Dalcroze Connections, Fall 2016

Vol. 1, No. 2

IN THIS ISSUE FEATURES HEART TO HEART: REACHING DEMENTIA PATIENTS THROUGH MUSIC AND MOVEMENT

Submission deadlines for each volume year are June 15, January 15.

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BY MELISSA TUCKER Dalcroze Connections accepts advertisements Sizes below. Contact the editor for pricing, placement availability, file preparation and delivery instructions.

DALCROZE EURHYTHMICS: A PATHWAY TO EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL EXPRESSION

Full Page: 7.5 x 10

BY PATRICK CERRIA

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INTEGRATION AND IMPROVISATION: A FELDENKRAIS PRACTITIONER AT LONGY

BY ADAM COLE 22

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REVIEW: MONICA DALE’S 5 MAGICAL STORIES IN MUSIC AND DANCE

Managing Editor Michael Joviala / editor@dalcrozeusa.org Associate Editor Aaron Butler Journal Design Emily Raively / mouseur2@yahoo.com [Cover Photo provided by Emma Shubin]

BY MARIA FRANZINI

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REVIEW: THOMAS PARENTE’S POSITIVE PIANIST PUTS PASSION INTO PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE

BY WILLIAM R. BAUER 28 DALCROZE IN THEORY/IN PRACTICE

BY WILLIAM R. BAUER

The Dalcroze Society of America (DSA) publishes Dalcroze Connections to inform, inspire and educate its members. Published twice per year (Fall and Spring), the magazine seeks articles, essays and letters by DSA members of varying lengths that pertain to the history, study, practice or teaching of the Method Jaques-Dalcroze and related disciplines. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis and may be edited for content and length. While timely submission of articles may allow for consultation with contributors, the editor reserves the right of final editorial decisions.

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DEPARTMENTS

Articles should be submitted electronically to Michael Joviala (editor@dalcrozeusa.org). Submissions to Dalcroze Connections should be no longer than 2500 words. Contributors are encouraged to submit related photographs and images. Scholarly authors are referred to the American Dalcroze Journal, the DSA’s refereed (peer reviewed) journal, published once per year. For more information, email editor@dalcrozeusa.org.

The views expressed in Dalcroze Connections do not necessarily represent those of the Dalcroze Society of America.

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FROM THE EDITOR

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

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MICHAEL JOVIALA

FROM THE EDITOR I can’t resist the cliché. You know the one: the buds appearing, the flowers opening, the renewal of life… It’s appropriate for so many reasons.

Let’s start with the the Conference taking place in Princeton, New Jersey from June 20th to June 24th. A glance at the list of presentations, workshops, demonstrations and performances (see www.dalcrozeusa.org for more information) actually suggest more of an abundant harvest than the green shoots. I am particularly excited about the pre-conference Symposium taking place June 20th – 21st. The theme – “Flow in Performance” – will be explored not only from the influential model created by Csikszentmihalyi, but also through such related topics as embodied cognition, gesture, and improvisation. A wide variety of fields will be represented, including neuroscience, music theory, musicology, education and motor control. The breadth and depth of the presentations bodes well for the reemergence of the American Dalcroze Journal in Winter 2017 as a peer-reviewed journal.

Then, from June 22nd to the 24th the full slate of Eurhythmics, Rhythmic Solfège, and Improvisation classes we offer will allow conference-goers to experience flow from many Dalcrozian vantage points.1 The schedule is rounded out with demonstrations in pedagogy, as well as performances and opportunities to connect with others both musically and socially. The event culminates with a special banquet during which we will honor master teacher Anne Farber.

In addition to sharing our work as Dalcroze educators and practitioners, the conference will give us an opportunity to share and discuss some of the work of the DSA itself, which includes last fall’s historic approval of the Dalcroze Certificate Teacher Training Manual: The T2 Program. The manual sets forth standards and practices for Dalcroze Certification and lays the foundation for a new system of accreditation that training programs in the United States have authorized the DSA to administrator on their behalf. Our new handbook, the result of hundreds of collective hours of discussion and consensus building by the Professional Development Committee (PDC), a DSA board-mandated committee made up of American Diplôme and License holders is the first of its kind in this country. This past spring the DSA membership approved it in an online vote (another first). There was no significant opposition posed by the approximately 33% of the membership that participated in this vote. All DSA members who attend the General Meeting taking place at our national conference will have further opportunities to ask questions about the manual and learn more about the accreditation process. Congratulations to the PDC on this major achievement!

In past conferences, the General Meeting has also served as the forum for voting on the slate of candidates for the new Board offered by the Nominating Task Force.

According to the new Bylaws adopted last summer, on a yearly basis on or around the Summer Solstice, the Board of Trustees now appoints its own members to staggered terms and elects its own Executive Committee, consisting of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary. In a nod to tradition, the Trustees will invite the membership to join them in voting to approve the current slate: William Bauer, President; Jeremy Dittus, Vice President; Anthony Molino, Treasurer; and Eunjin Lee, Secretary. An especially big salute goes to Kathryn Jones, who has served on the Board for several years, and as the DSA’s Treasurer for six years. Her service is all the more impressive considering the fact she has been simultaneously serving in the same capacity for the TriState Chapter.

Thank you Kathryn! Thank you, as well, to Jessica Schaeffer, for stepping into the role of Interim Secretary at a time when we sorely needed one!

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And of course here is the second issue of Dalcroze Connections. You have some interesting reading in store. The authors in this issue are each exploring special applications the Dalcroze work: Melissa Tucker inspires with an engaging account of her experiences with seniors; Adam Cole discovers connections between Dalcroze and Feldenkrais; and Patrick Cerria advocates for Dalcroze Education to meet the challenges of public schooling. Each of these writers provides further evidence that the revolutionary practice begun over 100 years ago by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze continues to evolve, grow, and make a beneficial impact on the world.

See you at the Conference!

Michael Joviala

NOTES 1. S cheduled conference presenters as of 5/30: Ruth Alperson, Kathy Arizmendi, William Bauer, Javier Álvarez Bermúdez, Ola Bilinski, Jane Buttars, Judy Bond, Patrick Cerria, April Centrone, Ange Chianese, Deanna Clement, Monica Dale, Mary Dobrea-Grindahl, Barbara Dutkiewicz, Sharon Dutton, Jeremy Dittus, Cassandra Eisenreich, Jesús E. Elizondo, Anne C. Farber, Elda Nelly Treviño Flores, Andrew Goldman, Kenneth K. Guilmartin, Sean Hartley, Judith Hendin, Fumiko Honda, Mimi Hsu, Eiko Ishizuka, Michael Joviala, Yoojin Kim, Yukiko Konishi, Cynthia Lilley, Marlene Maitland, Sean McCarther, Ashleé Miller, Luc Nijs, Selma Odom, Thomas Parente, Lisa Parker, Anetta Pasternak, Dawn Pratson, Joseph Reiser, Bassam Saba, Sue Saponara, Emma Shubin, David Stone, Leslie Upchurch, William Westney.

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5/18/2016

dalcroze flyer.jpg

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE RHYTHM-A-NING:

INNER GAMING AND FLOWING IN PERFORMANCE

Every other year, our National Conference gives us a singular opportunity to advance the Dalcroze Society of America’s three-fold mission: to build and strengthen the community of Dalcroze practitioners; to sustain, advance, and grow the practice of Dalcroze Education in the USA; and, to increase general awareness and appreciation of Dalcroze Education throughout the United States. And so, during five days this summer, we’re hosting a gathering of roughly a hundred attendees, including over fifty scholars, teachers, artists, theorists, and practitioners, offering classes, workshops, panel discussions, and presentations in a wide variety of formats. From June 20 to June 24, Westminster Choir College, Rider University’s Princeton, New Jersey campus, will be abuzz with the active participation of our membership and guests, fully engaged in an exploration of Flow in Performance.

Simply by attending such a critical event in the life of our practice, each of us helps to advance this shared project. I hope to see you there.

But it’s not just about making a contribution, as valuable as that is. In its innovative design and implementation, we’ve sought to make this collegial gathering especially useful and especially relevant to you, too. If you need to recharge your professional batteries, if you need to renew your love for teaching and learning, or if you need to reignite your passion for music, movement, improvisation, exploration—and all things Dalcroze—then you need to be here with us!

The conference theme, Flow in Performance: Theories/Practices, has sparked a lot of interest. What’s it all about? The word flow conjures up many different images and ideas. Used in reference to psychological states, it has become associated with the work of Michael Csikszentmihalyi, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. While it’s possible to pronounce his Hungarian name by saying the words “chick sent me higher” with a Brooklyn accent, I’ll refer to him as “MC Flow.” Over twenty-five years ago, his groundbreaking research into positive psychology gained widespread recognition with the publication of his research findings in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990).1 His model of flow as a state of mind—or, really, of being—has been so influential, several people have asked if that’s what the conference is about.

And certainly it will figure prominently.

But we’re flinging the doors wide open and welcoming a wide variety of interpretations of flow, of which there are several. Rudolf von Laban’s Effort-Action Theory,2 for example, a key element of Laban Movement Analysis, will also come into play, specifically in reference to the physical enactment of flow and the kinesthetic inner modeling it requires. To help us understand the role of muscular tension in facilitating or impeding movement, Laban contrasted “free” flow with the seemingly paradoxical “bound” flow.

In light of its critical role in mind-body integration, flow can even take on a metaphysical aspect. With regard to the martial arts, for example, I’m intrigued by some of the observations actor Bruce Lee made about the kung fu fighter’s inner attitude. His advice to “be like water”3 has been taken up by time management guru David Allen of Getting Things Done renown. These and other enigmatic remarks have as their source the deep wellspring of Eastern thought on flow, such as the writings of early zen master Eihei Dogen.4

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BILL BAUER

In the Western philosophical tradition we can find references to flow in the writings of Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BCE), whose notion of panta rhei [πάντα ῥεῖ], or “everything flows,” reveals the relationship flow has to time, change, and rhythm. The diversity of these and related sources of flow demonstrates that human beings have been fascinated with it in its many dimensions, but especially as it relates to intuition, perception, thinking, feeling, will, action, and performance, across a wide range of time periods and cultures. In relation to the conference theme, our specific purpose is really to further the teaching and learning of music, dance, mime, acting, storytelling, and other performing arts, as well as other areas, such as sports and martial arts, areas where flow is critical to good performance, by shedding light on the hidden assumptions that lie behind—and the unspoken principles that engender—flow, in all of its diverse manifestations.

