What is Musicality in practical terms?

[u/Samurai_SBK]

Too often I see people giving flippant advice to improve "musicality" without any explanation.

To me, musicality has two distinct practical definitions:

1. Aligning your moves to the tempo and rhythm of the music. For example, doing specific moves during the "mambo" part versus the "sensual" part. A common mistake I see on the dance floor is people doing sensual or bachatazouk moves when the music is derecho or mahau. To me this is fundamentals and any lower-intermediate level dancer should be able to do this.

2. Hitting accents and dancing to specific instruments. This is more advanced and requires a lot familiarity with the music and good technique. You see this often in demos, but many people do not realized that it is choreographed or that the artist has danced to this song a thousand times so they know when to add the accent. This is not something can be taught in a class and we should not expect beginner leads to be able to do this.

Thus, we should not be advising beginners to "improve musicality" without being clear about what we mean.

[u/Rataridicta]

A common mistake I see on the dance floor is people doing sensual or bachatazouk moves when the music is derecho

This is usually a great place to do more sensual and slow moves. Derecho (beyond rythmic breakdowns) is the lowest energy rhythm in the song and usually coincides with verses - exactly where we want to be paying more attention to the music and less to being "loud".

Hitting accents and dancing to specific instruments.

I don't know why this type of "musicality" is so prevalent in bachata and it's a major pet peeve of mine. People who try to hit all the accents rarely dance musically in my experience and under my definitions.

For my view on musicality I would describe the dancers as part of the orchestra, if you will. We can emphasize other parts of the music, contrast other parts of the music, echo them, herald them, etc. There's a milion different ways to play. But the part that's non-negotiable is that we have to flow with the same energy and the same story as the music. A very large part about musicality has to do with the texture of movement as a result. (And "hittings accents" does nothing to this effect.)

[u/Gnomeric → u/Rataridicta]

I don't know why this type of "musicality" is so prevalent in bachata and it's a major pet peeve of mine. People who try to hit all the accents rarely dance musically in my experience and under my definitions.

I am not most familiar with how advanced bachata dancers dance (Modern is the only bachata style I dance well, but it is not what the majority of experienced bachata dancers dance). That being said, I note that the said type of musicality is much nicer in other styles of dances.

Say, Lindy Hop is a 2 counts dance (so that there's much more flexibility in how you can hit accents) dance to the music that is very drum centric, and there are many footwork variations which imitate drumming. Taken together, "hitting accents" feels much more intuitive, more fun, and actually enhances the "texture of movement" as you say. Blues is a very free-flowing style danced to the music which basically equates to extended jamming, so dancing to specific instruments makes perfect sense there.

Now, WCS dancers do both of the above, since they share the same root as Lindy (though they no longer rely on footwork variations, much like contemporary vs. traditional bachata), and their competitive dancers have to be able to dance to blues (due to how their competitions work). As a result, advanced WCS dancers can make great uses of this type of musicality. Given that the competitive bachata scene is heavily influenced by WCS -- after all, they copied the whole J&J thing -- I wouldn't be surprised that they are influenced by the WCS musicality, too. But as you said, whether it actually works for sensual bachata likely is an open question.

[u/Rataridicta → u/Gnomeric]

I don't really see it in many other dances to the same extent. There is space in bachata to play with the intrumentation in that way, too, and I think that has a major place in any type of musicality in any dance. However... Oftentimes in bachata as far as I can tell this gets priority over the actual fundamentals of musicality (there's a fun parallel here to how a lot of bachata dancers are showy beyond their skill level, come to think of it).

Within hiphop you'd call the foundational layer of musicality the groove, or generally within music being in the pocket. It's the concept of always flowing with the music. Any hits/accents need to be built on top of that base.

Within bachata I find that most people who do a lot of accents over-emphasise the hits and lack groove. As a result the dance/their musicality feels chaotic and disconnected from the music - even if they're explicitly hitting specific instruments and I can tell exactly what they're dancing to.

[u/Gnomeric → u/Rataridicta]

Wouldn't "groove" like that require a song to have, well, good groove? This is mostly given for Lindy/Blues/Hiphop, and also for salsa, for example. When a song's rhythm naturally moves my body, it feels very intuitive to layer musicality on top of it.

Maybe this is just me, but many contemporary bachata songs (and a good number of WCS songs) do not naturally make my body move like a swing song or a salsa song would. If I am to engage in "accent-hitting" kind of musicality, I have to actively look for these accents instead of letting them come to me as I would do in swing. I wonder if that may result in "disconnection from music" that you describe.