ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the relationship between sound and movement in social partner dance. The primary focus is on how music can intervene in the lead/follow relationship as a third point in the triangle, and how different ways of constructing and delivering music can affect changes in that tripartite relationship. To begin with, certain predictable elements of musical meter, tempo, and phrasing can help coordinate a partnership. Dancers can match their movements to the rhythms they hear or, alternatively, weave in and out of the musical texture. Dance musics that privilege lyrical melody guide movements in ways distinct from those that privilege rhythmic patterning, and different kinds of groove can affect a dancer’s style of movement in different ways. By suggesting smoothness or bounce, by tessellating lightness and weight, music can suggest full-body movement patterns. Music not only coordinates the dance partnership, however, but also has its own distinct relationships with both the leader and the follower. Live musicians can also interact with dancers much as leaders interact with followers within the partnership. In that relationship, those musicians may be sensitive and reactive or insensitive and dictatorial. Dancers can also disobey the music, to varying effects.