All of which figures in what we do as Dalcroze educators, and, perhaps even more so in how we do it. I think we would all agree that to fully experience eurhythmics is to flow. But for the fact that some of the musical qualities we encounter and express in movement entail a disruption of flow in the conventional sense—imagine performing a series of tightly wound staccato gestures—we might even consider flow and rhythm virtually synonymous. From the standpoint of process, the word flow brings to mind the dynamic, student-oriented exploratory realm Dalcroze students and teachers enter when they are learning in and through music. To me it also suggests the mindbody (re)integrating benefits of Dalcroze’s pedagogical methods, which have the capacity to stimulate students’ intuitive control over their actions before they are consciously aware of the factors to which they are reacting. As Jaques-Dalcroze himself identified it, a-rhythmy, the opposite of eu-rhythmy, entails a choppy stuttering mind-body rhythm, an inner turbulence resulting from a dis-integrated mind-body.

Given the central role improvisation plays in our interactions with one another, and the way it leverages our innate capacity for emergent design, flow can take on a near spiritual aspect with us, at times.

By way of illustration, let’s take the clever title of Thelonious Sphere Monk’s wryly witty composition “Rhythm-A-Ning.” I believe this neologism solves an intriguing problem we Dalcrozians have with regard to flow. Have you ever tried to identify what we do and what happens in a eurhythmics class using a single verb? “I’m ‘eurhythmicking!’” said no-one ever in describing his or her actions in a Dalcroze class (although its closeness to the word “eureka” lends it a certain charm). This problem is related to one Christopher Small poses in his book Musicking.5 The entire book elaborates on the premise that, essentially, the phenomenon we refer to as music does not exist as a thing, per se, in the same way something in the physical realm exists as a thing—that is, as a static, typically solid, object. Of course, using music notation or even audio recording, you can catch the flow of events we experience as music midflight and pin it down, as one might a butterfly, reducing it to specimen of sorts. Musicologists do so all the time when they transcribe an improviser’s fleeting solo. But, while we also use the term music to refer to a written or printed page of sheet music—as in, “did you bring the ‘music’?,” we actually encounter music in its living, vital form as vibrations emanating from a voice or instrument in real time, the resulting sounds and meanings emerging as a dynamic human interactive process that leaves ephemeral traces on our senses and souls, much the way a scent lingers, evoking past lives. Although we routinely, and carelessly, refer to it with the noun music, according to Small, in order to honor its very intangibility, we should really refer to the experience as ‘musicking’.

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I see his point. A metaphor for human mortality, the impression of sounds dying away almost as soon as they are born resonates with a provocative idea that the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus framed with the famous statement: “You can’t step into the same river twice.” Influenced by zen philosopher Eihei Dogen’s masterpiece Sho ¯bo ¯genzo ¯, British expatriot philosopher Alan Watts put forward a similar thought centuries later: namely that, all things being ever in flux, we may understand everything—or rather, each thing—not so much as a noun but rather as a verb. According to this line of thinking, there are neither such things as a river, nor a human, nor a piece of music—a res facta—but rather we’re experiencing a “rivering,” a “humaning,” a “musiciking.” Are you the same person you were last year, or last month, or last week, or yesterday, or an hour ago, or even a minute ago? Echoing this sentiment, Bill Evans once said something to the effect that jazz is not a what, but a how. To experience the transformative potential of a Dalcroze class is to realize, indeed, to actualize the volatility of being human, or rather, of human becoming. These ways of relating to the world speak to the dynamic character of time, of moving through time, and, of flow.

Each of these tangential lines of thinking therefore touches upon the guiding theme of our conference. Circling back to our zen-like jazz composer Monk, if rhythm is the quintessential process, the mother-of-all-processes, then what does it mean to identify our experience of this process with a noun, as if it were a stable thing, or a steady state? Insofar as we embody flow when we are being rhythmic or enacting rhythm, or…rhythm-a-ning, as Monk might quip, we are ever emerging anew from that dynamic process. The architectonic sources of music’s predictability and structure— the repetition, restatement, reiteration, and reinforcement of musical ideas—may at times lull us into the impression that there’s some kind of “there” there, when in fact all that’s left of our experience of this elusive phenomenon is its resonance playing across our bodies, minds, and souls. Set in vibration, we become the instrument.

Given that some of these vibrations continue to echo in our being years after we had them, and I’m thinking specifically of past Dalcroze National Conferences I’ve attended, you can see how our conference on flow might engender such ruminations.

All well and good in theory; but how might these ideas play out in practice? Let’s start with an ordinary tennis ball, fresh out of the tube, ripe with springy energy.

In fact, take one from the gym bag over there in the middle of the room and hold it in your hand.

Go ahead, bounce it on the floor (you know you want to). Who among us hasn’t done this sometime in a eurhythmics lesson?

Now, as the ball turns earthward from the apex of its bounce, reach out and arrest its descent. In the time it has taken to apprehend this object in motion, you’ve marked one complete cycle.

Perform this action several times—bounce, catch, and bounce it and catch it, etcetera, always stopping its movement at the same height—and you generate a steady regular pulse.

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In fact, you’ve launched a simple oscillating system, a meter of two beats per measure resulting from the ball’s rising and falling. Down and up, and down and up…

So far this is Dalcroze 101. We’re embodying rhythm now, activating it in the timespace-energy continuum. And as we all know, when you change the force you’re putting into each bounce, the oscillator changes size and frequency, or tempo.

What better way to discover music’s essentially fluid, dynamic character? Concrete experience made liquid.

Now bear with me a minute and consider the physics of the modern tennis ball. To leverage the potential energy inherent in its materials and structure, the particular curve that gives this deceptively simple object its definitive design just happens to function as the intersection of two offset elliptic cylinders, or a hypar (that is, as the intersection of a sphere and hyperbolic paraboloid. Go figure!

Actually, I mention this fact not because I have any real grasp of what it means mathematically. Nor would this news have helped my approach shot back when I was playing the game. Still, I wanted to take a moment to marvel over the ways some highly sophisticated abstract thinking went into the making of this unassuming article from everyday life. Kind of the way a well-wrought eurhythmics class conceals the deep, life-long preparation that went into its innocent revelations of music’s subtle complexities. How many common items, plucked from the flow of events like a ball caught midflight, harbor such intriguing mysteries, I wonder. But perhaps I digress…

Let’s go back to the compact yellow orb itself. Turn it a particular way and notice what happens to the seam that divides it into two regions. Does this point of view remind you of the sinusoidal line that separates “yin” from “yang” in the Chinese Taijitu symbol? Emile Jaques-Dalcroze adopted this very symbol as the “logo” for his practice. What did it suggest to him? The “good flow” eurhythmics promotes? Or something more elusive about the nature of rhythm as it relates to life? For example, the way the symbol itself effectively maps out the earth’s seasonal oscillations in relation to the sun?

One of the first books to broach the topic of flow specifically with regard to human performance was W. Timothy Gallwey’s fascinating little book The Inner Game of Tennis.6 Here’s what he wrote: “The [tennis] player seems to be immersed in a flow of action which requires his energy, yet results in greater power and accuracy.”7 The book made such an impression on me when I first read it in 1987, I even took up the “outer” game of tennis, the better to probe Gallwey’s treatise on getting out of one’s own way, and to get a handle on its deeper meanings. The book’s Zen-and-the-Artof-Archery-like wisdom appealed to my love of Eastern metaphysics and mysticism.

And in line with its not-so-subtle Taoist overtones, its emphasis on “doing by not doing” by disarming the critical, verbally constructed consciousness so the intuitive self can guide the body subliminally to its proper action, each chapter begins with a photograph of a tennis ball, the seam-line playfully hinting at the fluid yin-yang boundary between dark and light, work and play, theory and practice, mind and body, and other mutually dependent opposites we rely on to give rise to conscious thought and verbal meaning. Working with bassist Barry Green, Gallwey later applied the ideas he exposed in The Inner Game of Tennis (1974) to music.8

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I’m glad to have a chance to bounce these ideas around with you in anticipation of the Symposium that will take place on Monday and Tuesday, June 20 and 21, where we will explore flow from the many different points of view that scholars exploring human performance are opening up. Coming from as near as Princeton and as far afield as the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, Poland, theorists and practitioners working in as wide a range of fields will share their recent work.

The roundtable format will enable in-depth discussion of such areas as: • Csikszentmihalyi’s Model of Flow Explored, Expanded, and Extended • Flow in Improvisation: Embodied Cognition in Cross-Cultural Contexts • Shared Flow: Somatic and Holistic Experiences • Temporal Processes in Musical Performance: Notated Works/Movement Realizations.

While the Symposium includes some experiential sessions for participants, interspersed among a preponderance of panel discussions and scholarly presentations, as you would expect, the Conference on Wednesday – Friday June 22 – 24 features hands on practical sessions on various and sundry facets of Dalcroze Education.

Participants will experience Dalcroze eurhythmics, improvisation, solfège, and pedagogical methods, and a generous sampling of sessions devoted to special applications of Dalcroze’s innovative philosophy and practice. Running beneath the remarkable diversity of these offerings, the conference theme, Flow in Performance, courses like an underground spring, bringing vital energy to the connections we will make or renew, with our beloved practice, with our passion for music, movement, improvisation, and discovery, and with one another. I look forward to rhythm-a-ning with you there.

PS The reference to the Monk tune is also meant to foreshadow the jam session we’re planning for Thursday night, June 23 during the banquet. All improvisers will be welcome to bring their “axes” and “tell their little story” (as Lester Young liked to say). We’ll make “charts” of the tunes on the play list available via the DSA website, so stay tuned—literally.

