🎹 Should We Dance at the Keyboard?

"You don't need to control your fingers. You need to control the piano."

Following recent reflections on flexibility and relaxation, I’m often asked whether movement at the piano should be choreographed — like a kind of dance.

In short: no. But it might look like it is.

Let me explain.

Music is a performance art, but it is not a visual art. Unlike dance, movement in music is a byproduct, not the goal.

The primary aim of a pianist’s movement is acoustic — not aesthetic.

Some may argue that once the musical and instrumental needs are met, there’s room for visual expression.

I’d respond: the demands of music, piano, and biomechanics leave little space for movement that doesn’t serve sound.

If it looks beautiful — as in the fluid stride of a sprinter — that beauty is functional. Not decorative.

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Movement Follows Priorities

As we’ve established:

1. Music comes first

2. Then the instrument

3. Then the pianist

From this perspective, the pianist’s movements are shaped by the need to serve sound — not style.

And since the pianist is the flexible part of the piano/pianist system, the movements required are inherently complex.

To navigate this, I distinguish between two fundamentally different types of motion:

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1. Playing Motions

Movements that produce sound by activating the keys.

2. Preparation Motions

Movements that position the body to enable effective playing — without making sound themselves.

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Why This Distinction Matters

These two types of motion have opposed purposes.

In my experience, many technical problems arise from conflicts between them.

Often, preparation motions dominate — the hand moves into position with too much force or too much delay — and this disturbs the clarity or timing of the actual sound-producing gesture.

This reverses the order of priorities: putting the pianist first, and the music and instrument second and third.

It may feel intuitive, but it’s counterproductive.

Playing motions must take absolute priority, because they control the sound.

Preparation motions should be swift, minimal, and non-disruptive.

Why?

Because excess energy from a preparation motion is often absorbed into the playing motion — resulting in unintended accents, tension, or blur.

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One Last Thought

There’s a line I often repeat to my students:

You don’t need to control your fingers.

You need to control the piano.

We’ll soon look at how the body, the instrument, and the music co-shape a complex movement language — one guided not by choreography, but by core principles of function and expression.

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JM | Art of Piano

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