Carnegie Hall

Ballet is a form of narrative dance performed on stage. The creator of the dance, called the choreographer, decides who is moving at any given time, which parts of the body move, how they move, and where they move in the space. After listening to and learning about “Knitting Nettles” from the Wild Swans ballet, your students can create their own ballet scenes inspired by an emotion and a story.

• Listen to “Knitting Nettles” from Wild Swans Suite. Explore the story of Wild Swans below. You can also watch a clip from the Australian Ballet’s performance of Wild Swans to see how the choreographer embodies the music and narrative in the dancers’ movements.
• As a class, brainstorm a list of emotions.
• Using Expressive Qualities in Dance from Explore Expressive Qualities in Music and Movement, review the different kinds of movements that can be used to express emotion in dance.
• As a class or in small groups, ask students to pick an emotion or emotions and create a short scene that expresses the emotion(s).
  • Create a character, a setting, and a situation that the character is in.
  • What is happening in the story?
  • What emotion is your character feeling?
• Ask students to create the story without words, using movement and expressive qualities.
• Create a simple musical accompaniment using the steps outlined in the Create Short Compositions activity.
• Use melodic and body percussion motifs as outlined in the My Own Motif activities from Explore Expressive Qualities in Music and Movement.
• Add sound effects to further inform the movements and stories.
• Have each group share their story with the class and see if other students can guess the emotion and the situation.

The Story of Wild Swans

Wild Swans, by composer Elena Kats-Chernin, is a ballet based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about a girl named Eliza with a wicked stepmother who drives Eliza from her home and turns Eliza’s 11 brothers into wild swans. To break the spell, Eliza must knit 11 coats out of stinging nettles, find the swans, and dress them in the coats—all while keeping silent as the months lengthen into years. In the “Knitting Nettles” movement, the music played by the percussion section evokes the sound of Eliza’s knitting needles as she learns how to knit from the good fairy.

Go Deeper: Pantomime Gestures

• Specific pantomime gestures are used in ballet to communicate meaning without words.
• Watch the Ballet Mime video resource from the Royal Ballet to learn some pantomime gestures used in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake.
• Using these gestures and some of their own, your students can work together to create narrative phrases.
• Have each group perform their narrative phrase for the class while the other students guess what the narrative is.

• Explain that the Link Up repertoire includes social dances from several different cultural traditions. Your students will have an opportunity to explore these dances below.
• Explain that social dances start with people dancing together at a party, community event, ritual, or ceremony.
  • When do you dance? Where and with whom?
  • Does your family dance at home? At parties or events?
  • Why do you think people dance?
• Brainstorm a list of social dances that the students already know and the kinds of music that go with these dances.
• Invite students to demonstrate the dances they know.
• To explore further, have a dance party where students bring in music and share different dances.

The Danzón

• Listen to Danzón No. 2 as a class, using the following concepts to guide your students’ listening.
• Explore the clave pattern below. Identify the pattern played at the beginning by the claves. Ask your students to clap along.
• Explore the different ways that the composer builds excitement and momentum.
  • Raise your hands when you hear changes in tempo.
  • How did the tempo change throughout the piece?
• Explore Márquez’s use of dynamics.
  • Márquez uses contrasting dynamics, achieved through dynamic markings and contrasting sections with solo instruments and full orchestra tutti sections.
  • How does the composer use dynamics to create excitement?
• Explore Márquez’s use of articulation.
  • What kind of articulation does the solo clarinet use at the beginning?
  • What kind of articulation do the strings use when they enter?
  • How do the strings’ accents increase the sense of excitement?

Learn More About the Danzón

• The danzón was born in the dance halls of Havana, Cuba, in the late 1800s, and soon migrated across the Gulf of Mexico to Veracruz, Mexico. Like many Latin American styles, the danzón melds African and European traditions. The characteristic rhythm is a clave, an African-based rhythm that combines a syncopated phrase with a non-syncopated phrase.
• The danzón was the first form of written music based on the clave rhythm. It is a slow partner dance, with choreographed pauses and intricate steps. While it all but disappeared in Cuba, it remains very much alive across Mexico, where there are about 200 danzón dance troupes and more than 20 orchestras.
• In his Danzón No. 2, Mexican composer Arturo Márquez takes this popular style and adapts it, transforming it from dance music to an orchestral work made for listening. Márquez has written nine danzónes altogether; Danzón No. 2 is the most popular, and is often called Mexico’s second national anthem. Márquez wrote the work at a time of political upheaval in Mexico, and has said that it is an expression of esperanza (“hope”) for the future of his country.