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ENDNOTES 1. I n the interviews MC Flow conducted for his research on happiness, his informants used the term flow as a metaphor for being swept along by a current, to describe their peak experiences. A body of scholarship has since grown around his theory, giving us way of theorizing the relationship between a performer’s inward experience of his or her actions and the actions’ outward manifestations, or that between a performer’s process and the results it produces.

2. Laban also used the term to draw attention to aspects of the performer’s inner experience and process—specifically the sensations of muscular release or resistance the performer feels while moving. His theory implicates this fundamental muscular dimension of movement in the performer’s experience of other features such as time (sustained or sudden) and weight (strong or gentle).

3. S ee episode 1.1 of the TV show Longstreet, entitled “Way of Intercepting Fist” (1971; see John Little, ed., Bruce Lee: Artist of Life Tuttle, 2001).

4. S ee Eihei Dogen (19 January 1200 – 22 September 1253) “Mountains and Waters Sutra,” or “Sansuikyo¯” [山水經] from Sho¯ bo¯ genzo¯ [正法眼蔵], Treasury of the True Dharma Eye; see also writings attributed to Lao Tzu [老子](6th century BCE, or possibly 5th or 4th century BCE), such as the idea of wei wu wei [爲無爲]: the “action without action” or “effortless action” discussed in Tao Te Ching (Dàodéji¯ng) [道德經], The Book of The Way and its Virtue.

5. M usicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998).

6. T he Inner Game of Tennis (NY: Random House, 1974). When the publisher reissued it in 1997 it added the subtitle: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance. An oblique reference to MC Flow’s Psychology of Optimal Experience?

7. G allwey, 1974, pg. 7.

8. A key aspect of Gallwey’s model of flow, however, was challenge. Writing of the “riddle of the meaning of competition,” he deepens his approach: “The real point for the surfer is to get into the flow of the wave and perhaps to achieve oneness with it” (Gallwey, 1974, pg. 9). Later he adds: The surfer does want to ride the wave to the beach, yet he waits in the ocean for the biggest wave to come along that he thinks he can handle [my emphasis].

If he just wanted to be “in the flow,” he could do that on a medium-size wave.

Why does the surfer wait for the big wave? The answer was simple, and it unraveled the confusion that surrounds the true nature of competition. The surfer waits for the big wave because he values the challenge it presents. He values the obstacles the wave puts between him and his goal of riding the wave to the beach. Why? Because it is those very obstacles, the size and churning power of the wave, which draw from the surfer his greatest effort. It is only against the big waves that he is required to use all his skill, all his courage, and concentration to overcome; only then can he realize the true limit of his capacities. At that point he often attains his peak. In other words, the more challenging the obstacle he faces, the greater the opportunity for the surfer to discover and extend his true potential. The potential may have always been within him, but until it is manifested in action, it remains a secret hidden from himself. The obstacles are a very necessary ingredient to this process of self-discovery (Ibid.).

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BY MELISSA TUCKER

[PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER PHOTOGRAPHY]

HEART TO HEART: REACHING DEMENTIA

PATIENTS THROUGH MUSIC AND MOVEMENT

years, I have worked with students of all ages and varying levels of experience, mostly in music schools, for the purpose of music education. This is the first time I have brought my skills as a Dalcroze teacher to a setting which, in many ways, is a music therapy setting. I have developed a song and rhythmbased program which has been very well received. Currently, I am working in two different locations: Aviv Centers for Living in Peabody, Massachusetts and Avita, an assisted living, memory care facility in Newburyport, MA.

Can you recall a time when hearing a familiar song touched your heart so immediately, and so completely, that before the wall of your defenses could realize what’s happening, you felt a firm tug in your heart and your eyes began to well with tears?

This is my experience every time I hear Harry Belafonte’s version of the song “Scarlet Ribbons”, A song about a child’s prayer for, and a father’s longing to provide, the lovely scarlet ribbons. This song transports me to my childhood home in Maine. I hear and see my father singing this very song while gently playing his acoustic guitar. He plays and sings with a sincerity and musical honesty that is beyond words. This visceral image is entwined with my own deep connection to music, then and now, a feeling of loving and being loved, a sense that all I’ve ever needed is right here, alive in this musical moment.

Why am I drawn to this work? There are two reasons: one personal, one professional. The professional reason is that over the last five years or so, I have been very inspired by Dalcroze master teacher Lisa Parker’s work with senior citizens. I was touched by attending her classes and demonstrations which are creative, artfully constructed, and endlessly inventive.

She offers weekly classes for seniors that are joyful and social. They offer a unique opportunity for seniors to connect their bodies, minds, hearts, and souls through music. I owe a great deal to Lisa and have incorporated many of her ideas into my work, as well as developed my own.

About 18 months ago, I was offered an opportunity to bring music and movement to patients with dementia.

Dementia is a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.

There is no known cure for dementia. It is progressive and fatal.

Dementia is profoundly challenging for those diagnosed with the disorder as well as their family and loved ones. Yet, I have found individuals living with this disorder are remarkably responsive to rhythm and music, especially songs that they know and love. It is amazing how folks who may not remember their own son or daughter’s name can remember the lyrics to a song from their past that is still alive for them. Music has the power to unlock memories that are otherwise inaccessible, to connect those who may feel disconnected, and to promote a sense of well-being, comfort, and joyful self-expression.

The personal reason I am drawn to this work is my experience with my father in his last years. Throughout my life, the heart of our relationship was always music and it became even more so toward the end of his days. All of my visits involved playing for him on the piano and encouraging him to sing along with me. His arthritic hands made playing the guitar impossible.

When even his singing voice had failed him, he would wheel his wheelchair over to the piano and listen intently. One time, unexpectedly, a song brought him to tears; it had reminded him of how he had fallen in love with my mother. He missed her terribly since her passing. When my Dad’s own time came, I managed to arrive by his hospital bedside to hold his hand and sing a few of his favorite songs one last time. Although he was heavily sedated, I knew somehow he heard me and appreciated this parting musical gesture.

Believing that the Dalcroze approach is innately adaptable and uniquely effective in a wide variety of applications and settings, I approached my new music and movement population with courage and conviction. I was determined to find a way to reach them. As a Dalcroze teacher for over 25

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In my groups at Aviv and Avita, I have found numerous new “relatives” who have claimed me as much as I have claimed them. One woman asked, “Are you my niece? Do you belong to me?” “I belong to all of you,” I answered without hesitation.

It is deeply rewarding to connect with individuals at the point in their lives when a kind word, a smile, and a song, can mean the world to them.

When I first started my sessions at Aviv, there was a woman who would perk up every time I went over to the piano. Her interest evolved over several months.

One day as I went to play, she said in a lively voice, “I could play a song. Call out a tune and I can play it.” “So you like to play the piano, too?“ I asked.

“Yeah, yeah, call out a tune,” she said inviting anyone in the group to respond. At this point, she started to rise from her seat. I said, “How about if you play at the end of the session?” Remembering our exchange, when the session ended I invited her to the piano. Without hesitation, she walked over and placed her hands on the keyboard. At first, the sounds were unintelligible, but gradually a shape and form begin to emerge. The activities director looked at me in awe saying, “She has never done this before. We never knew she could play the piano.” It was a magical moment.

a comforter and soothing elixir a key to unlocking memories an energizer a means for connection a mode of self- expression

Another magical moment involved a woman who was often rather gruff and difficult to engage. On a morning when she was particularly irritable and decided to sit outside the circle of participants, I took note of her mood and gave her space.

The last activity was a singing and drumming activity focused around Harry Belafonte’s recording of “Jamaican Farewell”. To my surprise, assisted by her walker, she began to slowly move toward us in order to join the group. To my sheer amazement, she traveled right into the middle of the circle and began to dance with her walker. She seemed to be totally transformed by the music. The lively rhythms of Harry Belafonte’s Calypso music literally moved her.

a source of joy

Let me speak candidly and say right up front that working with individuals with dementia is a bitter-sweet journey. You will see residents come alive through the joy of music and movement, but you will also witness their inevitable decline.

• What could they do with preparation and a bit of effort?

One gentleman, who was always so talkative and enthusiastic, withdrew more and more as his dementia progressed. Despite his loss in ability, his eyes still light up, and his voice joins in, whenever we sing “Edelweiss” or another of his favorite songs.

As dementia increasingly erodes the fabric of their lives as they once knew them, music emerges as a lifeline to essential qualities. Music in these settings can be:

• How can they be more involved creatively?

a vehicle for love In the sessions I am currently leading, the participants are seated as many are in wheelchairs or have limited mobility. As I plan my music and movement sessions with the seniors with dementia, I ask myself the following questions: • What songs do they know and love? (Choosing songs that you enjoy enables you to be connected and find joy in the musical material you share with participants.)

• What can they do easily?

• How can they be more engaged physically?

• How can they be encouraged to be more interactive with me and with each other?

• What song or activity did they particularly respond to in the last session? Should we revisit or expand this activity?

In my music and movement work with dementia patients, I have developed a song-based program with the following general sequence:

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Greetings around the Circle

MUSIC & MOVEMENT PROGRAM SEQUENCE

Go around the circle and shake hands with each person in turn, making eye contact, welcoming them by name, saying a few words meant just for them, connecting heart to heart. This is a lovely element I learned from Lisa Parker.

Prelude Greetings around the circle Warm up Opening Activity

Warm Up

Name that Tune/Sing-a-long

Raise your arms to the sky and shake your hands up at the top.

Lower your arms and shake your hands. Repeat.

Drumming/Rhythmic Activity Ritual Closing Activity

Take a deep breath in and raise your arms and stretch. As you lower your arms, make an ahh sound with your voice. Repeat.

Try an ooo sound.

Goodbyes

“Rumble” your feet (quickly tap your feet on the floor, alternating feet).

Gently hold one of your hands with your other hand and swing your arms side to side.

Allow one swing to make a big circle over your head and back down. Repeat a few times.

