of becoming a dancer, but fortunately for me I got to know much about dance. Growing up, I remember my Mom used to take me a lot of dance shows, and as far as I can remember when I was ten my mother and I would go the Cairo opera house to watch contemporary dance shows and famous ballets.
The reason why I choose to talk about dance is because I was always amazed by that essential relationship between music and dance. Knowing that from ancient musical groups dance routines to modern dancing, music is the influence for all dance practices.
I was fortuned to grow up watching video recordings with my family of classical ballets, contemporary ballet shows, and lyrical jazz dance shows. In many ways that showed me how much music influence the choreographer. It quite extra ordinary to know how choreographers use certain body movements in their choreographies that would suite the music chosen. Some movements can be fast, hard hitting and technically brilliant if the music is fast, and sometimes the dance can be very lyrical, and one could feel the flow of movement if the music is in a slow tempo and has an expressive character.
One other aspect of dance is the difficulty that dancers face, and the experience that they get from the intensity of the movement. I have been always found of contemporary dance, and if I was not a classical musician, I would have loved to be a professional dancer. If it was not for my family, I would have not been able to explore the world of dance.
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Hi Nawar! I think it's interesting how your mother's interest in dance brought about the interest in this connection. When I was younger, I dance for a little while. It's almost inexplicable in a way, but you can kind of feel the music in yourself in a slightly different way then when you are playing the music.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting, Nawar. We'll be seeing a number of links between music and dance as we go through our various cultures--keep think about those links as we progress through the semester.
ReplyDeleteI loved your comments on dance. I wanted to be a dancer, too, when I was little and took years of ballet (like it shows now!) I remember watching dancers on TV and wanted to join them. Even though I moved into other pursuits, namely flute and swimming, dancing has never been far from my mind.
ReplyDeleteI also remember playing in an orchestra where the conductor was very movement oriented. He believed that all music was dance music and unless we could feel it in our bodies, we would never be able to play it with the life that the composer intended.