The Waltz

The waltz is a dance in triple meter. Your students will learn the basic waltz step and then try out additional movement challenges by incorporating different dance elements.

• Listen to The Blue Danube (complete). Establish a slow triple beat by clapping, with instruments, or by counting out loud.
  • Note that the emphasis is on beat one, which is heavier, while beats two and three are lighter.
• Ask your students to start by walking in place, bending their right leg on beat one, and walking normally on beats two and three (measure one). For measure two, start by bending the left leg. Continue repeating the pattern.
• Next, try rising up on the balls of the feet on beats two and three (down, up, up). Gradually speed up the beat until the movement has the feel of a waltz.
• Add direction: Starting with the slow tempo and gradually speeding up, ask your students to travel forward for one measure and backwards on the second measure, repeating the pattern.
• Add full rotation: Start by dancing for four bars facing forward. Turn 90 degrees to the right and dance four bars. Turn 90 degrees to the back and dance four bars. Turn 90 degrees to the right and dance four bars. Turn back to the front to complete the rotation with four bars facing forward.
  • The waltz is typically done while twirling. For an added challenge, try rotating with two bars in each direction, then only one bar in each direction.
  • For a final challenge, try turning full circle while doing the triplet step!
• Add partnering: Split the class into two lines facing each other. Ask the lines to move towards each other for one measure and away from each other for the next measure as they do the waltz step. Next, ask one line to move forward while the other line moves backward. This is the beginning of partnering in large groups. If your students are ready, they can try partnering in pairs of two!

The Samba

Samba is rooted in the musical and religious traditions of Afro-Brazilians in Bahia, Brazil, and sprung up in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro more than 100 years ago. It is a major cultural phenomenon in Brazil and a key musical and dance element during Carnival celebrations.

• Learn to sing “Cidade Maravilhosa,” a Carnival march that has become the official anthem of Rio de Janeiro.
• Using “Cidade Maravilhosa” Dance Instruction, your students can learn some basic samba steps to dance along to “Cidade Maravilhosa.”

Mhande

Mhande is a sacred rain-making dance from Zimbabwe that is performed at community ceremonies called mapira. This dance features a basic leg pattern called jeketera, followed by intricate footwork variations that show off the expertise of the dancer. The dancers wear magabvu (leg shakers) to accentuate the mhande meter as they move their feet in the 1-2, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3 rhythm. Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa’s piece “Mhande” is based on a mhande song. Using Mhande Rhythm and Dance Instruction, your students can learn the mhande rhythm and some basic mhande steps.

Yi Dance

Dai Wei’s piece “The Dancing Moonlight” is inspired by a form of traditional dance and music created by the Yi people, a large ethnic group in China. Yi dance is often performed during festivals, holidays, and events.

Hora

The hora is a popular, traditional Israeli circle dance performed at celebrations and events. It can be danced to a variety of folk melodies with a distinctive rhythm. Composer and recorder player Tali Rubinstein picked one of her favorites—“Shibolet Basadeh”—and arranged it to feature the recorder.

The circle dance Shibolet Basadeh was first choreographed by Leah Bergstein to the original song by Matityahu Shelem for the harvest celebration in an Israeli Kibbutz. Shibolet in Hebrew is “a stalk of grain,” and ba’sadeh means “in the field,” so the name of the song is “a stalk of grain in the field.” Your students can learn a version of this popular dance using Shibolet Basadeh Dance Instruction.

Go Deeper: Circle Dances

The circle is very important in many social and traditional dances, including the hora and in hip-hop cyphers. The circle focuses on democracy, all voices being heard, and seeing everyone equally. Explore circle dances from different cultures with your students and try some out as a class.