Loch Lomond- Traditional song w/ Movements By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes --- swing arms side to side (as above) Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond --- big arm circle Where me and my true love were ever wont to be --- swing arms side to side On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond --- big arm circle Oh you’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low road --- swing arms forward and back

A SAMPLE MUSIC & MOVEMENT SESSION FOR SENIORS WITH DEMENTIA:

And I’ll be in Scotland before you --- Raise arms up and down

Prelude

But me and my true love will never meet again --- swing arms forward and back

I play a variety of piano pieces as residents enter the room to draw them in and create a welcoming atmosphere. This is especially important for the Avita residents, whose session is in the late afternoon, as it helps with “sundowning,” a term to describe the agitated or confused behaviors that often arise toward nightfall. [I do not include this for my morning session at Aviv, where participants are already seated and finishing a previous activity when I arrive.]

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond --- big arm circle Opening Activity March (while seated) -- 8 counts Tap your thighs -- 8 counts Clap your hands -- 8 counts Hold (Make a shape) -- 8 counts

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Drumming Activities 1. Tempo Follow to “I’ve Got Rhythm” on piano (tune and improvisation on the melody/harmonies) Add stop and start with the music.

2. Teach the following rhythm patterns on the drum.

Make a large circular gesture for the whole notes: a. A whole-note, followed by four quarters b. Eight 8th-notes, followed by a whole-note 3. If the group is feeling comfortable with the patterns, divide into two groups. Each group plays one of the patterns. [This can work if you have an activities assistant to lead one of the groups.]

4. Improvisation Variation: The group plays one pattern twice (or both of the patterns consecutively) then take turns having trios or quartets improvising their own patterns. Alternate between the small group improvisations and performing the ensemble pattern.

At first do the entire sequence with the group, then improvise music at the piano to accompany them. You will likely need to call out the elements. See if they can remember the sequence on their own.

5. Sing the traditional song, Polly Wolly Doodle, and see if they can find pattern B in the song (“Polly Wolly Doodle all the day”). If not, draw their attention to it.

Variations: - Instead of holding on the last 8 counts, have them move anyway they would like (while seated)

6. Tap the beat and play the rhythm of the words (“Polly Wolly Doodle all the day”) while singing.

Tap and sing the rhythm of the words as a call and response on “fare thee well”.

- Try 4 counts for each element (or even 2 or 1, depending on the ability of your group) -Try different tempi.

-Try different dynamics Name that Tune/Sing-A-Long Play a few bars of a song's melody on the piano and have them call out the title if they recognize the tune. Then sing the song as a group, with piano accompaniment. (Often we will add simple rhythmic movement(s) appropriate for each song, such as swaying or clapping the beat. We will usually sing 4 or 5 songs, depending on how things are going.)

Today’s theme is Musicals---Once they’ve recognized the tune and arrived at the title, ask if anyone knows what musical the song is from.

1. Oh, What a Beautiful Morning (from Oklahoma (encourage a gentle sway, side to side, while singing) 2. Getting to Know You (from The King and I) 3. Do-Re-Mi (Do a Deer, from the Sound of Music) Encourage them to clap the beat while singing.

4. Edelweiss (from the Sound of Music)

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(many she composed herself) she is a firm believer in sharing the rich repertoire of traditional songs with her students, especially children. When you give the gift of a song, you are giving a living gift. For individuals with dementia, this living gift has the potential to unlock, and even outlast, one’s recollection of one’s life story. If songs are what we are left with when all other memories fade, let’s honor and value the richness of songs and share the American Songbook with students of all ages.

Ritual Closing Activity “Kick ball” – Residents love this activity. We use a very large, colorful beach ball which participants kick back and forth to each other. This is another gift from Lisa Parker who likes to do this activity without music. I have found my groups really respond to a recording of early Beatles music: Love me do, From me to you, She loves you, I want to hold your hand.

I’ve experimented with other recorded music for this activity, samba, jazz etc., but nothing tops the Beatles.

How curious, poignant, and profound that when all is taken from us: our professions, our routines, our sense of ourselves, perhaps even knowledge of our own names, we still possess our deep capacity to respond to music: melody, rhythm, harmony, song. Why is this? Perhaps it is because our very being is music. Music is at the heart of our spirit and the essence of our soul. Music soothed and excited us as children and can accompany us, like a faithful friend, throughout our entire lives. It is perhaps ironic that those who have lost so many memories of their life and identity have, unknowingly, gifted me with the revival and expansion of my own life and love of music and songs.

Goodbyes – If time permits, I will take a short trip around the circle, as we began, shaking hands with each person in turn, thanking them and saying goodbye.

For those living with dementia, songs play an essential role in their lives. Through this work, I am just now realizing what Anne Farber, master Dalcroze teacher and longtime mentor of mine, has known all along: the power and importance of songs. For years, Anne has been a champion of the American Songbook. In addition to teaching newly composed songs

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Favorite Songs to Sing

AUTHOR’S BIO

Beer Barrel Polka

Melissa Tucker teaches eurhythmics and improvisation at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA. An Oberlin graduate, Ms Tucker earned her Dalcroze Certificate and License at Longy with Lisa Parker and Anne Farber. She has taught Dalcroze workshops and classes for students of all ages throughout New England including: The Boston Symphony Outreach program, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Emmanuel Church, Community MusicWorks in Providence,Rhode Island and The University of Connecticut.

Bye Bye Blackbird By the Light of the Silvery Moon Carolina in the Morning Catch a Falling Star Do a Deer Down by the Riverside Edelweiss Getting to Know You High Hopes

RESOURCES

If I had a Hammer

Teepa Snow Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease expert who trains and helps agencies, facilities, and families.

Check out her website; she is amazing.

Teepasnow.com

I’m Singin’ in the Rain In the Good Old Summertime Jamaican Farewell Loch Lomond

Education and Care Alzheimer Foundation of America Good general article on the power of music to reach Alzheimer patients, with a How-to of Music Therapy section. http://www.alzfdn.org/EducationandCare/musictherapy.html

Moon River My Favorite Things My Wild Irish Rose Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory A poignant documentary which follows social worker Dan Cohen who, despite the barriers of a broken healthcare system, reaches isolated and withdrawn patients through the power of music. A must see. www.aliveinside.us

Sentimental Journey Shine on Harvest Moon Side by Side Swing Low, Sweet Chariot This Land is Your Land

Glen Campbell: I’ll be Me 2014 Documentary on legendary singer Glen Campbell’s journey with Alzheimer’s disease. A very insightful and moving film.

Glencampbellmovie.com

This Little Light of Mine When the Saints Go Marching In When You’re Smiling

Looks Like Laury, Sounds Like Laury – This powerful PBS Documentary follows Laury, a 45 year old actress and mother, who faces the debilitating impact of fronto-temporal dementia (early onset dementia). http://www.pbs.org/video/2365436315/

You are my Sunshine Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Rounds Frere Jacque

Still Alice A touching and informative novel about a high-achieving female professor who struggles with early onset Alzheimer’s disease written by American Neuroscientist and author, Lisa Genova (2014). This book has been made into a feature film.

Lisagenova.com

Row, Row, Row Your Boat Oh, How Lovely is the Evening Music Alone Shall Live

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BY PATRICK CERRIA

DALCROZE EURHYTHMICS:

A PATHWAY TO EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL EXPRESSION In the last ten years, many educators have perceived drastic changes in the ways students learn. In addition, students are being classified with various learning disabilities in more ways than ever before. In order to accommodate these expanding and changing populations, districts have improved and/ or added many additional programs and services. Music is capable of reaching many of these populations in ways others cannot, and should be an essential part of these programs.

Dalcroze Eurhythmics is a holistic method that connects mind and body, an approach perfect to meet the challenges of today’s classroom. It should be included in the training of all music teachers.

they dropped the beanbag, or lost the beat, they couldn’t get mad. They had to work together to figure out the problem, then simply start again. This eventually grew into the whole class forming a circle and trying to get a single beanbag around in time. When they got good I added stops, starts, and changes in direction—quick reaction elements. They loved it. One class was laughing so hard, a school security guard ran in thinking there was nonsense going on. A student who’d had trouble with attendance as well as social issues handed me a note after the first month of school. It read: “I love this class. I love everything we do in this class…I don’t like we only have this class two days a week.”

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A simple game allowed a roomful of tough, at-risk inner city kids to begin to discover who they were. They did this through movement, expression, and listening. They woke up socially and emotionally—and did so through music. I was eventually able to start a strings program as well as a vibrant music history curriculum. Students with social issues began to express themselves more verbally. The power of eurhythmics was evident throughout.

I was awarded the Dalcroze Certificate in 2007 by the late Robert Abramson at The Juilliard School Dalcroze Institute and have spent the past nine years using my training in a number of unique situations. I began teaching in an urban school in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. I moved to an inner-city public school in Newark, New Jersey and then to a county district specializing in alternative and special education. I taught in four of the district schools: one for children on the autistic spectrum, one for students with physical disabilities, an alternative middle/high school for students with behavioral classifications, and an alternative high school for at-risk inner-city students. I was shocked (and continue to be) at the dramatic affects Eurhythmics based exercises had within these varied populations.

Eurhythmics also helped me with classes of autistic students as well as physically disabled and behaviorally challenged students. I played a game with my autistic students that involved them standing in assigned colored circles I’d placed on the floor, and moving rhythmically to my piano playing. The exercise began with small movements: shoulders, hands, head.

These grew to larger, gross motor movements: knee bends, hips.

The circles on the floor provided personal space, and allowed for recognition of body awareness as well as an easy way to identify their personal movements. This created a gradual understanding of the group dynamic, which is essential to their growth as students. Eventually I gave the students rhythm sticks. The sticks led to drums which led to a healthy classroom with music and participation. The physical movement led to a sense of self realization. Some students began doing things in music they were not doing in occupational, physical, or speech therapies. The physical component of eurhythmics allowed the discovery of temperament and the role it plays with emotions, social skills, and expression. This enabled me to bring in basic solfège as well as improvisational exercises.

The greatest accomplishment was an actual string ensemble with my physically disabled students. This culminated in a dual concert between my students and those from a local middle school's eighth grade orchestra.

