Learning Dance and Musicality

Dance is a learned skill. Dance is similar to language in that we all have an innate ability. However, the actual development of how to learn how to dance is environmentally determined. We can all learn a language easily when we are children, but for adults it is more difficult—the same is true for dancing.

As with any skill, we all have a different amount of inborn potential for how to learn how to dance. Essentially there is a range of potential innate abilities that need to be developed. Learning how to dance will take more effort for some than others. Someone with little natural talent for dancing will require a lot of effort to equal what someone with talent can accomplish with little effort. When a person with innate ability puts any effort towards learning and practice, they will outperform someone with little natural skill.

Frequently, we overlook how important it is to have an interest, passion or inclination towards a subject. Otherwise there will be no effort despite any innate ability. If we love dancing and music, we’ll put in the extra effort toward how to learn how to dance and the various skills involved.

Dance is comprised of many different skills, so there is room for many different types of success. Dance is an expressive art with an athletic component. One of the more challenging aspects for many people is musicality—sensitivity to the musical quality and expression of dancing. As with any musical performance, we try to express emotions and feelings as we dance. We express musicality with our bodies.

The many different aspects to musicality can be learned even as adults. When we develop more technical skills after asking how to learn how to dance, we can become more creative in our interpretations and more expressive of our feelings. Musicality in dance involves many different abilities, including the following:

• Listening to music and developing an appreciation for it.
• Picking out different musical instruments in music.
• Hearing dynamics and nuances in music.
• Recognizing breaks and accents and anticipating their occurrence.
• Identifying the beats in music.
• Understanding tempos and time signatures in written music.
• Understanding phrasing, musical themes and song structure.
• Learning different dance rhythms.
• Developing individual interpretations.

The last one is especially important because the same dance is interpreted differently by every couple who dances it, bringing out their own creativity and flair.

Eventually wanting to know how to learn how to dance leads the dancer to the desire to learn musicality, the creative physical expression shown in time to the music. As your musicality grows, your flair and joy in dancing will grow as well.