Spatial Orientation and Awareness

For many years of my own eurhythmics practice, I focused mostly on trying to coordinate my arms and legs through ever more complicated rhythms. Only recently have I become entranced by one of the very things that makes movement possible—space. It seems obvious: How can you move if you are not aware of the space…

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Remembering Lisa Parker (part 2)

On October 7, 2022, we lost an extremely valuable and inspirational member of our community, Lisa Parker. Many people from around the country and the world have special memories of their time with Lisa, as her work touched many of us.  Earlier this year, the DSA called for memories of Lisa to be shared with…

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Reflections of a DSA Scholarship Recipient

This past summer (2022), I attended the Dalcroze School of the Rockies two-week program to pursue the first level of the Dalcroze Professional Certificate. I had very little experience with Dalcroze going into the program and within the first couple hours, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Throughout the first eurhythmics class, I…

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Improv Exchange: Aaron Morrison

Welcome to the Improv Exchange, a new regular feature in Dalcroze Connections, the official magazine of the DSA. In this column, you’ll find inspiration to help kick-start your own improvisations at home or in class. The upcoming issue of Dalcroze Connections (vol. 7, no. 2; to be released digitally on May 9, 2023 and in…

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Shared Improvisations

Hello Dalcroze USA community, A few months ago, we published a blog with improvisation inspiration in the form of a randomized dice game. Although you can go back and read about the game here, the guidelines were basically to use a set of practice dice to assign musical parameters, such as tonality, meter, tempo, and…

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Eurhythmics As a Lifelong Discipline

Becoming an Opera Singer When I had to pick a concentration in my high school conservatory, I picked opera because I couldn’t dance. Selection day was held in the small former chapel, with dozens of other first year applicants dancing and warming up on the hard, gray carpet; flipping their long hair and box stepping.…

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Improv Exchange: Aaron Taylor

Welcome to the Improv Exchange, a new regular feature in Dalcroze Connections. In it, we’ll provide inspiration to help kickstart your own improvisations at home or in class.  Composer Aaron Taylor Our inaugural column features the work of Aaron Taylor, whom Publications Committee member and editor-extraordinaire Michelle Li met during the 2022 CMU Marta Sanchez…

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2023 National Conference Reflection

The 2023 Dalcroze Conference at Baldwin Wallace University was uplifting and expansive.  As I walked into each room, meeting others from across the country and reconnecting with a few familiar faces, I found the teaching modality that has been missing in my instruction for years. Moving with ease and beauty, while learning about the importance…

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Incitation and Inhibition: A Means to Internalize

by Jeremy Dittus and Eiko Ishizuka The Dalcrozian strategy/technique of incitation and inhibition exists in virtually every reaction exercise we do in eurhythmics, solfège, and improvisation. Simply put, incitation describes the desire to do something while inhibition describes the feeling of suppressing or denying that desire. Because of their symbiotic nature, incitation and inhibition typically…

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Call for Submissions: Remembering Lisa Parker

On October 7, 2022, we lost an extremely valuable and inspirational member of our community, Lisa Parker. Many people from around the country and the world have special memories of their time with Lisa, as her work touched many of us.  Below is a memoriam written by two of Lisa’s former students, Jeremy Dittus and…

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