Consider a class of culturally and ethnically diverse high school students in an alternative setting. Many of the students are at risk of dropping out, and are past the typical high school graduation age of seventeen, the age range of the students being fourteen to twenty. Many have Individualized Education Plans (IEP’s) and/or Behavioral Modification Plans (BMP’s). Some come from troubled homes, live in poverty, or have attendance problems. Many don’t know who they are or where they fit into society at large. The classroom is a microcosm of their world, and it is what I faced on my first day. How did I handle it? I began by handing each student a small beanbag and asking them to pass it from hand to hand while counting out loud to four. Some looked at me like I was nuts. Others cursed me out while saying how “easy” and “stupid” the exercise was. “If it’s so easy, then you should be able to do it,” I answered with a smile. Next, I asked them to pass in time with a beat I played on a small drum set I’d brought in. (They were shocked at my ability to lay down a hip hop groove.) Eventually the game became passing in time between two people. They weren’t allowed to speak, but had to communicate through movement and facial expression. If

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aesthetically. McGill University in Canada now has an entire Music Cognition department. In addition, biomusicology is an emerging field of study which is beginning to ask if music is essential to us as humans.

Emile Jaques-Dalcroze could have been speaking of the modern day public school situation when he wrote in the opening of Rhythm, Music, and Education:

Training music teachers in Dalcroze Education would enable music educators to be better used within our public schools.

Eurhythmics tunes into the power and ability of our physiological system as well as our emotions and self expression. It connects mind and body and allows for not just musical, but also emotional, physical, and social awakening.

“In my judgement, all our efforts should be directed to training our children to become conscious of their personalities, to develop their temperaments, and to liberate their particular rhythms of individual life from every trammeling influence...”(Dalcroze, 1921, p. xii) His words speak to the need for students to express themselves and recognize who they are. Education is a journey of self discovery, and within the expanding populations of our public schools, eurhythmics can help accomplish this. Music, after all, is not just processed in our ears, but also visually, emotionally, physically, and neurologically. In 2011, the journal Science Daily reported a Finnish study showing how music stimulates sections of the brain that control emotion and creativity as well as sections responsible for motor movements1. Dalcroze recognized this in 1921, and created a method to teach music using the whole body:

This is vital in the education of any child, not only those with a classification such as autistic, learning disabled or ADHD. Jaques-Dalcroze believed all musical ideas originate in the body. In essence he believed music to be a physiological art form. I have seen what eurhythmics classes can do and accomplish. Having Dalcroze-trained music educators in our schools will assist in the overall education of our children as we move further into the twenty-first century.

AUTHOR'S BIO

“…eurhythmics is capable of awakening the dormant or moribund temperament, or provoking in the organism the conflicts necessary for establishing the control and balance of resistances, and of bringing consciousness, by means of harmonization of cerebral and motor centers, and canalization of nervous forces [i.e. channeling of nervous impulses].”

(Dalcroze, 1921, p. 147).

Patrick Cerria is a New Jersey-based Dalcroze teacher who’s had a life in music. He began playing the drums at age 6 and has never stopped. He earned his BA from William Paterson University where he studied Music (percussion) and the Humanities.

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 13% of American public school students receive special education services—over 6 million children2. Within that number is a wide array of diagnoses. According to 2010 CDC data, the rate of autistic spectrum diagnosis (ASD) for children aged 3 to 17 is roughly 1.1%3. Within the same age, the same data shows a 6.8% rate of AD/ADHD; 3.5% rate of behavioral or conduct problems, and a 3.0% rate of anxiety4. It is not uncommon for a single classroom to contain two to three classifications of students. As music educators, our approaches and techniques have to expand.

REFERENCES Jaques-Dalcroze, E. (1921). Rhythm, Music, and Education.

New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

NOTES 1. A katemia, Suomen. (2011). “Music Lights Up the Whole Brain.” Science Daily. Retrieved from http://www. sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205081731.htm

It is time to re-define the term Music Education. Modern school populations demand that we expand our music rooms beyond band, chorus, and orchestra. Eurhythmics classes would present the benefits of music to all students—and provide subsequent benefits to the developmentally diverse populations we now teach. I say this not just because of my experience, but also because of an increase in scientific research and scholarship showing how music not only affects the brain but our entire physiology. Books like This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin; Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by the late Oliver Sacks; and The Music Effect: Music Physiology and Clinical Applications by Daniel Schneck and Dorita Berger all demonstrate how music impacts us physically, emotionally, and

2. National Center for Education Statistics. “Children and Youth with Disabilities (Updated May 2015): http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgg.asp 3. C enters for Disease Control. “Identified Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html 4. C enters for Disease Control and Prevention. “Mental Health Surveillance Among Children - United States, 2005-2011 May 17, 2013: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/ preview/mmwrhtml/su6202a1.htm?s_cid=su6202a1_w

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BY ADAM COLE

[PHOTO CREDIT: JORDAN FINK]

INTEGRATION AND IMPROVISATION: A FELDENKRAIS PRACTITIONER AT LONGY

Dalcroze made a number of statements that could easily be mistaken for passages in Feldenkrais’s books: “The practice of bodily movements awakens images in the mind. The stronger the muscular sensations, the clearer and more precise the images…The precision and regulated dynamic force of muscular automatisms are a guarantee of the precision of thought-automatisms…” (Jaques-Dalcroze 1921, 124).

A FELDENKRAIS PRACTITIONER APPROACHES DALCROZE I was the rare music educator who already had a certification in The Feldenkrais Method when I returned to college in my thirties to study music education. The method offered me a more holistic perspective on the kinds of skills I would need to acquire as I became a music teacher. I did my utmost to apply the ideas of scope, sequence, movement, and experience that I got from my Feldenkrais training into my music teaching.

As early as 1898, Dalcroze would express the radical notion that students be evaluated on what they could feel rather than on what they know. His statements echo Feldenkrais’s mistrust of language in favor of movement. Dalcroze understood that what we think we “know” is often only what we can describe in words, and that the actual knowledge must show up in our ability to act. “The delay between thought and action is the basis for awareness” (Feldenkrais 1972, 45). Dalcroze had already come to this conclusion from his studies with Claparède when he attributed poor rhythm to a lapse between the brain and the muscles (Jaques-Dalcroze 1921). The solution, of course, was to use movement to provide a person with an opportunity to more fully feel, and thus become aware.

My experience with the Dalcroze approach had actually begun many years earlier at Oberlin College, when I took a semesterlong course on Eurhythmics and Plastique Animée from Herbert Henke. Although the class sparked something in me at the time, I did not have the opportunity to pursue further training.

Twenty-four years later, now a full-time music educator looking for inspiration, I attended a one-week session at Longy to reacquaint myself with Dalcroze’s methods and principles. In that week I saw these two parts of myself, the music educator and the Feldenkrais practitioner, come closer together than they ever had before. Experiencing the Dalcroze training as a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, I was surprised by the connection I felt between Dalcroze Education and the Feldenkrais Method, despite their apparent differences.

A DALCROZE APPROACH WITH A FELDENKRAIS MIND When I get up from the floor or table after a Feldenkrais lesson, I may feel a remarkable sense of freedom, lightness, or enhanced sense of presence or ability. Practitioners are not encouraged to diagnose or repair specific symptoms of their clients, but strive instead to address their clients’ needs by generating this overarching sense of well-being and functionality. Whatever my state before the session, I now have a more integrated sense of self that arises from a profound sense of connection between sensation and action.

As I spoke with Longy instructor Adriana Ausch, we were both struck by the similarities between the communities of Dalcroze and Feldenkrais practitioners. Both are small, express frustration with how the work is perceived by outsiders, and have difficulty reaching consensus on the specific elements of the practice. I left Longy with a feeling that creating a stronger connection between the two practices of Dalcroze and Feldenkrais would benefit both communities.

To generate the awareness of this connection, a Feldenkrais practitioner may take me through carefully considered sequences of movement, with the aim of carefully considering the elements of a practical function such as reaching, rolling, or twisting. The practitioner is able to engage me in a kind of attention which I do not habitually employ, one which resembles the way I attended to the world as an infant, without the agendas and distractions that accompany the development of language. The human system often responds to this kind of attention with remarkable self-correction, bringing it back to a more neutral and responsive state that is better able to act in accordance with our wishes.

Dalcroze was spurred to recreate education itself. He attempted to bring about a complete reform in the way humans thought about and improve themselves. This is precisely what Moshe Feldenkrais was after as well. I am convinced that what we do brings about a potent transformation of individuals, and that the ideas of both Dalcroze and Feldenkrais can revitalize not only our music making but our entire notion of what is possible in education.

COMPARING THE LANGUAGE OF DALCROZE AND FELDENKRAIS The commonalities between Feldenkrais and Dalcroze are not hard to spot. Both men were visionary and saw more deeply into human potential than their peers. For both, the process through which they attempted to achieve this potential defies simple explanation.

This state involves the practical ability to travel in any direction without prior preparation. Such a state requires balance over my center of gravity in whatever posture I happen to be, and an understanding of the transformation of my internal body

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schema as I move from one configuration to another. When I am in this state, I find myself more present, with all the emotional resonance, both good and bad, that this entails.

I am convinced that this magic sensation is more than a fringe benefit of the lesson. Just as it is the desired end result of Feldenkrais’s work, I suggest it can be seen as a significant consequence of Dalcroze Education which sets it above and beyond other modern music education methods. In fact, this is the element which makes the Dalcroze work so elusive and difficult to codify when compared to other methods and systems of music education.

When I was at Longy during my week of Dalcroze, I had a similar opportunity to increase my organization to move in any direction without preparation. In contrast to many kinds of movement instruction related to music, the Dalcroze teachers encouraged me to improvise movements that reflected the music as I heard it. The more possibilities I had on the floor to move from one place to another, the more freedom I felt when at rest.

Dalcroze had in mind not only the improvement of musicianship but also the improvement of the whole self through the study of music. If one recognizes that a greater sense of efficacy and a more profound connection to one’s surroundings is an educational marvel, then one can begin to see what Dalcroze may have meant.

