Dance Routines Research Articles

Does The Wii Zumba® Game Meet ACSM’S Recommended Guidelines For Cardiorespiratory Fitness?

Wii Zumba® Fitness World Party is an active video game (AVG) in which celebrity instructors lead Zumba® routines from around the globe. This AVG form of dance could provide a very appealing, cost-effective mode of aerobic training; however, we are unaware of any studies that have investigated cardiorespiratory or metabolic responses to this unique AVG. PURPOSE: Determine oxygen uptake (VO2), heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) responses of sedentary women completing a single session of Wii Zumba® aerobic dance. METHODS: Seven sedentary female participants (22.71 ± 2.69 yrs) completed two sessions: a preliminary session to assess cardiorespiratory fitness and an experimental session to determine cardiorespiratory and metabolic responses to a Wii Zumba® AVG protocol. The Wii Zumba® session protocol consisted of a 5-min warm-up, an 11min, 15s dance portion that included 4 different dance routines (two moderate and two high intensity), and a 2-min cool-down. HR and RPE were assessed and recorded in the last 30 seconds of each stage (warm up, dance 1, dance 2, dance 3, dance 4, and cool down). VO2 and HR were monitored across the session using a metabolic system (ParvoMedics, Sandy, UT) and heart rate monitor (Polar T31, Polar Electro, Inc, USA), respectively. VO2, %VO2peak, HR, RER, and RPE (Borg, 15 pt. scale) were analyzed for session 2 using a one-way repeated measure ANOVA. RESULTS: For VO2 and %VO2peak, there was a significant time effect with increases in both across time [F(5,30) = 20.06, P = 0.0001; F(5,30) = 20.52, P = 0.0001, respectively]. There was also a significant time effect for HR [F(5,30) = 21.2, P = 0.0001] as well as RER [F(5,30) = 28.76, P = 0.0001] with increases in both over the exercise session. In addition, RPE revealed a time effect [F(5,30) = 16.6, P = 0.0001] with increases across the exercise session. Mean (± SE) percent VO2peak ranged between 57.47 (± 2.82%) and 64.67 (± 4.74%) and mean HR rose from 136.57 (± 8.52 b/min) to 155.71 (± 6.19 b/min) across the 4 dance sessions. RPE peaked at 13.57 ± 0.72 during the last dance session and mean total kcal expenditure was 108.43 ± 5.82 kcal. CONCLUSIONS: The Wii Zumba® AVG protocol elicits a moderately stressful cardiorespiratory workout, and meets ACSM guidelines for improving cardiorespiratory fitness.

“Let the Dance Floor Feel Your Leather”: Set Design, Dance, and the Articulation of Audiences in RKO Radio's Astaire-Rogers Series

:This study revisits a classic film series from the high point of Modernism's influence on Hollywood art direction: RKO Radio's Astaire–Rogers society film musicals from 1933 to 1938. The study makes use of primary evidence, contemporary reviews, and critical writings from the 1930s to illustrate the corporate, social, and production contexts of a film series that made effective use of the networks of social relations extending from studio personnel to theater patrons. The study adopts the principle of articulation, drawn from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, to explain how discourses surrounding the films were used by necessity to ensure success for each film and offer the possibility of continued financial return. In the Astaire–Rogers series, various elements of the film text, such as dance routines and modernist furnishings, were articulated to audiences through extratextual material, and the visual landscape of aspirational modernism connected with real domestic and social spaces. The study proposes that the series offered more than an escapist fantasy for the passive audience—it engaged audiences physically and discursively to develop an intimate connection between screen aesthetics and financial success.

Nonahere Òri Tahiti: Pipiri Mā by Patrick Araia Amaru, Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku (review)

