Dancing in the Seats

Dancing in the Seats

By DANIEL J. LEVITIN

Published: October 26, 2007, The New York Times

Montreal: THE fall concert season has begun at music halls around the world, and audiences are again sitting in rapt attention with their hands folded quietly in their laps. Does anyone besides me find this odd?

Through tens of thousands of years of evolutionary history, music has nearly always occurred together with dance. Even today, most of the world’s languages use a single word to mean both music and dance. The indivisibility of movement and sound, the anthropologist John Blacking has noted, characterizes music across cultures and across times.

Music and dance have also always been a communal activity, something that everyone participated in. The thought of a musical concert in which a class of professionals performed for a quiet audience was virtually unknown throughout our species’ history.

Although the Greeks built amphitheaters, these were typically used for plays, speeches and other public events, not musical performance. The first concert halls for music did not appear until the 17th century in Europe. York Buildings in London is thought to have been the first, in 1678, followed by the Holywell Music Room, built in Oxford in the 1740s. As Anthony Storr, a professor at Oxford, once noted, the advent of concerts by a society’s most skilled performers separated performers from listeners. Listeners were no longer expected — or even allowed — to join in.

The ancient connections between music and movement show up in the laboratory. Brain scans that I and my colleagues have performed make it clear that both the motor cortex and cerebellum — the parts of the brain responsible for initiating and coordinating movements — are active during music listening, even when people lie perfectly still. Singing and dancing have been shown to modulate brain chemistry, specifically levels of dopamine, the “feel good” neurotransmitter.

Our species uses music and dance to express various feelings: love, joy, comfort, ceremony, knowledge and friendship. And each one is distinct and widely recognized within cultures. Love songs cause us to move slowly and fluidly, for example, while songs of joy inspire us to dance in a full-body aerobic way.

Our ancient forebears who learned to synchronize the movements of dance were those with the capacity to predict what others around them were going to do, and signal to others what they wanted to do next. These forms of communication may well have helped lead to the formation of larger human communities.

Some of the strongest bonds in our society are formed by people who march together in military units, as William McNeill, the historian, has pointed out. Members of orchestras and performing groups today likewise develop bonds. As Frank Zappa told me years ago, playing music with other people can be more intimate than any other activity. The turn-taking and accommodation involved call for great amounts of empathy and generosity.

Most of us would be shocked if audience members at a symphony concert got out of their chairs and clapped their hands, whooped, hollered and danced — as people would at a Ludacris concert. But the reaction we have to Ludacris or U2 is closer to our true nature.

Children often demonstrate this nature at classical music concerts, swaying and shouting and generally participating when they feel like it. We adults then train them to act “civilized.” The natural tendency toward movement is thus so internalized, it is manifest in concert halls only as a mild swaying of heads. But our biology hasn’t changed — we would probably have more fun if we moved freely.

Music can be a more satisfying cerebral experience if we let it move us physically. When we hear a chord we like in works by Sibelius or Mahler, our brains want to shout out “Yeah!” When an orchestra builds the timbral mass in Ravel’s “Bolero,” we want to break out of our seats and dance and show how good it feels. Stand up, sit down, shout, let it all out. As the managers of Lincoln Center contemplate renovations, I say rip out some of the seats and give us room to move.

Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of psychology and music at McGill University, is the author of “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession.”

LETTERS PUBLISHED IN REPONSE TO THE ARTICLE

To the Editor:

Re “Dancing in the Seats,” by Daniel J. Levitin (Op-Ed, Oct. 26):

While superficially attractive, the notion of dancing during classical music concerts is destructive. How would we hear the music over the sound of the hooves of the satyrs and the cries of bacchants who dance?

Children, treated to recorded music, may dance joyfully in their schools and homes. There, may they find joy.

But after having paid $200 for a choice seat for a performance of “La Bohème,” I do not care to have a child kicking the back of my seat. Let the rude children and their parents be banished to the lobby, where they may bother each other.

Dance, dance to the music — but not in the sacred space of the orchestra or chorus, which offers live interpretations of the glories of music of the past. Must we permit clog dancing during a performance of Mozart’s Requiem?

Mr. Levitin is correct that music is inextricably entwined with dance. That’s why there are ballets, hoedowns and mosh pits.

William Barber
Missouri City, Tex., Oct. 26, 2007

To the Editor:

As a performing musician, I enthusiastically agree with Daniel J. Levitin. I feel uneasy listening to classical music concerts and rarely do so, while I have a great time on stage. After all, there I can dance with my instrument and my fellow musicians!

Rip out some seats in the concert halls and add a bar in the back — I’ll be back in the audience in no time, and won’t be the only one.

Etienne Abelin
Basel, Switzerland, Oct. 26, 2007
The writer is a violinist with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

To the Editor:

In suggesting that classical audiences would be better served if they became more animated during concerts by clapping hands, swaying in their seats and shouting, Daniel J. Levitin unfortunately confuses just one aspect of orchestral music — rhythm — with appreciation of the full complexity of the performance.

Great music is written by brilliant composers and when performed by virtuoso musicians is an experience to hear, understand, interpret and, above all, enjoy.

Arthur L. Yeager
Edison, N.J., Oct. 26, 2007

To the Editor:

The ants in Daniel J. Levitin’s pants ought not to manifest themselves in public.

Yes, concert halls did not make their appearance until the 17th century, because a venue for the new type of music was needed. This was a complex art form that required quiet and concentration.

While many people use music as a soundtrack to whatever else they are doing, those truly interested in classical music require quiet so that they can concentrate on what they are hearing.

In witnessing the ever-higher median age of the concert-going public, one can deduce that this quaint notion is surely on the wane.

I have an excellent stereo. When I go to a concert, it is to absorb the music and sound, most specifically the overtone series. If one feels the need to dance like Isadora Duncan to a Beethoven symphony, he can do so at home.

Shhhh!

David Spiel
Hollis Hills, Queens, Oct. 26, 2007

To the Editor:

Daniel J. Levitin asks whether anyone besides himself finds it odd that audiences at Western classical concerts are “again sitting in rapt attention with their hands folded quietly in their laps.”

He need only ask Indian classical music concertgoers, who are at least as rapt but just not as still.

At Western classical music concerts, I find it stifling to be unable to move a finger or hand, nor to nod my head to process the music, nor applaud or otherwise express my appreciation when the music moves me to do so.

These behavioral norms seem unnecessary and elitist, since they only make it harder to enjoy or follow the music.

Like the children that Mr. Levitin mentions, I have now been trained to be (mostly) “civilized” at Western classical concerts.

I certainly hope change will come at the Lincoln Center and elsewhere. As it is, I find that audiences at Indian classical music concerts in the West are much more repressed than in India, but maybe the exchange of behavioral norms can be bidirectional.

Ranjeet Tate
Amherst, N.Y., Oct. 26, 2007