Choreomusical Conversations: Facing a Double Challenge

Introduction

Dance is virtually always music-and-dance, unavoidably interdisciplinary and ready for "marriage," or so the familiar metaphor tells us (Du Manoir 1664/1985; Humphrey 1959, 164). Apart from a few notable exceptions from within modern dance—like the silent dances of the 1920s and 1930s or the flamboyant rejections of musical tyranny by Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer from midcentury—the centrality of music within dance and the "musicality" of the dancer have long been considered unquestioned facts of life.

Yet traditionally, there have been fundamental differences in practice and conceptual frameworks between these two art forms or (within the academy) "disciplines." Music has a history of being thought "alone" and uncontaminated by matter outside itself. Often, it needs no other partner. Then, in dance, the performer is central—as Yeats famously wrote: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" ¹ —while in music, the score object, written by a composer, has been central and the performer, until quite recently, relatively marginalized.

Today, it is timely to review the two disciplines, noting that they are becoming more mutually permeable, and in relation to their shared interdisciplinarity. Now, we might consider how music theory becomes dance theory and how dance and the body, using the principle of somatic engagement, can impact on musical experience and thinking about music. I will also suggest how intermedia theory becomes a theory of "choreo-musical" interrelations. ²

I am far from alone in my interest in choreomusical matters. During the last five years there have been no fewer than eight international conferences crossing music and dance, others devoted to the topic of music and the body, and several related publications. ³ But my paper is partly autobiographical, the reflections of a dance analyst resulting from my own practice and academic background in and across both disciplines. This experience has made me sensitive to the distinctions between the disciplines and the problems that can arise when two kinds of specialist approach the same issues on very different terms (in my case adopting a split mindset). The experience has also helped me to engage with the new, changing world of theoretical possibility.

My focus in this article is on choreomusical analysis within the context of Western theater dance; my dance examples include my recent work on Stravinsky (Jordan 2007) and the dances to his music and, currently, my work on Mark Morris and the use of music in his dances. It is important that theoretical frameworks can be moved forward through contact with actual dances. In other words, while use of an analytical method can be revealing about a work, application of it can also lead to its own refinement. First, to set the scene, it is instructive to trace briefly the different recent histories of the two disciplines as fields for analysis.

The Background: Two Disciplines Compared

Through much of the twentieth century, Western musical analysis has been equated with formal ⁴ analysis, examination extending from the smallest unit (a note)—"close readings" always a strong feature—to complete works, leaving just a little room for hermeneutics. This was my academic background. As the article in the current Grove Dictionary suggests (Bent and Pople 2001), musical analysis had its own secure place alongside, as well as interfacing with, the defined fields of musical aesthetics, compositional theory, criticism, and history. It also gave birth to a considerable typology, depending on the methods and on which component of music was singled out for special attention. Analysis of temporally-based form and pitch-based structures seems to have been especially important, far less so rhythmic analysis, with timbre hardly acknowledged at all. Especially influential was Heinrich Schenker's theory of tonal music (1935/1979) as a hierarchical structure, based on the projection of a tonic triad, from the Ursatz or fundamental structure through various layers (or "grounds") up to the surface. Many musicologists shared the belief that a musical work is a unified, organic conception and a closed, autonomous entity, and that model forms, like ternary or sonata form, can operate as standards against which works can be measured.

From about 1985, suddenly...