Reviewed by: Nonahere Òri Tahiti: Pipiri Māby Patrick Araia Amaru, Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku Terava Ka‘anapu Casey Nonahere Òri Tahiti: Pipiri Mā, by Patrick Araia Amaru, Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku, 2012. In Tahitian and French. Papeete: Editions des Mers Australes. isbn: 978-2-905808-44-8; 46 pages, illustrations, audio cd, dvd. €30.00. During the 2011 national celebration of Heiva in French Polynesia—an annual festival of culture and patrimony well known for dance competitions often involving elaborate preparations, costuming, oratory, and musical performances—the Tahitian dance troupe Nonahere Òri Tahiti realized the legend of Pipiri mā. A significant contribution to that year’s Hura Tau (Senior Division) section of the Heiva competition, this performance has been captured in a combination book, cd, and dvdpackage. Collaboratively realized by prize-winning Tahitian literary author Patrick Amaru, Marquesan anthropologist Edgar Tetahiotupa, and Matani Kainuku, director of the dance troupe Nonahere, this collection offers audiences an extraordinary window into Tahitian culture through a key myth related to the constellation Scorpio while capturing a sense of the vital energy and possibility of multimedia art in the contemporary Pacific. In the legend of Pipiri mā, Pipiri and Rehua (brother and sister) run away from home after being starved and neglected by their parents. They climb the tallest mountain, and, before their parents can reach them, they are tricked by an evil spirit and carried away on an enormous kite. They ascend to the highest heavens and take their place in the stars as the constellation [End Page 302]Scorpio. An important part of what this collection makes visible is that knowledge of traditional histories and stories has endured despite centuries of massive social and cultural change and is being used to revitalize cultural practices that Pacific Island communities are enacting in creative and sometimes surprising ways. Moreover, contemporary media-technology can now bring knowledge sources and performance traditions into mainstream accessibility beyond the temporal borders of onetime events and annual festivals. In the long-term scope of cultural preservation, Pipiri māis a notable example of the role played by high-quality media releases in how rising generations view themselves—as participants in these cultural practices and as audiences in diasporic contexts, removed from actual performance events but participating in globe-spanning conversations surrounding culture, art, dance, music, and story. In their local and regional circulations, such compilations engage regional and extra-regional audiences in a process that asks them to question what these legends mean for contemporary lives and what roles they can play in education and cultural renewal. Nona-here Òri Tahiti used approximately 160 cast members (dancers, singers, chanters, drummers, musicians, and costume designers) in this collaboration in order to display traditional and expected dance routines that breathe life into this story. The traditional pā‘ō‘ā, for example, is a group routine in which the dancers sit in a circle and sing/chant while select members of the group dance in the middle of the circle. However, Nonahere uses the pā‘ō‘ā as a highlighted scene in the beginning of the story when the parents are gathering the meal. This supports the story line, fulfills the dance requirements of a Hura Tau presentation for Heiva, and lends a creative edge to a dance style appropriate to the event. The dances are interwoven into the legend, much like the male and female counterparts are paired in the opening ‘ōte‘a (a fast, vigorous dance), to represent the balance and harmony necessary in humanity. This tale considers underlying tones of gender within legendary stories, intertwined creatively in order to remind us of the lessons of humanity in a tale of sacrifice. The presentation depicts a customary parable, while displaying aspects of culture that correspond to dance and drumming traditions. The intensity and speed of the drumbeats help the story to climax, while contributing a sense of conflict and complexity to the plot. Soloists serve as highlighted characters who embody significant ideas of the legend, such as the mischievous spirits that lead Pipiri and Rehua to the kite. Similarly, the ‘ōrero becomes song-like, matching the tone of the drumbeats to create a melodic, soulful emphasis on the drama. Both in...

Similar hats on similar heads: uniformity and alienation at the Rat Pack's Summit Conference of Cool

AbstractThis paper considers the nightclub shows of the Rat Pack, focussing particularly on The Summit performances at the Sands Hotel, Las Vegas, in 1960. Featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, these shows encompassed musical, comic and dance routines, drawing on the experiences each member had in live vaudeville performance. The discussion outlines these individual histories, and draws attention to a shared fascination with impersonation, which forms an explicit and implicit part of the act, as the performers’ stage personas are already emulatory. In addition to the influence of vaudeville, the construction of the Rat Pack also draws on the structures of blackface minstrelsy, with the interactions of the five members being patterned on a fluid variant of the interlocutor–endmen relationships. The interweaving of these influences and performance styles underpins a dominant concern of the troupe, as the comic material frequently negotiates the racial, national and religious identities of the individual performers. In particular, this deals with their shared status of having immigrant ancestry, a status which I term as being ‘hyphenated-American’, suspended between historical, public and aspirational identities.

Jumping into the frame

The second part of this series outlines how children can use computing to create PE warm-ups and even dance routines to enhance their enthusiasm for the subject

Yole!Africa: Negotiating Art and War in the East of Congo

On July, 2012 more than 6,000 spectators gathered in the open-air cercle sportif stadium in Goma, east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to cheer the dance routines and vocal feats of the yo...

A bittersweet score: a father's account of his family's 20-year journey after a pediatric brain tumor diagnosis.

