My aim within this essay is to analyse music and dance relationships and give examples of Direct Correlation through to Visualisation being used and what they represent

Visualisation is shown in the piece West Side Story. Visualisation creates the mood of the sequence and exaggerates everything possible to help us picture what is going on. The scene performed in West Side Story is violent and strong and makes the audience feel uneasy from the tension built; this is contributed by the music. The choreographer uses very natural sounds to help us relate and visualize the surroundings such as the sound of cars passing by and police car sirens, this makes us picture new York city and are natural instincts assume its to do with fighting. The music of the piece builds again a huge amount of tension by the tempo of the music and sudden dips and pauses of sound. In the sequence there is a point where the tempo of the is fast and loud and different burst of notes are heard, this is when two of the members from different sides quickly jab and thrust the knife in different directions trying to meet there target. The choreographer used sharp, frantic dynamics, compared to Swan Lake as Bourne uses graceful dynamics.

Mutual co-existence or which also can be called Disassociation is the complete opposite of the meaning of direct correlation as it is when the music and dance exist but work against each other, this is displayed in the piece changing steps by Merce Cunningham. This piece is extremely abstract as this is what Cunningham’s style is. He believes that movements happen because they do and they don’t always have to contain meaning behind them. Cunningham uses in this motif natural sounds such as cracking, rustling, banging, sawing and many more including as well animal sounds most which could be a woodpeckers and sounds from the dancers bodies for example they may hit the floor with force to create a loud thudding sound. The point being the music doesn’t at all go with the sequence; this may be as the movements are quite separated as well as many others. The piece is not sight-specific as it is not performed in a theatre or any other typical place.