It was this emphasis on improvisation coupled with sensation which, when linked to the structure of music, may have generated the profound sense of “joie” to which Dalcroze refers over and over again. While my Dalcroze teachers were not examining the deficits in my functionality the way a Feldenkrais practitioner might, they were modeling a higher functionality, both in the way they moved and in the way they manifested themselves musically through their improvisation at the piano. I had an opportunity to hear and see the instructor’s effective organization and was given many opportunities to adapt to it to solve musical problems.

AUTHOR’S BIO Adam Cole is a music educator, pianist and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner in Atlanta, GA. He serves on the editorial board of The Feldenkrais Journal, and has published numerous books on music and music education including Solfège Town, as well as novels and short stories. He maintains a blog at www. mymusicfriend.net.

Yet it was not the modeling alone which created the profound shift. Essential to the Dalcroze approach was the opportunity for me to explore without criticism on the floor, to move freely, and to sense while I improvised. As I came to realize that I was no longer being asked to conform, but to rather explore the possibilities and select those that were the most effective, I engaged in that level of attention which resembled the infant, rolling around on the floor, lost in a state of contemplation. This kind of absorption resembled in many ways the integration of a Feldenkrais lesson. Most notably, at the end of each lesson, my mind was quieter while my capacity to think seemed to have increased. There was a kind of magic in the experience which nonetheless defies easy explanation.

REFERENCES Feldenkrais, M. 1972. Awareness Through Movement.

New York: Penguin.

Jaques-Dalcroze, E. 1921. Rhythm, Music and Education.

Trans. Harold F. Rubenstein. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921.

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BY MARIA FRANZINI

REVIEW: MONICA DALE’S 5 MAGICAL STORIES IN MUSIC AND DANCE

music, composed for an ensemble of timbres, encourages listeners to simply practice moving and posing, but then becomes more refined, asking them to gallop in compound meter or waltz to a meter of three.

Available from iBooks: ($19.95).

Written by Monica Dale Illustrations by Alyssa Koski As Dalcroze Eurhythmics moves into the 21st century, we must realize that, to remain relevant, the method must evolve with the times. I am convinced that Emile Jaques-Dalcroze would have been overjoyed at the pedagogical possibilities that technology affords us, as long as the integrity of his method was upheld. The Dalcroze-inspired iBook presents us with an exciting new development, and Monica Dale has broken ground with her latest publication, 5 Magical Stories in Music and Dance.

“The Broken Metronomes” hones in more on musical subjects, focusing on beat, accelerando, and ritardando, while adding movement objectives of shape quality, and movement direction. Dale incorporates an interactive component into the story when the metronomes help “fix” each other to tick evenly instead of slowing or accelerating, thereby integrating the interpersonal aspect of a solid eurhythmics lesson.

The iBook begins with an introduction about how Dale developed her storybased approach to teaching music and movement. It started organically as she observed her own daughter’s budding dance skills. She states that stories appeal to the very nature of children; they are drawn to the makebelieve, magic, and examination of the human condition. Through stories, they can be easily led to explore new movement and music ideas. In the book, Dale presents five tales composed for movement. The iBook enables her to embed composed music into the story, simply by linking it to a tappable icon. She acknowledges in the introduction that Alyssa Koski’s charming illustrations do not appear on every page, but this is because the children themselves become the visual elements of the story!

The first story is a variation on a first lesson in Eurhythmics, with the objectives of starting, stopping, holding a pose, and responding freely to a variety of music. “The Mystery of the Magic Park” is told humorously, with details that I imagine have been perfected after many tellings. The children are given creative license to choose what kind of park statue they will be, and therefore what kind of movement they will do. At first the

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“The Giants and the Elves” presents a “quick reaction” exercise in the form of a game for which students must step division (eighth-notes), multiple (half-notes), and beat (quarter-notes).

This story has a more dramatic aspect, since the children become either an elf, giant, or troll during the story, and may only move on their specific music.

The illustrations in this story help set the scene nicely. As a teacher, I would personally appreciate a printable graphic of each character. In order to keep track of who is who in a large group, students could wear a picture of their character as a necklace. Eventually pictures could be replaced by notation, and ultimately taken away entirely, allowing students to guess who was which character, based on the movements they observed.

Dale suggests adding the element of improvisation after students are familiar with the story by having the teacher play the different rhythms on a drum or rhythm sticks. This way students cannot predict the character sequence or phrase length and can experience the joy which comes from a surprising discovery.

“How Spider’s Legs Got Bent” and “The Little Pine Tree” take the previous musical and movement concepts and add melodic themes and musical form.

Both ask the children to respond in movement and song to specific melodic patterns, and the story narratives are fleshed out by the rondo-variation form. Though these two tales are a bit more fixed in their lesson structure, the students still decide how the various characters will move and can add drama to their songs. Due to their complexity, these stories are ideal candidates for a class play performance. The students could learn to play rhythmic sound effects on classroom instruments, and melodic phrases on pitched instruments.

evolved into an active (as much as possible, given our space contraints) music and story time, so I believed the students were primed for a combination of those subjects. After a carefullypaced introduction on how to move in place, I was able to read them the story from my iPhone, which was hooked up to a speaker. The frequent movement kept even the youngest students engaged and happily following listening cues to dance and sing throughout the story.

From my own experience, these are stories the children will request again and again. The iBook version allows for wider usage by non-musicians, provides an aural example on which new Eurhythmics teachers can base their own improvisation, and is convenient to seasoned music teachers who lack a piano in their teaching space. Though I am most comfortable improvising piano music for small groups in an open movement area at my school, I have recently had great success with “How Spider’s Legs Got Bent” in one special teaching situation. I have the duty of entertaining a group of 17 preschool children in a small hallway every day for 20 minutes. The class has naturally

This iBook could be seen as a companion to Dale’s Eurhythmics for Young Children series, since she presents versions of two stories from those books “The Broken Metronomes” and “The Giants and the Elves.” The difference is that 5 Magical Stories in Music and Dance is presented in storybook fashion with teaching suggestions and musical icons instead of a lesson plan with written notation. For those new to Eurhythmics teaching, I would recommend they consult Eurhythmics for Young Children for preparatory activities and clearly outlined pedagogical suggestions leading into the stories.

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I understand that more and more teachers these days face challenges of overcrowded classrooms, too little physical outlet for children during the school day, and too little time for creativity. To remedy these issues, I can recommend the userfriendliness and adaptability of Monica Dale’s iBook to any classroom situation. I hope all preschool and lower elementary teachers, not just those trained in Dalcroze Eurhythmics, have the opportunity to discover it.

AUTHOR’S BIO Maria Franzini holds an M.M. In Piano Pedagogy and Performance, as well as the Dalcroze License. She teaches General Music at Providence Montessori School in Lexington, KY, where she lives with her husband, two sons, and dog.

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The Dalcroze Center at Hoff-Barthelson 2016-17 program includes: Eurhythmics, Solfège, Improvisation License Level Tuesdays, 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM

Eurhythmics, Solfège, Improvisation Certificate Level Beginning / Intermediate Wednesdays, 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM Dr. Ruth Alperson, Director, Diplőme Supérieur Hoff-Barthelson Music School 25 School Lane, Scarsdale, NY 10583 Fall semester, 15 weeks: Tuesdays, 9:30 am—12:30.

First day of classes: September 18, 2015 Tuition for one semester: $695.00 (includes $50 registration fee) Contact Terry Wager, registrar, 914-723-1169, or twager @hbms.org Questions about the course? Please contact Ruth Alperson, 914-723-1169 or ralperson@hbms.org

Elderhythmics A Special Class for Seniors* Kathryn Jones, Dalcroze Certificate

*

”Elderhythmics” classes take place at Huguenot Memorial Church, 901 Pelhamdale Ave., Pelham, NY 10803 Contact Kathryn Jones, 914-723-1169 or kjones@hbms.org

BY WILLIAM R. BAUER

REVIEW: THOMAS PARENTE’S POSITIVE PIANIST

PUTS PASSION INTO PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE the theory, despite all the technical exposition, by offering a humorous account of his efforts to drive a rented car in England to illustrate the link between the two theories. Some Dalcroze educators might reasonably quibble about Fitts and Posner’s insistence that all learners necessarily move through three stages in the course of learning, from the cognitive, to the associative, to the autonomous. Some modes of Dalcroze Education offer a counter example. But the distinctive manner in which the Dalcroze approach works, first appealing to the student’s intuitive responses to music rather than his conscious mind, in part to promote greater mind-body integration, puts it in a unique pedagogical realm, distinguishing it from much of the intellectual learning Fitts and Posner are looking to theorize. In conversation, Tom has proposed that, using the minimum of explanation at the start of a eurhythmics lesson, the Dalcroze teacher can move students rapidly through the cognitive and associative phases into the autonomous phase, possibly addressing this discrepancy.

Full disclosure: the book I’m reviewing here is about flow.

As such, it has direct relevance to our forthcoming National Conference and Symposium on Flow in Performance. This gathering will give us a forum for exploring a wide variety of ways of understanding what it means for performers to flow— physically, emotionally, cognitively, socially, and holistically.

The book’s author, Tom Parente, Dalcroze Licentiate, DSA member, and full-time piano faculty at Rider University’s Princeton campus, Westminster Choir College, was instrumental in helping to make it possible to hold our conference at Rider.

This past February, he and I offered a workshop entitled Flow, Learning Theory, and Blues Performance Practice to a dozen or so eager participants to spark interest in the conference and launch Dalcroze Central New Jersey.

From the outset Tom addresses his readers in a personal manner.

Recollections of his Italian grandmother’s homespun wisdom on such broad themes as “loving what you do and doing what you love” signal that he does not intend this to be a dry, academic treatise but rather a user-friendly invitation to join him on his wonder-filled journey through the complex theoretical maze he has thoughtfully mapped out. Even when plunging the reader into the intricacies of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, popularized in the latter’s classic work, Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience, Tom guides us gently but surely along the winding pathway, ensuring that we don’t get swamped in highly technical backwaters.

