Dalcroze Eurhythmics: the body plays the score
Course Description
Summary
Dalcroze Eurhythmics is a music class where we practice sensing the body through musical movement. Can our bodies help us learn how to read and interpret sheet music too? Yes!
The feeling body is the single constant throughout all of our experiences, but can be easily forgotten amidst the notes and rhythms of music learning. Swiss pianist and composer Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) sought to change that. He created Eurhythmics to instill a connection between sound and gesture and return his music students to the body as the seat of musical experience.
Together, we鈥檒l look at the work of renowned composers, feel with our whole selves how melodies propel us through space, and explore how those embodied responses inform our identities as interpreters and performers. We鈥檒l also investigate how artists like Stanislavsky, Laban, Holm, and Kandinsky followed Dalcroze in expressing the intrinsic, physical, and visceral bond between performing artists and their work.
Learning Outcomes
- -Experience and identify the grammar of western rhythm.
-Create gestures that express their experience of those rhythms.
-Analyze and imitate the rhythm and structure of their favorite music.
-Improvise and compose for their voice or instrument.
-Discover and deepen relationships between sound and musical gesture.
-Work closely with their classmates to witness a diversity of experiences.