Mexican sones are genres that combine instrumental music, sung poetry, and dance born out the cultural mixture between Indigenous, African, and European traditions (Brill 2010). While fields like anthropology, dance studies, and ethnomusicology have recognized the percussiveness of the dance (González 2004, Power-Sotomayor 2020, Paraíso 2007), the rhythmic intricacies of zapateado (percussive footwork) remain understudied. In recognition of zapateado's sonic contribution to the musical texture in Mexican sones, this study reframes the dancing body as a musical instrument and research modality, drawing upon the conception of dance-music genres in African and Afro-diasporic traditions (Anku 2000, Butler, 2006, Simpson-Litke 2021). I analyze the pasos (step units) as choreomusical motives shaped by timbre, accent, articulation, and rhythm by transcribing footwork, engaging in Practice-in-Research (PiR), and performing ethnography.

Various subgenres of son have emerged throughout different regions of Mexico characterized by the sesquialtera hemiola, which alternates 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures (Brill 2010). In this paper, I compare the rhythmic behavior of zapateado in son calentano from Tierra Caliente (southwest) and son huapango as danced in Chihuahua (north). I first embody the zapateado to then understand it musically through PiR, a kinesthetic modality in research where the practice informs the analytical process and aims to answer scholarly inquiry (Kosstrin 2020). Inspired by the symbols used in the ethnographic fieldwork of Miguel Vélez (González 2004), I provide choreomusical transcriptions that show the rhythmic patterns articulated by the dancer. Many pasos are multi-measure patterns that are often repeated 6-8 times throughout different formal sections. However, the repetition behaves differently in each dance. PiR allows embodiment to be part of the methodology, and when several musical parameters are considered, we can study the rhythms articulated by the dancer as music. Finally, my analysis reveals that stylistic distinctions across subgenres of son are determined by both musical structure and dance.

The shattering climax of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is its final scene, the Sacrificial Dance, where the Chosen One, menaced by a crowd, violently dances herself to death to propitiate the sun god. While the music and choreography of the scene have been studied separately, there has been virtually no attention to the relationship between the orchestration and choreography. I will examine how three choreographies establish different choreography-orchestration relationships, articulating three narrative possibilities of the Chosen One’s response to her fate: 1) terror and submissiveness (Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer’s Nijinsky reconstruction, 1987), 2) madness (Pina Bausch, 1975), and 3) dominance and control (Martha Graham, 1984).

I build on previous work to uncover how continuous parameters in the music (timbre and orchestration) and dance (motion trajectories, expansion and contraction of the body) contribute to the scene’s form. I show that the portrayal of violence is determined by the interaction of the choreography and orchestration.

Pinning down rhythm tap dance’s musical instrument is a complex matter. While tap shoes might seem the most obvious candidate, some dancers argue that the floor or body is the true instrument (Nemr 2019, Michael 2025). Moreover, there is great variation in tap dancers’ footwear, floors, and bodies; and in staple genres such as stair, chair, and sand dances, environmental conditions further change the instrument’s nature. Such ambiguity and inconsistency trouble instrument-based analysis. Accordingly, this paper theorizes what I call the “tap instrument.” I conceptualize the tap instrument as a “variable assemblage” (Théberge 2017) or “system” (Heyde 1975) that typically consists of the shoes, floor, body, and gravity-governed environment. However, my definition encompasses the entire constellation of tap practice, including tap performed on any surface; using any footwear (or “handwear”); seated, standing, or suspended; and with any bodily variation. By treating the tap instrument as an assemblage of changeable parts, my approach acknowledges all variants of tap practice. My theorization thus resists a totalizing conception of tap’s instrument and idiom that constructs a center and margins.

Aiming to understand tap dance’s musical syntaxes and expressive meanings through the lenses of materiality and affordances (De Souza 2017; Cole 2024), this paper ultimately demonstrates how thinking “with” the tap instrument serves as a productive analytical lens for understanding rhythm tap. Through case studies highlighting variations in the instrument’s assemblage, I reveal how tap expresses various types of musical meaning by negotiating the physical affordances and limitations of a given assemblage. Defamiliarizing the tap instrument’s components encourages close attention to that which usually recedes from view, enabling us to examine the generic norms of tap that derive from specific aspects of its assemblage. Drawing on methodologies from creativity studies, improvisation studies, and phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Zemblyas and Niederauer 2017; Cook 2018; Schuiling 2018), this approach highlights the interplay between instruments and musicians’ decisions. More broadly, examining the variants of the tap instrument yields valuable insights into the role of instruments in the production of genre, and acknowledging bodily and experiential variation challenges models of embodiment in music-making that assume a generic, universal body.