Body movement for musicians.

After inviting people to remove shoes and come into an open space, Julia Schnebly-Black began the session with an easy warm-up of swaying from one side to the other. Adding hand claps on the first beat, then all three, and, finally, all permutations of three, prepared the entrance of Mozart's Theme from the A Major Sonata, K. 331, played by Schnebly-Black, who then encouraged everyone to dance about the room, retaining the feeling of swaying and sometimes stepping the three eighths.

Next, George Lewis guided the participants through movements that loosened all the joints and established an attitude that the body could be expressive. Lewis's presentation culminated in a display of control and imagination: to demonstrate our capacity to move smoothly and suddenly change to an abrupt movement, he transformed everyone into slugs that reached forward slowly, then met an object and pulled back with a short quick movement. Next he added a large enveloping movement, covering the object and moving on. Lewis began to hum a simple melody to accompany the progression, and soon everyone carried the melody over the room. Musical slugs!

Schnebly-Black followed this with a circle game of ball passing. The object was to feel the difference in the energy used to pass the ball to the next person on half-notes, quarters, eighths, even whole notes. Control over space and energy was dictated by the time available. Passing on eighth notes caused general excitement, even confusion.

The next activity matched partners to tap each other's hands, moving around an imaginary square in the air between them. Following Schnebly-Black's commands they skipped touching on certain beats and eventually settled on a pattern of 1-2- -4. After improvising for the preparatory exercise, Schnebly-Black carried this syncopation pattern into a lovely little piece by Bohuslav Martinu called

"Columbine Sings," from his suite, Puppets, in which the left hand moves throughout in syncopation. Everyone described the syncopation by rising on their toes on beat three and thus feeling the extension over the long note. Eventually, everyone sang along with the flowing melody while moving about the room in syncopation.

Finally, Mozart's music inspired the energetic movement that closed the session. His Rondo alla Turca, which closes Sonata K. 331, gave an opportunity to explore pulses at different levels, as well as the insistent drum pattern in the bass. After experiencing all these possibilities, everyone was free to move to any of them, even to change from one to another.

The goal of the session was to illustrate how effective moving the whole body can be in stimulating awareness of musical elements. Through the Eurhythmics activities Schnebly-Black led, participants felt the carry-over from simple movement games to the phrasing of musical compositions. Lewis's use of the imagination to direct the flow and control of energy showed how similar moments in our teaching can lead to enhanced musicality in ourselves and our students.

George Lewis, movement artist since 1971 and teacher for twenty-five years, spent three years in Paris working with Etienne Decroux. For 12 years he has been teaching with Julia Schnebly-Black for the Dalcroze Society.

Julia Schnebly-Black is head of eurhythmics at the Seattle Conservatory and director of the summer program in eurhythmics at the University of Washington. She holds degrees from the University of Washington, Yale University and Peabody Conservatory.