Tom gently but persistently urges the budding performer to strive more for self-acceptance than for some unattainable ideal, latter pursuit that risks setting ourselves up for failure.

The book offers a powerful alternative to the highly competitive dynamic that drives music education in the conservatory, where emerging artists face the prospect of either being lifted up onto a pedestal in the pantheon of virtuoso performers, or cast down into purgatory for failing to deliver on their talent and defiling the sacred art of music. Resetting the focus on the learning process itself, Tom repeatedly holds up the achievement of flow as an alternative criterion of success. Urging readers to evaluate the degree to which they’ve entered this positive psychological state, he shifts their attention away from the immediate results of their efforts and directs them instead to leverage the dynamic learning process flow engenders in the service of their aesthetic goals. A refreshing contrast to the content-oriented approach prevalent in classrooms across the country, the book fleshes out a highly student-centered vision of teaching.

Essentially the book reflects Tom’s application of Csikszentmihalyi’s theory to piano practice and performance.

Csikszentmihalyi conceives of the learner as moving between two fundamental human needs or impulses, one urging us to seek security, stability, and safety, the other impelling us to seek challenge, risk, and opportunity. Flow, or optimum experience, stems from striking a healthy balance between these two needs. Indulging one to the virtual exclusion of the other will only scuttle the performer’s best efforts, either boring her with excessive control and stability or overwhelming her with excessive uncertainty and volatility. We might envision Csikszentmihalyi’s ideal means of progressing as a rising staircase. Achieving flow entails navigating the dynamic equilibrium between these two extremes, enabling the performer to climb steadily upward toward higher levels of achievement without fully letting go of the confidence-building foundation provided by previously developed skills.

In fact, it’s so student centered, Tom directs most of his insights to piano students—especially to college piano majors— guiding them in specific, concrete, practical, and possibly even measurable ways, to apply Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory to their work in the piano studio. Given that this is the angle he adopts routinely in his teaching, this approach makes sense. And, no doubt much as his students do, the book benefits from his warm, ingratiating style, making it a highly readable trek through somewhat daunting theoretical terrain.

While a student working through this material with a teacher who can assess his or her progress objectively would be ideal, the book is written such that a highly motivated, highly self-

Going beyond Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, Tom adapts it to the specific demands of motor-skills acquisition by incorporating Paul Fitts and Michael Posner’s ideas about the stages of learning. Tom keeps his reader interested in

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directed novice could work through it and benefit from and the wisdom Tom supplies—especially in the chapters devoted to the study of actual repertoire.

As I listened in on the conversation between author and budding pianist, however, it became clear to me that Tom is also indirectly addressing teachers. When I got to the last chapter, I was thrilled to see him turn his gaze to us and explicitly flesh out his humanistic—and humane—vision of teaching, inspired not only by Csikszentmihalyi’s original ideas about actualizing human potential, but also by Abraham Maslow’s and Martin Seligman’s ideas about positive psychology. For us Dalcroze teachers, the book opens up a larger discussion on learning theory—especially sensory-motor theory as it relates to performance—pedagogical methods, and the roles motivation, conscious will, and unconscious drives play in education. I look forward to pursuing these areas, which are so pertinent to our work in the classroom, at the Symposium.

Fellow practitioners who know of Tom’s Dalcrozian roots will find vindication in the book’s last chapter, where he hints at these roots without explicitly identifying them as such. For example, he describes an improvisation game as a vehicle for getting non-pianist keyboard harmony students to confront the

physical challenges of playing scales with correct fingerings.

He then encourages teachers to harness the power of physical movement to empower their students to play with greater rhythmic understanding and flow. He illustrates this point with the polyrhythmic opening of Debussy’s first Arabesque.

I’m hopeful that the Symposium will give him a chance to elaborate on the connections between flow theory and Dalcroze Education that his book leaves to the imagination.

Offering harmonic, contrapuntal, orchestral, and polyrhythmic possibilities not available to most other instruments, the piano figures prominently in the training of Dalcroze teachers. For this reason alone, this book’s intriguing approach to keyboard instruction will prove useful to our members. And because Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory has direct applications to the ways we approach movement challenges in the Dalcroze lesson, the book suggests provocative ways of framing what we’re doing in eurhythmics and solfège classes, and, more crucially, what we’re trying to get students to do.

You should be able to get a signed copy at the conference. I hope you will.

Music for People, Inc. Improvisation Workshops for All Instruments and All Levels of Experience ADVENTURES IN IMPROVISATION Workshops: October 9-11, 2015, Stony Point Center, Stony Point, NY Feb 12-14, 2016, Immaculata University, Frazer, PA April 30 - May 1, 2016, Stony Point Center, Stony Point, NY June 24-26, 2016, Immaculata University, Frazer, PA ART OF IMPROVISATION workshop: July 31 – August 5, 2016, SUNY, Fredonia, NY

Listen. There are no wrong notes. www.musicforpeople.org or call 860-491-3763

DALCROZE

IN THEORY/IN PRACTICE

BY WILLIAM R. BAUER F.I.E.R. maintains a generally open-minded stance toward different manifestations of “Rhythmic Education,” or what we in the English-speaking world refer to as Eurhythmics.

This is in part because ever since Emile JaquesDalcroze left Hellerau, Germany in 1914, the German-speaking world’s approach to the practice evolved differently from that which developed at the Institute in Geneva. Parsing F.I.E.R.’s website’s description of Eurhythmics in this light is instructive. Consider this statement: “Rhythmic Education, a form of music/movement education based on the Dalcroze method, owes its development and its spread to several generations of ‘rhythmicians.’ The federation works with the Jaques-Dalcroze Institute in Geneva, and with international organizations for cultural and educational purposes.” Our very own Eiko Ishizuka, DSA Trustee and candidate for the Diplôme Supérieur, was appointed to FIER’s board this summer at the organization’s general meeting.

I offer this entry as the first in what I hope will become a well-established feature of Dalcroze Connections. The goal is to create an online forum for members to hold ongoing discussions about the ways we theorize our practice, and, conversely, the ways our actions in the classroom, studio, and clinic actualize the principles that give this work—and its practitioners—their distinctive character. It will also appear on the DSA website as a blog with a comments option.

Going forward, what will the column look like, and how it will play out over several issues of this publication? I can’t say. I can, however, put my best foot forward here and hope the result sets us in the right direction. For this issue of Dalcroze Connections, I’ll feature an item one might consider an “outtake” from another effort, but which in fact draws from the same source from which it, too, sprang.

Last year, Jeremy Dittus and I began work on a project that's intended to clarify the relationship between “product” and “process” in our practice. We gave a presentation on this very subject at the International Congress in Geneva last July. In part as a result of the interest (read: controversy) this talk prompted, Paul Hille asked us to submit our conclusions to FIER’s annual publication Le Rythme.1 The material below is one of several pieces of content from the first draft of the extended piece Jeremy Dittus and I sent Paul, content we extracted because we exceeded our word count.

What is the relationship between the DSA and FIER? Each participating country provides one delegate that represents its community of practice. We represent the American practice of Eurhythmics in FIER. We pay dues to be a member, to the order of seven Swiss Franc per DSA member. Consequently, all of our members are de facto members of FIER. Paul Hille, the newly elected President of FIER has taught in the United States, most recently at CMU’s annual Immersion Weekend, and we will no doubt hear more from and about him. He has generously agreed to offer his thinking about FIER in an interview for a future issue of Dalcroze Connections. In addition to issuing its primary annual publication Le Rythme, FIER has also published informative books on the practice including the Chemin de Rythmique series.

But what's FIER? To us it’s the International Federation of Eurhythmics Teachers; but the acronym comes from the French version of this wording: La Fédération Internationale des Enseignants de Rythmique. En français, the word “fier” means “proud”: The phrase “fier d'être français” means, literally, “proud to be French.” According to Wikipedia, it is “the only association representing and supporting the teaching of Rhythmic Education internationally.” It goes on to clarify that the organization’s activities include:

For this instance of Dalcroze in Theory/in Practice, I will refer to the section of our essay “Notes Inégales” devoted to the matter of pacing. Consider the following questions, which also appear in Le Rythme 2015: • How do we assess the student’s performance in a given activity? How much of the assessment focuses on:

• [Hosting] international conferences, exhibitions, and shows in collaboration with the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze.

o Precision?

• [Sustaining] an Information Centre (Secretariat) that conducts the work of researching and documenting Rhythmic Education.

o Accuracy? o Musicality?

• [Publishing] an annual bulletin in English, French, German, and other languages: Le Rythme, as well as a bibliography, and brochures (eg -Histoires Then and now -Hellerau-Symposion) on the development of rhythm in different countries).

o Expression? o Comfort? o Self-confidence?

• Maintaining an annual list of courses, congresses, and vocational schools in the world of rhythm [conducted] around the world.

o Flow (as a function of mind/body integration)?

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several factors reaching well beyond simplistic binary constructions, either of “product” and “process” or of content- versus student-orientated teaching approaches into subtle distinctions among different modes and phases of assessing student learning, such as diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment. Perhaps because Dalcroze teachers learn intuitively how to pace our lessons, responding to innumerable cues both obvious and subtle—many of which we may perceive subconsciously—we tend to approach this topic subjectively. Consequently, discussions among colleagues about pacing can end inconclusively, rather than bringing us closer to a consensus, as they will largely hinge on each individual instructor’s personal taste and perspective.

• Which of the above factors does the teacher need to observe and address before moving on to a new activity, and which of them influence the teacher’s decision regarding how long students should continue in a given activity?

• What is the next step in the lesson if: o The students haven’t yet achieved the lesson’s pedagogical goal, but are showing signs of being tired or restless? o The teacher wants to move on to the next activity, but the students don’t feel they have mastered the skill?

• To what extent, and in what particular ways, does a teacher o Ignore certain errors of execution and prioritize other concerns instead? o Correct the students’ execution, redirecting their attention to details of their performance and negotiating students’ [self-] exigency or commitment to exacting standards?

