Melody in music is connecting sounds from a wide spectrum of vibrations and tonal qualities.
Melody in dance is connecting movements from a wide spectrum of three dimensional movement and tonal qualities.
Melody in both contain phrases, concise units of communication that have an initiation, a continuation, and a completion.
Music includes specific sounds that we identify as specific vibrations or as notes. Each vibration within a melody also has an initiation, a continuation, and a completion. A specific sound contains a wide spectrum of dynamics and tonal qualities.
Dance includes specific movements that we receive as vibrations emanating from different areas of the body and from different relationships to space. Each vibration of each movement
within a melody has an initiation, a continuation, and a completion. A specific movement also contains a wide spectrum of dynamics and tonal qualities.
Each vibration may connect to another vibration or have a brief pause called a rest, a space, silence or stillness. The training of the musician, the dancer, and their audiences is to experience the melody as a connected unit even with the pauses. Another part of the training is to connect all the concise phrases that make up the melody.
Those experiencing the melody, the dancer, the fellow dancer, and the observer, receive the vibrations along with the modulations of dynamics and tonal qualities. The experience is an engagement of all the human faculties available to the person.
The depth of training for all those receiving melody can be elusive because it is a skill present in the embryo and the youngest child. As with any experience, if we fully engage ourselves we build networks of body, brain, intention, and signal balance. As we discriminate between experiences, we can train ourselves to ignore some of these networks.
Training to receive melody is a daily reminder of the full spectrum of vibrations available to us as humans. Music we immediately engage. We can limit the kinds of music and limit the areas of of our body and memory and hope that relate to the music experience.
Dance is the same. We can engage every area of our bodies as we dance or observe dance. Yet we can only experience the areas of our bodies and brains that are available to us. Our habits are to limit our experience of different parts of our bodies, our memories, and our hopes.
For this reason, our earliest ancestors danced and sang every day. They were reminding themselves of melody as a way of engaging the full spectrums available to humans.
They were entering the experience of engaging their entire self and reflecting on the experience of sharing those vibrations of melody with their community. Each phrase had a concise mode of communication and each phrase connected to a full melody.
Melodies change with the experience of the individual and the group. This growth of melody leads to a deeper training that is also elusive because it is second nature to humans. When dancing or making music, we move through different types of experience. Each tonality, each combination of vibrations, affects our perception of how we fit into our world.
Our language does not express this experience well. We call the agility to move between different experiences alternately mind states, meditative states, body states, out of body states, or states of consciousness. We may call it a spirit world or prayer or hallucinations.
The experience of melody is the practice of reminding ourselves how we connect to ourselves, to each other, and to our world. Melody is concise communication that comes through us and inspires our reflection upon the connection of experience, our emotional and intentional nature, and the forces of life that seek a balance of sending and receiving vibration.
Tim Hurst. 042517
