What does a Eurhythmics teacher do?!`

 

Somedays, work is just a little too much fun. We are just back from Spring Break, and over the next two weeks, we will turn our attention to "big-body gesture" and "expressive range." I have now spent close to 60 hours with these first-year students, and lots of the basics are now in the body. We spent much of the first semester learning to listen and how to turn our attention to our own feeling body. We have earned our classmates' trust and survived some good artistic risks in front of each other. 

We have covered basic lessons in time-space-energy, tempo, dynamics, articulation, beat/pulse (binary, ternary beat-units), divisions and multiples of beat-units (regular and irregular), rhythmic patterns based on binary and ternary beat-units, binary and ternary meters, complementary rhythm, augmentation, diminution, anacrusic and crusic phrases, canon, ties, syncopation, form, accents (metric, dynamic, agogic, tonic, timbre, harmonic). This semester, we will cover meters that combine binary and ternary beat units,  hemiola, cross-rhythms (3:2, 3:5, 5:2), two-part rhythmic sight reading and dictation, and improvisation (singing and gesture) will continue to hold a major role in the training. 

Of particular interest to Eurhythmics II is a turn away from the "building blocks" of music (beat, meter, rhythm, pitch, harmony, etc), and a turn toward interpretation. At Carnegie Mellon, we are working with main-stage performers and composers, and our allegiance is to MUSICIANSHIP above all else. We are training ARTISTS, which means we have to discover the music that exists between the notes on the page, more so than merely recognizing the printed notes on the page. It takes some patient work to get to this place, but the act of interpretation is synonymous with risk-taking, exploration, and improvisation. You can't both play it safe and share your deep beliefs at the same time. So today, we spent the whole class exploring "expressive range," the space where we look for interpretative options. We experimented with simple and safe motions, then pushed on those boundaries to awaken less-rehearsed, less comfortable, less common options, all in the service of greater expressive range. 

It is such a privilege to work with these young artists. They are deeply invested, courageous, and kind. They are willing to be playful, which is the root of all creativity. I wish all of you a day of curiosity, exploration, and joy. May all of our days be full of such life. 

We wrote a book!!!

The last year has been a whirlwind; there were highs and lows, some travel, lots of teaching, and even some playtime...

One of the most exciting accomplishments of 2024 was made possible through a collaboration with my dear friend and Dalcroze wizard, Anthony Molinaro. We made a thing! The project is called Make It Music — Dalcroze Strategies for Every Classroom. 

Anthony spent all of last school year doing graduate work at Carnegie Mellon, and we thought...while we were both there, seeing each other every day, we should look for some way to meet and share ideas. I have been BLOWN AWAY by his work with the kids for years. He has such a thumb on the philosophy behind the Dalcroze Eurhythmics routines. It is always a joy to talk to him about his classes and to compare notes.....and that is what we did! For most of the last year, we met every week to compare ideas about what excites us in our teaching practice. We each shared stories and ideas and talked about all parts of Dalcroze pedagogy, practice,  history, and how we use all of that to craft lessons for our students. 

We discussed quite a few ideas, but we kept coming back to two prevailing points—ideas critical to our Dalcroze practice. 

The first is what we are calling "open-ended lesson planning." Under this discussion is the balance between advance lesson planning and in-the-moment ideation in co-creation with our students. The example of in-the-moment ideation was always on great display with my foremost Dalcroze mentor, Dr. Marta Sanchez. I once watched Marta teach 4 back to back classes, just riffing on the dotted-eighth-sixteenth rhythm. (Honestly! She showed up to class that day with that rhythm on a post-it note, stuck it to the piano, and just improvised her whole, AMAZING, day of teaching!) 

There is certainly a huge need for the night-before planning that we all do to arrive at our classes prepared and organized. I have written out the lesson plans for every class I have ever taught. (I still have them all in a big file cabinet – 33 years' worth of single-page lesson plans 😱) But I never believe I have done the best Dalcroze work if my creativity stops there. The real magic is found when I can 'get into the zone' with my students. My goal is to spin a lesson that starts with some idea(s) from my lesson plan, and then see how those initial ideas open up possibilities and potentials in my students. When it is working the way it should, I end the day with more ideas than I started. My students and I have come to new understandings, new exercises, new orderings, new turns of phrase....new insight that was just not possible when planning by myself the night before. The Make it Music book takes some pages to try to describe the open-ended-lesson phenomenon and then builds a set of tools to help teachers who might be new to this mindset.

The second set of ideas we kept visiting was the nature of artistry in the Eurhythmics class. Anthony and I both come from mainstage performance careers, each of us spending years as live performers before really doubling-down on classroom teaching as our #1 devotion. When I was singing in or directing main stage operas, it was easy to see myself as an artist. The open stage is defined by the creative, the interpretative, intimate work in ensemble with others. You have to take risks and own them on the live stage. You have to show-up, be fully present, and give yourself over to the practice. The "artist" title was easy to carry. 

As a young teacher, it was not obvious to me what classroom work had in common with main stage artistry. Teaching can be a slog. Students are not always interested in finding the close ensemble or taking musical risks together. Bell schedules, academic calendars, grades (!), and the bureaucracy of many schools are all pressures that can distract us from the first reasons we are there and the profound work that we do. 

But as I started to focus more on Dalcroze ideals and included more of the exercises; as I strove to honor the traditions and paid more attention to the "body is the first instrument" mantra, the teaching artist persona became more and more apparent. Our Dalcroze routines not only push the student to be present, embodied, creative and self-aware, but they ask the same of the teacher! Crafting my interactions with the classes, co-creating exercises, discovering new variations on the themes, taking risks, performing in ensemble, and moving together. It is not only 'like' mainstage performance; the opportunities for artistry are largely identical. The Make It Music book challenges every reader to take on the title of Teaching Artist and then continue to work in that framing. 

The book comes with 4 decks of cards — a tool for creating new exercises and challenging our routines. You can read all about it at make-it-music.com. Please check it out and let me know what you think!!!

Thanks to Anthony for the ideas/writing collaboration. And thanks to Melissa Neely for making everything look SO AMAZING!! She is the real artist in my life. 💕

Thanks to the Virginia Symphony Orchestra Chorus

Not every day, you get to teach 100 outstanding adult musicians at once! Thanks to Maestro Robert Shoup and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra Chorus for your kindness and generosity. Being invited back to spend some hours together was such a joy. You are wonderful, and I am so excited for the remainder of your concert season.

We hoped for a longer residency, but the weatherman had other ideas. Even with a condensed schedule, we were still able to cover quite a bit of ground in preparation for John Adams' HARMONIUM. We explored music as inner feeling vs. outward sound, musical momentum, the shared gesture, deep ensemble, and the differences between technique, literacy, and musicianship. I am so fortunate to work with artists of such high caliber. It is a joy and a privilege. I am already looking forward to our next time together!