I will end this installment of “Dalcroze in Theory/in Practice” somewhat inconclusively, in the spirit of open-ended inquiry, with Jeremy’s personal reflections on this whole question of pacing, and how questions of product and process can play out in different settings:

• When within a limited time span, how do we deal with the delicate balance between giving students critical formative experiences and ending on time?

In workshops I tend to focus less on the precision of students’ performance, and I’m less concerned with their self-exigency (i.e. their holding themselves to a higher standard). I focus more on how they’re learning concepts X, Y, or Z, and on giving them a musically nurturing way in. So, while their performance is important, it’s not as important as their personal experience, which needs to be positive and invigorating. I’m also more supportive and encouraging.

• What is the appropriate decision when a teacher is running out of time in a workshop, the participants have not met the teacher’s goals, and the teacher wants to arrive at a piece of music or in some other ways culminate the workshop in that crucial “theory-follows-practice” moment?

In the essay, Jeremy and I reflect as follows: We have all been in situations where these or related concerns arise and we have to reconsider the class’s or workshop’s direction and pace. The general circumstances (skill level of the students or participants, time allotment, workshop or ongoing class, etc.) and various other factors, such as training and cultural background, will certainly influence our decision. But our orientation towards process and product will also necessarily come into play.

Furthermore, in a workshop, class, or teaching jury, one’s judgment of the teacher’s or trainee’s pedagogical choices may depend on the perspective from which he or she is experiencing them, whether as participant, student, or examiner.

As a result, I might spend much more time exploring a topic in a general way, rather than getting into specific details of variance and unique application.

Last year, for example, I taught a class on beat, division, and multiple in three-four time for a rather small workshop of just eight general music education teachers.

We were doing a verbal reaction game with a ball.

They were to show the beats in 3-time using the ball in their own way, but always bouncing the ball on beat one. If I called out a number, they were to perform two eighth notes on that beat of the measure. So, for example, if I called, “ONE,” the students would have to show two-eighths with the ball on beat 1, etc.

With so many variables to take into account, the authors do not presume to offer a definitive answer as to the “correct” balance between process and product. But clearly pacing is a core topic for Dalcroze educators involving complex negotiations among

I’ve used this game many times without issue.

[Question: When you called out “one,” were the

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students supposed to perform two short bounces to show the subdivided beat on the crusis?]

And most of the group was doing fine. But one student—let’s call her Sandra—was having trouble following the changes.

In this example, I focused much more on the process than the product, which is generally how I tend to treat workshop teaching. Now, if I had done the exact same exercise with my professional studies students who are studying to be Dalcroze teachers, I doubt that I would have conducted the class in the same way. With students in these classes, I might have broken the original ball activity down into smaller components, ensuring that students’ gestures coordinated with the music exactly. I would expect the energy, tempo, and nuance of the music to be in harmony with their bodies. When we stepped the rhythms, I would insist on arm beats, excellent flow, and appropriate balance of the body in performing these rhythmic cells. I would require the students to show the length of the long notes with continuous motion so that the movement would not be static.

In essence, with a different audience, my pacing is remarkably different, and this ultimately affects my teaching style.

I gently corrected her mistakes, but she still didn’t get it. She grew increasingly more frustrated, to the point where I had to stop the activity.

We switched to a completely different way of tackling the same rhythmic problem, sitting down and using chopsticks as miniature claves. The students would tap the beats in 3-time, performing beat 1 on the floor, beat 2 on their knees, and beat 3 in the air. If I called out a number, they were to perform two eighth notes on that beat of the measure. So, for example, if I called, “ONE,” the students would tap twice on the floor to show the two eighths, etc.

Without feeling singled out, Sandra eventually got the activity, and I could tell from her reactions that she felt successful. And all of the students learned a different way of knowing this subject. When we returned to the ball activity Sandra was able to do it successfully.

Finally, we ended up stepping these different rhythms while clapping the beat as a dissociation.

NOTES 1. The 2015 issue’s contents feature the following authors and titles: Dorothea Weise, “Emile Jaques-Dalcroze 150: Bon anniversaire! ” and “Why celebrating Dalcroze in Germany?”; Karin Greenhead, “Drawing threads together”; Selma Landen Odom, “Pioneering Work with JaquesDalcroze: Traces in Suzanne Perrottet’s Archive and Memories”; Younsun Choi, “A Study of the relationship between movement and music”; Jeremy Dittus, William R. Bauer, “Notes Inégales”; Eleonore Witoszynskyj , Paul Hille, “From Hellerau to Hellerau-Laxenburg”; Eckart Altenmüller, “Émile Jaques-Dalcroze as a Visionary of Modern Brain Sciences”; Joan Pope, Sandra Nash, “Getting Started in historical research”; Grazyna Przybylska-Angerman, “Learning to Sing vs “Regietheater”

We talked briefly about basic ideas in stepping rhythms to create good flow, but not in much detail. I had wanted to arrive at a piece of music, so the teachers could see a first-hand example of all that they had just done. But because we had spent so much time on these rhythms, we didn’t have much time left.

I had planned a small folk dance for the teachers to move. Instead, we just listened to the piece and followed along in the score. We remarked how the composer used the rhythms, and how they helped to shape the form and structure of the piece.

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DALCROZE TRAINING CENTERS (Sites where candidates can earn Dalcroze credentials from qualified Dalcroze educators.)

A FULL LIST OF UPCOMING WORKSHOPS, ONGOING CLASSES AND OTHER TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES IS AVAILABLE AT DALCROZEUSA.ORG, OR BY EMAILING LAUREN HOGDSON AT ADMIN@DALCROZEUSA.ORG. COLORADO DALCROZE SCHOOL OF THE ROCKIES Dalcroze Certificate and License programs, and classes for adults, teenagers, and children. Long-distance studies, monthly weekend intensives, and Online lessons in Solfège and Improvisation are also available.

Denver, CO Instructors: Dr. Jeremy Dittus, Diplôme Supérieur; Katie Couch, MM, Dalcroze License; Emma Shubin, MM, Dalcroze License; Lauren Hodgson, BM, Dalcroze Certificate Contact: jeremydittus@gmail.com www.dalcrozeschooloftherockies.com NEW YORK DALCROZE SCHOOL AT THE KAUFMAN CENTER THE DALCROZE SCHOOL AT LUCY MOSES SCHOOL at the Kaufman Center Dalcroze Certificate and License programs and classes for adults, teens and children New York, NY Anne Farber, Diplôme Supérieur, Dalcroze School Director Cynthia Lilley, Michael Joviala and Leslie Upchurch, faculty Contact: 212-501-3360 www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org DILLER-QUAILE SCHOOL OF MUSIC Dalcroze Certification opportunities, as well as graduate credits available Ruth Alperson, Diplôme Supérieur, Director Cynthia Lilley, Michael Joviala, faculty 24 E. 95th St. New York, NY 10128 Contact: Kirsten Morgan, Executive Director 212-369-1484 www.diller-quaile.org

HOFF-BARTHELSON MUSIC SCHOOL Dalcroze Teacher Training Course Classes taught by Dr. Ruth Alperson Classes in Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Solfège and Improvisation are necessary pre-cursors to teacher training and eventual certification.

Hoff-Barthelson offers these three courses at the Beginning/Intermediate level.

Students enrolled in the Teacher Training Course have the opportunity to observe Dalcroze classes for children.

Contact: Terry Wager 25 School Lane, Scarsdale, NY 10583 914-723-1169, twager@hbms.org MASSACHUSETTS LONGY SCHOOL OF MUSIC OF BARD COLLEGE 3-YEAR DALCROZE CERTIFICATE & MASTER OF MUSIC (in performance or composition) Combined Program Eiko Ishizuka, Director Faculty: Eiko Ishizuka Contact lisaparker035@gmail.com DALCROZE SUMMER INSTITUTE Lisa Parker, Director Faculty: Lisa Parker, MM, Diplome Superieur, Eiko Ishizuka, Candidate for the Diplome Superieur, Adriana Ausch, MM, Dalcroze License, Ginny Latts, Dalcroze License, Melissa Tucker, Dalcroze License 27 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

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PENNSYLVANIA CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY Marta Sanchez, Dalcroze Training Center Certificate and License Programs Summer and Academic Year Dr. Annabelle Joseph, Diplôme Supérieur, Director 5000 Forbes Avenue, CFA 105 Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 412-268-2391 music-dalcroze@andrew.cmu.edu INSTITUTE FOR JAQUES-DALCROZE EDUCATION The Institute for Jaques-Dalcroze Education, LLC is owned and operated

by Monica Dale and Jack Stevenson, two internationally recognized JaquesDalcroze pedagogues. The program provides hands-on experience of the Jaques-Dalcroze method: Eurhythmics, Solfège, and Improvisation,in addition to Jaques-Dalcroze pedagogy, philosophy, and plastique anime, and prepares candidates for the examinations leading to the Jaques-Dalcroze Certificate.

St. Francis Center for Renewal 395 Bridle Path Rd Bethlehem, PA 18017 July 2015 Faculty: Jack Stevenson, Diplôme Supérieur Contact: Jack Stevenson 610-691-5544 jack@jdalcroze.org

The Dalcroze Program at Diller-Quaile 2015-2016 DALCROZE CERTIFICATION OPPORTUNITIES Teacher Training Faculty: Ruth Alperson, Michael Joviala, Cynthia Lilley CORE SUBJECTS: EURHYTHMICS, SOLFÈGE, IMPROVISATION Three Levels of Classes for Adults: Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced DALCROZE METHODOLOGY: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES Includes observation of Dalcroze Eurhythmics classes for children and practice teaching DALCROZE CLASSES FOR STUDENTS FROM PRE-K THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL Teacher training classes have been evaluated and recommended for graduate credit by the University of the State of New York, New York State Board of Regents National College Credit Recommendation Service (National CCRS).

Visit www.diller-quaile.org for information about 2015-2016 courses.

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The Diller-Quaile School of Music | 24 East 95th Street | New York, NY 10128 212-369-1484 | www.diller-quaile.org Accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community & Precollegiate Arts Schools

DALCROZE CONNECTIONS Kathy Jones 25 School Lane Scarsdale, NY 10583