A Bittersweet Score:A Father’s Account of His Family’s 20-Year Journey After a Pediatric Brain Tumor Diagnosis Christopher Riley I hadn’t seen him for 20 years, not since the day he drilled a hole in Peter’s head and left the stainless steel drill and bloody bit on the bedside table. He figured prominently in the story I often told of that day when he, a doctor in training, [End Page 3] informed my wife Kathy and me that, “Wow,” our five-year-old son had “an impressive tumor” in his brain. He announced it with the admiration I reserve for a touchdown pass or stunning sunset. Since that day, he had become a venerable physician. Back then he was the resident who met us in the ER after our pediatrician told us that the MRI of Peter’s brain was “not normal,” that “there might be a growth.” As if there might not be. I imagined that Peter’s brain might simply have an unusual shape, or that the scan revealed some undiscovered fracture and the authorities only wanted to lock me up and all with my son would be well. The thrilled young doctor slew those hopes with an ice pick: “Wow, that’s an impressive tumor.” I said, “That’s the first time anyone has used the word tumor.” The doctor appeared mortified and started over. Now 20 years later we found ourselves at the same party and I felt a compulsion to introduce myself, remind him we’d met that day in 1993, and tell him what had become of Peter and his family in the decades since he’d made that mortifying mistake, one I hoped had become for him a defining moment. To my disappointment, he didn’t seem to remember. Peter was my red-haired boy. Fearless and whip smart, he told a stream of knock-knock jokes and performed dance routines choreographed by his 8-year-old sister Rachel. Six months of headaches, vomiting and clumsy falls led to discovery of the tumor. When I phoned my parents with the news, I couldn’t speak the words, words that felt as if they spelled my boy’s doom. My body refused to pronounce them. The war for Peter’s life began with surgery. I sat with Kathy in the surgical waiting area, fearing every minute that I would see the surgeon approaching with his shoulders slumped in mortal defeat. I learned during those hours that fear of your child’s death is a physical pain, a constriction in the chest, a suffocation. At the end of that wait, the surgeon told us the tumor was out and Peter had survived. The pathology indicated the tumor was a medulloblastoma. Without additional treatment, including radiation, it was certain to come back. Kathy’s knees buckled. Having just endured one life-and-death battle, we were plunged into another. To complicate matters, Peter wasn’t waking from surgery. Even after the anesthesia wore off, Peter remained groggy, unable to move or focus his eyes. Through the following days, Peter failed to rouse or speak. Sores formed at the back of his neck where his unswallowed saliva pooled. Neurologists doubted he knew us. His doctors hoped Peter would recover but it was possible he would remain as he was indefinitely. As I sat holding his useless hand, watching his useless body, I thought I’d never loved him as much as I did now. Peter’s doctors presented two treatment options. The first consisted of relatively high doses of daily radiation, the most effective known method for preventing the return of the cancer. But radiation wasn’t good for young brains. It “shaved IQ points,” they said in wild understatement. So they offered a second, experimental option, one that reduced radiation by a third and added months of chemotherapy. The doctors hoped this new regimen would be as effective as the old but cause less cognitive damage. They asked us to choose. It seemed impossible. We gathered the scant available data. We weighed the risks. We prayed. We took a leap. Without asking him, we made a decision for Peter we knew...

Gaming the system: Gender performance inDance Central

This article investigates how the Dance Central game series (Harmonix Music Systems) invites and persuades players to experiment with gender performance. Dance Central uses the Xbox 360 Kinect, a motion-sensing interface, to teach players full-body dance routines set to popular club music. This study offers evidence that performative, constructivist gender theories informed the development process for these games, and explores what happens when designers enlist players in putting theory into practice. Dance Central stages visceral encounters with gendered choreography, generating both embodied gender work in the course of gameplay and reflective gender discourse in public-sphere social media. Grounded in qualitative ethnographic research that gives equal attention to interface affordances, game design, player experiences, and game-related discourse, this article offers a case study for understanding how digital media become enculturated as technologies of gender.

FRI0455 Is the presence of generalized joint hypermobility in young adult female dancers beneficial?

BackgroundWithin the community of professional dancers flexible joints are highly regarded for esthetic reasons and often required in order to perform complex dance routines. From a clinical perspective generalized joint...

