Body movement for musicians.(PEDAGOGY SATURDAY IX)

After inviting people to remove shoes and come into an open space, Julia Schnebly-Black began the session with an easy warm-up of swaying from one side to the other. Adding hand claps on the first beat, then all three, and, finally, all permutations of three, prepared the entrance of Mozart's Theme from the A Major Sonata, K. 331, played by Schnebly-Black, who then encouraged everyone to dance about the room, retaining the feeling of swaying and sometimes stepping the three eighths.

Next, George Lewis guided the participants through movements that loosened all the joints and established an attitude that the body could be expressive. Lewis's presentation culminated in a display of control and imagination: to demonstrate our capacity to move smoothly and suddenly change to an abrupt movement, he transformed everyone into slugs that reached forward slowly, then met an object and pulled back with a short quick movement. Next he added a large enveloping movement, covering the object and moving on. Lewis began to hum a simple melody to accompany the progression, and soon everyone carried the melody over the room. Musical slugs!

Schnebly-Black followed this with a circle game of ball passing. The object was to feel the difference in the energy used to pass the ball to the next person on half-notes, quarters, eighths, even whole notes. Control over space and energy was dictated by the time available. Passing on eighth notes caused general excitement, even confusion.

The next activity matched partners to tap each other's hands, moving around an imaginary square in the air between them. Following Schnebly-Black's commands they skipped touching on certain beats and eventually settled on a pattern of 1-2- -4. After improvising for the preparatory exercise, Schnebly-Black carried this ...