Springs in Traditional Dance: An Analysis and Classification

Abstract

The notation practice at the Dance Department of the Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is related primarily to Central European traditional dances. The applied dance notation system is Labanotation1 which uses abstract symbology to identify movements. Because of this abstractness for proper reconstruction a thorough analysis and classification of movement is needed. A characteristic and frequently used movement class of the Central European traditional dances is springs. On notating these dances and observing their reconstruction during teaching a divergence can be encountered between the comparatively narrow possibility of indicating springs by the analytical and symbological means of Labanotation and the wide variety of real movement phenomena. The investigation of certain aspects of this variety led to a classification which covers the ways of releasing the weight in traditional dances. On identifying the movement category in question some ambiguity can be found in terminology in the referring textbooks.2 The generally used, everyday term for it is jump, with an understanding of lifting the body in the air and arriving back to the ground. The aim of the investigation below is to call attention that this understanding is narrow, occasionally improper and does not cover certain important features of this movement category. Therefore in this study to identify the category at issue the expression spring is used in-