User Experiences While Playing Dance-Based Exergames and the Influence of Different Body Motion Sensing Technologies

Dance Dance Revolution is a pioneering exergame which has attracted considerable interest for its potential to promote regular exercise and its associated health benefits. The advent of a range of different consumer body motion tracking video game console peripherals raises the question whether their different technological affordances (i.e., variations in the type and number of body limbs that they can track) influence the user experience while playing dance-based exergames both in terms of the level of physical exertion and the nature of the play experience. To investigate these issues a group of subjects performed a total of six comparable dance routines selected from commercial dance-based exergames (two routines from each game) on three different consoles. The subjects’ level of physical exertion was assessed by measuring oxygen consumption and heart rate. They also reported their perceived level of exertion, difficulty, and enjoyment ratings after completing each dance routine. No differences were found in the physiological measures of exertion between the peripherals/consoles. However, there were significant variations in the difficulty and enjoyment ratings between peripherals. The design implications of these results are discussed including the tension between helping to guide and coordinate player movement versus offering greater movement flexibility.

Fraser and the Cheerleader: Values and the Boundaries of Student Speech

Student speech has and continues to be a contested issue in schools. The Supreme Court ruled in Tinker that students do not shed their rights at the schoolhouse gate; in the Kuhlmeier and Fraser decisions, however, the Court gave school officials greater latitude in regulating student speech, especially when it bears the imprimatur of the school. However, in its Frederick decision, the Court established school officials as the arbiters of the meaning of student speech. This article explores the underlying values in schools that rejected the speech of Fraser while accepting the speech act of cheerleaders’ dance routines. It examines how the interpretation of these speech acts by school officials contributes to gender reproduction, with all the inequalities imposed.

Dancing Combines the Essence for Successful Aging

Dancing Combines the Essence for Successful Aging

Pedagogical Applications of the Video GameDance Dance Revolutionto Aural Skills Instruction

In the video gameDance Dance Revolution(DDR), players earn points by depressing buttons with their feet in time with instructions given on the screen by scrolling arrows. The arrows, which reveal the step components of pre-programmed dance routines, are spaced such that all rhythmic attacks are perfectly coordinated with the beats and/or rhythms of Electronic Dance Music. Many aspects of the game, including its emphasis on accurate rhythmic performance and the presence of an objective, real-time scoring mechanism, causeDDRto have significant implications for musicianship training. This article discusses howDDRmay be profitably incorporated into the undergraduate aural skills classroom to help improve sight-reading, rhythm performance, and the dictation of popular music. This article includes both video recorded demonstrations of the game along with a sample curriculum for instructors interested in setting up labs for students to train withDDR.

Dancing to a Disco Beat?: Children, Teenagers, and the Localizing of Popular Music in Bali

�� ��� Th e following examines how children and teenagers in Bali, Indonesia, indigenize local, national, and global forms of popular music in disco dance performances. Th e article focuses on disco dance performances as just one element in a much broader argument about adaptation and change in Balinese society that includes the introduction of popular modes of activity, including television, radio, fi lm, and discos. Appadurai (1996) suggests the overlap of people, places, and economic mechanisms has led to a compression of time and space, a factor Appadurai sees as a hallmark of globalization. Th roughout I highlight how Balinese children and teenagers respond to global infl uences, in particular the infl uences of television and popular music, through their disco dance performances. I do this to illustrate some of the ways in which young people in Bali incorporate and give meaning to popularization modalities in their everyday lives. To begin, I briefl y outline theoretical approaches to globalization before moving on to discuss important studies that focus upon globalization within ethnomusicological research. Having provided this overview, I then move on to consider studies of popular music in Indonesia, in general, and Bali, in particular, to situate the current paper within the context of previous research in my fi eldwork area. By recounting a series of conversations with informants, I then examine the role of popular music in the lives of children and teenagers in Bali to show how television and radio provide young people with access to various forms of local, national, and global popular music and their associated dance forms. Th rough ethnographic descriptions and an application of Foucault’s (1986) concept of heterotopia, I investigate how, by performing their disco dance routines in contexts more associated with traditional Balinese dance, children and teenagers actively fuse external music and dance infl uences with traditional performance practices. Th us, in conclusion, I show how such routines allow children and teenagers to create dance performances that are simultaneously new, modern, and “Balinese.” Before going any further it is important to inform the reader that during fi eldwork, children, teenagers, and adults frequently used the English term “disco dance” when talking among themselves and with the author. Th e same term, therefore, is used throughout the following to denote the particular performance genre under discussion.

Developing Aerobic Dance Routines

(2009). Developing Aerobic Dance Routines. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance: Vol. 80, No. 7, pp. 23-41.

