CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This research unites some issues I found during my career as a student, professional pianist, teacher.

When I started working as a professional pianist, I found out that young people were not interested in classical music. We live in an overstimulated society, and staring at the stage for one hour could sound exhausting for most of the juvenile audience. In a classical concert,  music is not “enough” for the new audience. Many kinds of research agreed that music has an accompanying role nowadays. We go to the mall and we listen to music while we buy clothes, we see a film and we feel the music as something which is a part of the whole context. Apart from that, people are used to listening to music while cooking, walking, reading...

For that reason, I wondered about creating new concert formats, mixing visual arts with music, and finally, I chose dance. These two disciplines have many things in common and I thought that it could be more natural to classical music than other visual art.This is due to the fact that dance works with time and tempo, and not painting, for example.  Also, it could be a very good opportunity to learn more about dance and the historical and cultural context of both arts.

During my concerts, I also felt that the audience could not approach the complexity of classical music. I had the opportunity to speak with the audience several times, and I found out that they just imagined arbitrary images or feelings. Most of the time, these images and feelings had nothing to do with the musician´s preferences. Adding dance to the performance, it is possible to reach the audience with more information.

On the other hand, I also had pedagogical reasons to start studying about this topic. As a piano student and teacher, I am always looking for new ways of music learning. I am very interested in the process from reading a piece to performing it. However, I never thought that it was possible to improve the learning process by introducing other art disciplines in the learning method. For that reason, the research question is:

How does my playing change while working “La Soireé dans Grenade” with a dancer?

Trying to join up all these problems, I thought that I could create a short spectacle mixing music and dance, where my personal music analysis could be explained with the dance. Within this project, people could reach more information about the real meaning of the performance, and it would be more attractive to a new audience, especially a young one. I chose “La Soiree dans Grenade” by Debussy.

I started the research learning more about the connection between music and dance. This topic is very broad, so I tried to have a general approach to it.  Later, I analyzed two different projects that connected music to dance. Firstly, I analyzed “Falling Down Stairs” by Mark Morris. This project was initially created as a dance film. “Falling Down Stairs” is a choreography for fifteen dancers. Facing them, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma performs Bach´s Suite no. 3. Bach’s music is connected to seventeenth-century dance, but this Suite was not made to accompany any body movement. The piece I am using in the project wasn’t created for dance either. For that reason, analyzing another project that used just instrumental music to add dance has been very useful.

The second project I analyzed is “Bransle gay” solo from “Agon” ballet by Stravinsky. In contrast with the other project - and my own one - this piece has always been connected to dance. In fact, “Agon” is known as a major work in terms of the creative collaboration between composer and choreographer. In this work, Stravinsky explored serialism, and the choreographer Balanchine developed a neoclassical style, with references to jazz. This piece has been meaningful to create a reasonable correlation between both arts in my own project. Moreover, this piece is also connected to my project in other way. The solo of Bransle Gay finishes with the rhythm pattern of the castanets. The dancer stand still in the middle of the stage, with her torso up. This attitude is very typical in Spanish dance, when the music stops and the dancer is waiting for the claps of the audience. This piece has Spanish instruments and some folkloric characteristics during the whole movement. Debussy visited Spain only once, however, “La soiree dans Grenade” is based on Spanish sounds and rhythm patterns.

After analyzing the relation between music and dance in these two different projects, I examined Debussy´s piece in order to explain it to the dancer, from my point of view. Apart from my personal music expression, the idea was to create the movements in keeping with the score and the structure. For that reason, analyzing the motives and rhythmic patterns has been very important in the process.

Closing the research, the last two chapters speak about the process I had with the dancer and the results. In chapter 4 I write step-by-step the connection of every movement with the dance. In this part, I also tried to connect what I learned from other projects and apply the connections to mine. In the last chapter, I speak about how this project changed my performance of “La Soiree dans Grenade”. In order to do that, I compare a recording made before rehearsals, and another one made after them. I look for the varieties, and I search the reasons of the differences. 

This research opens broad possibilities in music learning and performing. The results reveal some benefits of interdisciplinary work in the learning process.