How Dance Can Deepen Musical Practice

Finding rhythm, coordination, and musical expression through movement

I was taking a violin lesson over the summer focusing on improving my rhythmic accuracy in sight reading. At one point during the lesson, my teacher asked me to take a step on each beat of the music I was reading. In response to the unexpected difficulty I had with this seemingly simple task, my teacher surprised me by asking, “Have you ever considered taking dance classes?” It wasn’t until a couple months later that I discovered a ballet studio within walking distance and signed up for their introduction to ballet course. I have since learned that it’s not uncommon for musicians to explore movement and dance either to support their playing, or as a music-adjacent movement-focused activity. After all, dance cannot be separated from music, and in the few months that I have been dancing, I notice parallels between the movements at the ballet barre and my own embodied movement while playing the violin.

Why Musicians are Turning to Movement Practices

Musicians are increasingly aware of how important body-awareness and physical movement are to supporting a musical practice. The rise of Alexander Technique, body mapping, Feldenkrais, and other body-centered practices have increased the awareness of the importance of connecting to the physical body to prevent injury and improve musicality. For adult learners who might have other physical injuries or more of a tendency to playing with tension than young students, these practices are especially important.

Dance is one way to connect to the body and bring a renewed physical awareness into musical practice. As dance is intertwined with music, it is an especially powerful way to connect to and embody musicality. I asked both musicians and ballet dancers on Reddit how dance has influenced their music and vice versa. One Redditor who has been playing violin and dancing ballet from a young age said, “I do think of musicality as a quality shared across ballet and violin.” Another said, “As an adult beginner with a music background, I was surprised how much my music knowledge gave me an advantage to learn ballet.” And notably, one Reddit user explained how learning some baroque dance lead to a breakthrough in their approach to playing baroque music, saying, “I play a lot of baroque music and it didn’t even really click for me until i did a bit of baroque dance [and …] I really understood the physical feeling of the music in the body.”

Balance, Alignment, and Freedom

For musicians, dance training can improve rhythm, build balanced posture, and strengthen body awareness in a way that supports musicianship. After having taken some ballet classes, I often find myself thinking of port de bras when I am practicing. I notice how my arm moves my bow, and it is more than just my arm moving, it is a gesture similar to one I might perform in ballet that originates from my back, moving my bow with grace and fluidity to make a full musical sound on the violin. Just connecting to the movements my body makes and how I stand rooted on the floor when playing, as when dancing, brings more freedom to my playing. If I learn one thing from ballet, it would be how to play with the grace of a dancer because playing the violin is as much a physical activity as dancing, even if it is not often approached this way.

Expression, Gesture, and Musical Storytelling

When I watch beginner violinists perform, I notice that they often play the notes, but the music doesn’t reach much beyond their arms and fingers. The motions are small, and well-described as motions rather than gestures. To play the violin, after all, takes immense concentration and physical coordination, and even moving the bow and fingers together is a feat. When I watch professional violinists, on the other hand, they appear to embody the music while also looking relaxed and free in their motions. Although made up of individual notes, the music is made more of gesture. These violinists describe the phrase with their bodies, bringing life to the music.

This is why, when I am working on musical phrasing in a lesson, my teacher often encourages me to think of the story behind the music and to tell this story through the music, using my body to bring the sound into being. And this is as much a physical act as it is an act of musical expression. I have found that ballet, as expression of classical music, has encouraged me to bring more physicality to my music, and I think this is exactly what my violin teacher was encouraging me to do when she suggested that I try dancing.

How to Integrate Dance Into Practice

As a musician, integrating movement or dance into your practice can start simply. You might integrate movement into your regular practice time, such as walking or swaying with the beat as you play. As I discovered in my violin lesson, this can be surprisingly challenging.

If you are curious to try dancing to enhance your music, try a variety of genres, or simply one that calls to you. If it is available, baroque dance can drive insight into the music of the era, while folk dancing, with its rhythmic drive, can help build rhythmic sensitivity. Ballet, with its close ties to classical music, feels naturally supportive as a classical violin player. Because ballet is highly structured, and introductory or fundamentals classes start off slowly, I have found that I am less self-conscious than expected as an adult learner with very little prior dance experience. Classes I have attended usually have people of all ages from teenagers to people into their 80s, and I’ve noticed that recreational dancers bring a similar enthusiasm to their learning as the amateur and adult learner musicians I play with. Ballet, in my brief experience, feels like a natural extension of my musical practice that I can bring back into the practice room feeling more grounded and more physically aware of the importance of musical gesture.

Carrying Movement Back to the Instrument

While dance, like the violin, takes time to learn, even after a few months, I feel an increased physical connection to my bow, and the rhythm of the music that I play. My ability to sight read with rhythmic accuracy is slowly improving, and joining a ballet class may be responsible for some of this growth. And I’m finding that it feels good to connect to music physically through the practice of dance. Even if you aren’t ready to join your local adult recreational ballet class, it is worth taking some time to consider how physical movement is linked to musical expression and to explore movement in your playing.