Passionate competitors: the foundation of competitive ballroom dancing in South Africa (1920s-1930s)

By the turn of the nineteenth century ballroom dancing had become a popular social pastime in Europe, North-America and South Africa. The years leading up to the First World War saw a number of South African social dancers, like their Western counterparts, striving to perfect the steps of these imported, ballroom dance routines. Dancers danced partly out of a sheer passion for movement but, more importantly, to maintain and increase their social status within society. Various international and later local dancing organisations were formed to organise and control these dancing events. The creation of these formal bodies unavoidably forced ballroom dancing into a competitive phase that transformed it from a mere social past time to a highly competitive sporting activity.This article will focus on how the founding of prominent international ballroom dance organizations influenced the creation of the South African Dance Teachers Association (S.A.D.T.A.) and how both the British and South African organizations developed competitive ballroom dancing during the 1920s and 1930s. It will also consider the infrastructures required by these official organizations, the shortcomings as well as the determining impact that this had on South Africa’s ballroom dance history. As a result of a number of prerequisites, competitive ballroom dancing is not a sport for the masses, and its formalization in the first half of the twentieth century saw an increased segregation in the dancing halls based on race and class. However, the passion that the 1920 ballroom dancers had for competing laid a firm foundation for the development of dance as a sport in South Africa.

Sonic diaspora, vibrations, and rhythm: thinking through the sounding of the Jamaican dancehall session

The propagation of vibrations may provide a better way of understanding the spread of diasporas than the conventional focus on the circulation of products (Hall 1980, Appadurai 1986, 1996, Gilroy 1993a, Brah 1996). Jamaican sound systems operate as a broadcast medium and a source of CDs, DVDs, and other commercial products (Henriques 2007a). But the dancehall sound system session also propagates a broad spectrum of frequencies diffused through a range of media and activities – described as ‘sounding’ (following Small's 1998 concept of ‘musicking’). These include the material vibrations of the signature low-pitched auditory frequencies of Reggae as a bass culture (Johnson 1980), at the loudness of ‘sonic dominance’ (Henriques 2003). Secondly a session propagates the corporeal vibrations of rituals, dance routines, and bass-line ‘riddims’ (Veal 2007). Thirdly it propagates the ethereal vibrations (Henriques 2007b), ‘vibes’ or atmosphere of the sexually charged popular subculture by which the crowd (audience) appreciate each dancehall session as part of the Dancehall scene (Cooper 2004). The paper concludes that thinking though vibrating frequencies makes it easier to appreciate how audiences with no direct or inherited connection with a particular music genre can be energetically infected and affected – to form a sonic diaspora.

Whose Fire on Freedom Holds More Water?

Whose Fire on Freedom Holds More Water?

‘BOLLYWOOD FLASHBACK’

The songs that punctuate Hindi films and give them much of their remarkable international appeal are particularly significant sites in the cinema's attempt to deal with challenges to traditional structures of authority. Focusing on spectacular moments of non‐narrative – and often explicitly erotic – pleasure, such songs proffer utopian scenarios within which the tensions raised by the narratives of kinship in crisis that dominate Hindi film are emolliated. It is the moments of melodic fantasy embedded in Hindi film, the song and dance routines which offer these condensed images of reconciliation, that predominantly working class youths in Britain appropriate in order to express the conflicting hopes and fears that characterize their own cosmopolitan identities. In this article, I discuss two of the most important instances of remix culture in Britain over the last decade in order to offer a retrospective take on the uses of Hindi‐language film by second‐generation Asian youths.

Guidelines for developing and implementing humor in nursing classrooms.

The three teachers in this study selected many types of humor to exemplify their points. To avoid predictability, they varied their humor presentation styles and frequency by using simple cartoons projected on a screen, jokes and stories, and songs and dance routines. All three teachers engaged in a continuous search for new material to further expand their repertoire. Careful not to overuse humor, they never lost sight of the learning objectives, but they added enough humor to sustain students' attention. The teachers gradually increased their use of classroom humor as they felt more comfortable with the content and setting. All of the students' and teachers' comments corroborate the conclusions reached by Bryant and Zillmann 1989), "It would appear that success in teaching with humor...depends on employing the right type of humor, under the proper conditions, at the right time, and with properly motivated and receptive students' (p. 74). Not all types of humor are appropriate for all teachers. However, for teachers who carefully invest time and effort into learning to teach with humor, the reward can be a successful and enjoyable experience for all involved.