Classical Music used for Dancing
 

What classical music pieces are made especially memorable for you because of the dances (ballet, ice skating routines, or others) choreographed with them in mind?

For clarity's sake, I'm using this definition of classical music:

...but if you can think of dances set to Indian classical music or Japanese traditional music, etc., that's fine by me! :)

Three of my favorites:

Ravel - "Bolero" - ice skating routine by Torvill & Dean that won them the 1984 Olympics Ice Dance Gold Medal.

I remember watching this performance and feeling very excited by it. The routine was beloved by almost everyone I knew at the time! This music/dance combination helped inspire me to get involved in modern dance, which I enjoyed for 12 years.

Interestingly, the French composer, Maurice Ravel, felt "Bolero" (1928) was "trivial and once described [it] as 'a piece for orchestra without music.' " Maurice Ravel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Tchaikowsky - Nutcracker Ballet - "Dance of the Snowflakes" and "Sugar Plum Fairy." I never tire of watching this ballet with its beautiful music...and I must have seen it at least 8 times. :)

I love how there is so much beautiful music to accompany dance numbers. I should know a bunch off the top of my head seeing as I used to take ballet and other dance lessons. I'll get back with my selections tomorrow!

I was introduce to Ravel by an unlikely source - The Ventures. It was featured on their Joy album which featured instrumental rock versions of art music, it was probably the first Classic Rock album to be released j/k:D.

Ravel's Pavanne - The Ventures

There were two youtube videos that featured Pavane pour une infante défunte one was still-pic of the painting Lake George, by John Frederick Kensett and this one. I thought you might like this video because it fits in well with your topic.

That would be great, Burning Down, because I haven't seen many ballets...mostly just the same one over and over! :p: I'd like to be familiar with more ballets than *just* The Nutcracker, great as it is.

The Ventures' song was fun!

And the video *does* fit in perfectly with my topic. Thank you, Neapolitan, for sharing it. The dancing definitely makes the swimming, amorphous music more memorable for me as the dancer/actress, Patricia Blair, moves from nature to the city and finally to the studio in this modern ballet piece that I suspect was choreographed just for her, since the choreographer was Martin Vincent Blair (who I think was her husband). Patricia Blair is still alive. She's 80 now! :)

Manuel de Falla: El amor brujo ("Love, the Magician"). First composed as a symphonic suite, and then as a ballet too. Two of its best-known movements are #8 (Ritual Fire Dance) and #10 (Song of the Will-o'-the-Wisp). This video is from a film based on the ballet:


But, of course, you can also stare at a bonfire, and you'll see how fire dances in time to the music. ;)

nothing beats The Blue Danube Waltz

I enjoyed Swan Lake tremendously

Wow! That is *lovely*, Zaqarbal. So dramatic and intense. Hot hot hot!!! You Spanish people, you know how to dance, don't you! I love the sensual flamenco style, the swish of the skirts that sounds like licking flames, and the dragging and stamping of the feet.

I read the plot of the story, and this dance makes perfect sense now that I know the story. I think this clip ends with Lucia dancing with the ghost of Jose to exorcise him from the earth so that he stops haunting his ex-wife whom he married in an arranged marriage while his heart was really with Lucia. This ballet makes "The Nutcracker" romance between a pre-adolescent girl and a...nutcracker...seem rather bland. :/

Duce, what YouTube video of "Swan Lake" shows your favorite section?

I love On the Beautiful Blue Danube (An Der Schöen Blauen Donau) by Johann Strauss II.



and here's a fun Simpsons take on that piece:



I also like Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, in particular the Neapolitan Dance:



When I was a kid, we did a ballet dance routine to Léo Delibes' Suite from Sylvia: Pizzicato. You may know this piece from the movie Babe, when Babe was fooling around with the paint cans and the yarn.



And finally, for some 20th century ballet: Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Here's some of it (well the first part!)

I got a Finlandic production - probably not on youtube, it's probably Act 2 Scene 1 - as the Prince wanders out and finds the Swan Princess, with Mephisto lurking in the backgrund

Thank you for all those additions to the thread, Burning Down!

