Sri Lankan drummers and dancers performing a Kandyan dance. Ewing Krainin/Stockpile
Individual dance movements also have a natural rhythm that determines the way in which they can be executed. A high leap, for example, can take only a certain amount of time (the force of gravity preventing a very prolonged duration and the height of the leap precluding a very quick one). Thus, the rhythm, or pattern of accents, imposed on the leap can be neither very sharp nor very sustained.
Even though choreographers are limited to those rhythms permitted by the various dance movements, they do not always use those that are most natural and efficient. It may be easier for a dancer to perform a section of runs and jumps at a moderate, evenly paced rhythm, but this may not produce the effect that the choreographer wants.
Choreographers vary dance rhythms for many reasons, the most basic being the wish to create different qualities of movement—a slow, even rhythm, for example, to create softness and fluidity, or a fast, asymmetrical rhythm to make the movement attenuated or uneven. Varying the qualities of movement may also have a dramatic function, rhythm often determining whether a movement appears joyous, calm, or anguished. Also, choreographers following a musical score may manipulate the rhythms of the dance movements either to match or counterpoint those of the music.
Rhythm is a vital element of all dances in all cultures, even in those African and Asian dances whose complex rhythms are often imperceptible to the Western observer. In these forms, the drummer may play a different rhythm with each hand, one setting the basic pulse and the other producing a pattern of sound to reflect the mood or meaning of the dance. The dancer, too, may set up one rhythm in the stamping of the feet while marking out another in the torso, arms, or head, thus producing a highly varied and irregular pattern of sounds and movements. It is rare for dance not to follow any kind of rhythmic organization, just as poets who do not follow a strict metre still emphasize and manipulate the rhythms of language. Music
Many of the terms used in reference to dance rhythm, such as tempo, dynamics, and beat, are derived from music, as most dance is either set to music or accompanied by it. Particularly in cases where the choreographer sets the dance to a previously composed score, the music may determine both the length and structure of the work and even the exact phrasing of the movements. At its simplest, there may be an exact correspondence between the notes and the dance steps, as in a basic waltz melody. On a more complex scale, as in the music visualization popular with such choreographers as Ruth St. Denis, dancers or groups of dancers are assigned to specific instruments and are choreographed in such a manner that they duplicate on stage the relationships among the instruments in the orchestra. Balanchine was said to have translated music into spatial terms, manipulating the floor patterns and the grouping of the dancers so that they corresponded to the appearance and development of particular chord sequences, rhythmic patterns, melodies, or sections of counterpoint. Nijinsky, on the other hand, in L’Après-midi d’un faune (1912; “Afternoon of a Faun”), used Claude Debussy’s music purely for atmosphere, permitting it to set the mood rather than influence the organization of movements.
Music can determine the style or dramatic quality of a dance. In fact, composers are often instructed to emphasize or clarify the drama already inherent in the choreography. In Western ballet it is common for important characters to have their own musical themes expressing and identifying their personalities or for whole sections of music to be written in the style of the character dancing to them—as in the sweet, tinkling music that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed for the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. In plotless dances music and movement also reflect and reinforce each other, as in Ashton’s Monotones (1965–66), where the clear, uncluttered lines of the choreography reflect the limpidity of Erik Satie’s music.
Certain choreographers in the second half of the 20th century worked either without music or in such a way that music and dance remained wholly independent of each other. Merce Cunningham choreographed in silence, so that while the music helped to determine the overall mood of the dance, it rarely affected the dance’s phrasing and structure and often did not even last for the same length of time. Cunningham believed that too close a correspondence between dance and music would not really help the audience to perceive the two forms more clearly but, rather, would have the opposite effect of each canceling the other out. Other choreographers, such as Jerome Robbins in Moves (1959), used complete silence even in performance, so that the natural sounds of the dance movements formed the only accompaniment, leaving the spectator to concentrate solely on the patterns and rhythms of the movement. Others have used natural or electronic sounds and even spoken words in an effort to separate dance from a close relationship with music while still providing it with some relationship to sound.
It is likely that music accompanied dance from earliest times, either through sounds such as stamping, clapping, and singing that the dancers made themselves, through percussion, or through various wind instruments such as pipes or flutes. In modern Afro-Caribbean dances it is possible to discern the effects that drumming and percussive-sounding movements can have on dancing—in maintaining the dancer’s beat, providing accompaniment, and intensifying the dance’s emotional power. A slow, heavy beat can create a mood of tension or expectancy, while a fast beat may build the dance to a joyous or dramatic climax. The rhythms of the drums, reinforced by clapping and stamping, can amplify the rhythms of the movements (the sway of the pelvis, the rippling of the spine) as well as set up a complex counterpoint with them to produce variations in tempo and phrasing.
Clapping and stamping can also play an important role in producing the hypnotic effect necessary to certain ritual dances, uniting both spectators and dancers in a single world of sound and clearing their minds of everyday preoccupations. In the war and hunting dances of many tribes, sound is often used in an imitative way, with the dancers uttering war cries or animal sounds in order to further their transformation into warriors or the hunters’ prey.
Tutsi hunters performing the ceremonial lion dance. The headdress is symbolic of a lion's mane.George Holton/Photo Researchers
In many Indian and Asian classical dances, stamping also plays an important role in maintaining the beat. Music, too, is very important, and many dances are accompanied by specific songs or musical compositions. In the Middle Eastern raqṣ sharqī, the song or music establishes the mood or narrative situation of the dance, which the performer then interprets through movement. In the Indian bharata natyam the dancer is accompanied by a singer, who marks the movements with a tiny pair of cymbals while singing out instructions to the dancer. Bells tied around the dancer’s ankles also accompany the movements with their sound. Just as in Western theatre dance, the music accompanying these different dance forms is important both for its dramatic function—emphasizing moments of climax or different emotional states—and for its ability to increase the spectator’s pleasure in and awareness of the movement.