An Interactive Guide to Music for Dancers

Music and dance are intimately related art forms that share many basic elements of rhythm, etc. These elements of musicality are usually communicated non-verbally by dancers when they are teaching, choreographing, and performing. Therefore, musical knowledge, skills, and literacy are tools necessary for the development of an aesthetic response to musical expression. Ideally, dancers work to develop the interdependence of thinking, listening, and acting - each feeds the other. Dancers & dance students alike must be aware of the musicality inherent in movement, and the movement inherent in music, so they gain a kinesthetic understanding of rhythmic fundamentals and phrasing, becoming better dancers, choreographers, and better teachers."An Interactive Guide to Music for Dancers" is an interdisciplinary approach to music and dance, which combines concept and skill development that ordinarily exist in isolation. This CD-ROM is designed to be used in conjunction with the text, "Rhythmic Training for Dancers", by the same author. The text and CD-ROM may be used in music theory - or rhythmic theory - for dance courses as well as in dance pedagogy and choreography classes."An Interactive Guide to Music for Dancers" is a computer program organized in three main sections beginning with a dancer's view, which presents video examples of dance technique class combinations. Musical time is approached from the dancer's perspective. This is followed by a musician's view, which explores rhythm and meter through audio and video examples and is more theoretically in-depth than in the dancer's view. A glossary is accessible from either of these sections. The program concludes with a practice area in which three interactive environments are presented for the practice of material that was presented in the previous two sections. The CD-ROM will also have a companion student textbook and teacher's manual, "Rhythmic Training for Dancers".