Music to Make You Warm

Snow fell this week in New England, and it got me thinking- again- about warming up in dance! This time, however, it got me thinking about the music I use to warm up my students.

Typically, the warm up music dictates what kind of class a student will be involved in. If it's jazz, I'll typically put on some Dance or Electronic music. At least, that's what I've been using lately. If it's lyrical, I'll put on some slow, pretty sounding music, albeit usually sad. While I usually let the barre be the warm up for a ballet class, if I do a stretch in the center, I'll put on a piece of music that I found on a Finis Jhung and Scott Killian cd entitled "Atmospheric Stretching". Lately, however, I've been into something a little different.

For my younger classes, I've stuck with keeping genre of dance with the genre of music. For my older students, I've been straying the beaten path. I've been going down a more modern/contemporary route. I've been using the soundtrack to "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" movie (US version). The music is done by the same pair that did the soundtrack for "The Social Network"- Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. When my students who are on the younger side hear it, they usually say something like "this is weird." Well, it is. But I love it! It's slightly ominous, while being atmospheric. Having read the book by Stieg Larsson, but not having seen the movie yet, it seems to capture the essence of the story. However, I'm not quite going for that violent, thriller/crime theme in the dance class. Instead, it provides a feeling of strength for the dancers to relate with.

For a while before I was using that soundtrack, I was working with Balmorhea's self-titled album from 2007. My students liked the aspect of typewriters and sandpaper-sounding tones. It allowed for me to warm up the students at a slow-ish pace, but also allowing me to gauge how the students were feeling and either speed it up or slow it down, or even work a little longer on specific areas of the body. Without specific or consistent time signatures, or even beats, it provided more of an atmospheric soundtrack, than a downbeat driven class.

What kind of music do you like to warm up to in class? Do you like faster music or slower? What kinds of warm ups get your blood flowing faster?