Musical Imagination
“There is no "special or specific" way to speak about music in dance.”
Musicians are often tasked with teaching dancers how to “speak about music”. When I was first starting to teach, dance programs wanted me to teach musical terms as a way to encourage dancers to speak about music. Most of the musical terms were new to these students, which gave them a feeling of being beginners at music. I noticed that this made them feel disconnected and estranged from their own individual understanding of music and dance. The students were not beginners at music, they had been working with music for many years and already had a great understanding of how music worked. Knowing how music and dance work together has little to do with understanding musical terminology.