Tracie Stanfield doesn’t want students to just dance to music. She wants them to partner with it. “It should be a duet,” says the contemporary lyrical and contemporary jazz teacher. “I want it to look like they inspire the music—not that they’re dancing to the lyrics.” Dancers of all backgrounds take Stanfield’s fusion classes at […]
When it comes to choosing music for class, Popin Pete has one rule: “It’s always going to be something groovy,” he says. That’s because he doesn’t want students to just hear the music—he wants them to feel it. “It’s a difference,” he says. “That’s on any level, whether emotionally or spiritually or physically. That’s what […]
Kenichi Kasamatsu has taught worldwide, from New York City’s Broadway Dance Center and at workshops all across America to studios on the other side of the globe in Thailand (where he was born and raised), China, and Japan. However, his sense of musicality, he says, started to evolve three years ago when we were all […]
For many teachers, the counts of a song are the starting place for developing students’ relationship to the music. But not for Omari Wiles, Founding Father of the legendary vogueing house, House of NiNa Oricci, and founder of the Les Ballet AFRIK company. He prefers to start by encouraging dancers to feel the rhythm of a song instead of “drilling a bunch of numbers into their heads,” as he describes it. “When I’m teaching, it’s about understanding the music first, instead of ‘This is what we’re going to do to this music.’”
Teaching artist Kelby Brown prefers simple piano accompaniment with long sustaining chords. He finds this helps dancers to concentrate and fill in the space with the steps. “I need fewer notes, less music,” he says. It’s an approach he learned from his teachers at the School of American Ballet, like Stanley Williams, and from his […]
Finding age-appropriate hip-hop music can be a struggle. Choreographer Afaliah Tribune addresses this common dilemma for hip-hop teachers by making her own original tracks on GarageBand. “I love experimenting with live music, and my students think it’s fun, too,” says Tribune, who is an adjunct professor of dance at New York University. “There are so […]
Teachers from coast to coast are pushing students to move outside the constraints of popular music. There is a consensus that the earlier you introduce varied musical forms, the more adept and adaptable a dancer’s musicality will be. New York–based jazz scholar and teacher Melanie George notices that many students’ relationships to music can be […]
While training with Abby Lee Miller in Pittsburgh, Rachel Kreiling underestimated the studio’s requirement of enrolling in every class. The versatile curriculum (tap, ballet, hip hop, modern, acro, lyrical and jazz) paired with Miller’s unconventional teaching style, since showcased on “Dance Moms,” greatly impacted Kreiling’s own style and relationship to music. “Abby would play the […]
The beloved “So You Think You Can Dance” alum and former Emmy-nominated “Dancing with the Stars” pro Chelsie Hightower discovered her passion for ballroom at a young age. She showed a natural ability for the Latin style, but she mastered the necessary versatility by studying jazz, ballet and other forms of dance. “Every style of […]
While Teddy Forance admits that performing with commercial artists like Lady Gaga and Madonna, and in front of 30,000 people, is exhilarating, he is personally drawn to more abstract music when he choreographs. It’s a preference that sometimes confounds his contemporaries. “Some of my friends will ask, ‘How do you choreograph to music that sounds […]