Dalcroze Eurhythmics: How Music Feels

Course Description

Summary

How do performing musicians develop their personal voices? The Swiss pedagogue Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950) invented Eurhythmics to address this question. Specifically, we’ll focus on plastique animée, a movement practice that Dalcroze created for analyzing sound through movement. We’ll attempt to feel with our arms and legs what a melody ‘wants’ to do next, and explore how those embodied responses are already inside of you. We’ll also investigate how artists like Stanislavsky, Laban, and Kandinsky followed Dalcroze in expressing the intrinsic, physical, and visceral bond between performing artists and their work.

Along the way, we'll work on our skills of reading, singing, and conducting from sheet music to understand the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms that captivate you as a listener and performer