I didn't know Léo Delibes' Suite from Sylvia: Pizzicato was used in the movie Babe, when Babe was fooling around with the paint cans and the yarn. :)

I couldn't find the Finlandic production, but here's another professional production (Ballet of the Kirov Theatre St. Petersburg) of Swan Lake, Act 2 Scene 1, that I'm watching now to see what it is like since you recommend it. Beautiful music.

My only complaint with the choreography is that there is an awful lot of arm/wing flapping! :p: I know they're swans and all, but still...when you've seen 10 flaps, 1000 gets a little tiring.

they don't flap that much in the Finlandic production

Good. :) That was an awful lot of flapping in the Kirov production. It distracted me from the music and the moves. All I can remember is flapping now.

There are also some nice menuets...

Vivaldi's 'Concerto No. 4 in F minor' ('Winter') will always remind me of skater Surya Bonaly because it was commonly her music of choice on the ice. Here she is performing her illegal specialty after a fall at the 1998 Olympics -- a one-skate backflip.

^ Hooray for Surya Bonalay!

I love love love Romeo and Juliet's Pas de deux. The music and dancing is so wonderful together.

I love the music for "Dance of the The Knights" from Prokofiev's ballet, Romeo and Juliet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_a...iet_(Prokofiev). I first heard the song in some car commercial and didn't realize until recently that it is part of a ballet:

Prokofiev - "Dance of the Knights" (or Montagues and Capulets) from his ballet, Romeo and Juliet
I like the music's somber, destructive power contrasting with the delicate, romantic, hopeful interludes. An especially nice moment in the ballet (shown below) is when Romeo and Juliet come face to face (at 5:20) and the somber, martial theme re-emerges, foreshadowing the devastation that is to come in their lives:



* * * * *

Il Duce in another thread asked about Bartok's music for his ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin The Miraculous Mandarin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This made me curious about it (especially after seeing a link that most definitely was *not* the download of the music :p:) and so I found the following video showing excerpts of the ballet:

Bartok - The Miraculous Mandarin (ballet)
The dancing is pleasantly contemporary and fresh, and the music chaotic and intense, matching the far-fetched plot: three tramps force a girl to dance to lure men close enough so that the tramps can steal from them, which leads to the tramps violently murdering the final gentleman, a wealthy Chinese man, who longs for the girl and eventually dies in her arms. :/

^^yeah, it's a story worthy of a movie on its own

Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance music.

In my recent explorations of classical music, this has been one of the songs I've gotten into the most. I had never seen the accompanying dance before. Is it wrong that up until this moment the song always conjured up very vivid images of Darth Vader for me? :laughing:

Not wrong at all! Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights" for me still conjures up images of giant swinging balls because they were in the car commercial that first introduced me to the song. Better Darth Vader than giant swinging balls! ;)

http://images.wikia.com/characters/i...arth_vader.jpg

Tchaikovsky's swan lake.

Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing an excerpt from the ballet, Le Jeune Homme et La Mort, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach adapted from his "Passacaglia in C Minor"
during the opening titles of the movie "White Nights."

This excerpt from the ballet choreographed by Roland Petit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_jeune_homme_et_la_mort) is melodramatic but memorable. Without the dancing, I would pay the music little heed because it swims on without much that I'd note about it except for its ominous, somber tone. Yet paired with Baryshnikov's spastic, rapid, and amazingly powerful dancing, a mix of ballet and modern, the music gains life.

Moral of story: when a woman in a yellow dress belittles, taunts, and demeans you after playing with your affections, then tells you to hang yourself...don't. :p:


Opening ballet from "White Nights" by Mikhail Baryshnikov - YouTube

^ Moral #2: Don't smoke!!! See what cigarettes will do to you? :) It isn't pretty.

Here's another dancer, Rudolf Noureev, performing the ballet, "Le Jeune Homme et La Mord," in case you can't get enough:

Really full of entertainment in this thread

Classical music to dance

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker.

Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet.

Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story.

Georges Bizet: Carmen.

Aram Khachaturian: Spartacus.

Maurice Ravel: Boléro.

Johann Strauss II: On the Beautiful Blue Danube – Waltz.