Between Opera and Dance

Abstract

In 2006 Simon Morrison and Stephanie Jordan guest edited an issue of this journal entitled “Sound Moves.” In it, they announced the emergence of “choreomusicology,” a new discipline forged by scholars possessing a certain skill set, namely, “a sensitive ear” and the ability to read multiple forms of notation.1 Eight years later, the tandem study of music and dance has attained greater visibility, a fact nowhere more evident than in the establishment in 2012 of a Music and Dance Study Group under the auspices of the American Musicological Society. The Group hosted its inaugural session, “Getting Musicology to Dance,” at the Society's 2013 annual meeting.2 In spite of these developments, however, it seems likely that at least within the precincts of musicology the study of dance will remain a marginal interest—a “Group” rather than a robust subdiscipline. However, within the field of opera studies, studious attention to dance is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, the study of dance has fit rather comfortably under the banner of opera studies for many years now. Today, a class of scholars has arrived, specializing in what we might call “dance in opera.” In addition to the scholarship of Morrison and Jordan, work by Daniel Albright, Irene Alm, Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Bruce Alan Brown, Wayne Heisler, Wendy Heller, Mary Ann Smart, and Marian Smith argues both for the necessity of studying these two artistic forms in tandem and demonstrates that the historical and analytical methods of musicology have much to offer to dance studies and vice versa.