Social Dance Research Articles

Serious Leisure, Play and the Construction of Community among Older Adult Square Dancers

ABSTRACTThis article adds to the literature on social dance and aging with an ethnographic study of the square dance community in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, most of whose members are older adults. Based on focus groups and interviews with square dancers, a survey of the square dance community, and participant observation, we focus on the serious and playful aspects of the dance and their role in creating community. We examine aspects of square dance that contribute to successful aging: the pleasure of socializing and friendships, the joy of moving the body to music, and the pleasure of dressing for the dance.

Feeling the Beat: Bouncing Synchronization to Vibrotactile Music in Hearing and Early Deaf People.

The ability to dance relies on the ability to synchronize movements to a perceived musical beat. Typically, beat synchronization is studied with auditory stimuli. However, in many typical social dancing situations, music can also be perceived as vibrations when objects that generate sounds also generate vibrations. This vibrotactile musical perception is of particular relevance for deaf people, who rely on non-auditory sensory information for dancing. In the present study, we investigated beat synchronization to vibrotactile electronic dance music in hearing and deaf people. We tested seven deaf and 14 hearing individuals on their ability to bounce in time with the tempo of vibrotactile stimuli (no sound) delivered through a vibrating platform. The corresponding auditory stimuli (no vibrations) were used in an additional condition in the hearing group. We collected movement data using a camera-based motion capture system and subjected it to a phase-locking analysis to assess synchronization quality. The vast majority of participants were able to precisely time their bounces to the vibrations, with no difference in performance between the two groups. In addition, we found higher performance for the auditory condition compared to the vibrotactile condition in the hearing group. Our results thus show that accurate tactile-motor synchronization in a dance-like context occurs regardless of auditory experience, though auditory-motor synchronization is of superior quality.

On gray dancing: Constructions of age-normality through choreography and temporal codes

Against the background of population aging, older peoples dance has attracted attention in research and its health promoting effects and social meanings have been brought to the fore. In this article we focus on the context and power dimensions of dance with an emphasis on the organizing of dance among older adults in terms of social discourses and age relationships. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 33 older dancers and 11 dance providers in Sweden, the study illustrates how dance is organized through social discourses on healthism and on the increasing group of older people as a powerful consumer group. The study highlights that older people and their social dance contexts are marked and subordinated in relation to younger age groups through non-verbal practices such as choreography and temporal codes. In short, dancing among older adults is not only a common health promoting and social activity, but also an arena in which age and age normality are negotiated and constructed.

Tracing Tangueros: Argentine Tango Instrumental Music. By Kacey Link and Kristin Wendland.

‘Tango is a sad thought that is danced’ (Enrique Santos Discépolo, cited and translated, p. 11). Tango has been popular internationally since the early twentieth century: its romanticized imaginings of risqué, low-life origins gripping people’s hearts across diverse social classes and cultures. Adopted in new environments, it has retained certain of its idiosyncrasies, whether in France, Finland, or Japan. But what gives Argentine tango music its essence? Can these idiosyncrasies be distilled and identified? In this book, Link and Wendland try to do just this by examining the music, and tracing the performance and compositional techniques of tango from late nineteenth-century Argentina through to the present day. Crucially, they distinguish between tango as a genre that accompanies popular social dancing, and the development of ‘a refined tango suitable for listening’, identified with the 1920s and the start of the guardia nueva era (p. 45). Their focus on listening shifts the beginning of tango’s Golden Age forward from the 1920s to 1932, the post-Golden Age to 1955, and tango’s rebirth to 1990. This revised timeline presents a fresh perspective that highlights tango’s importance as a music to be listened to: ‘Our view of the beginning of the Golden Age corresponds to the expansion of tango orchestras established primarily for listening, such as those of Fresedo and De Caro, and the formation of orchestras that functioned primarily as dance bands, such as that of Caló. Both changes occurred in 1932’ (p. 52). Accordingly, the role of tango orchestras and ensembles is emphasized—and reflected in the volume’s title. Although the early history of tango dance has received considerable attention, serious engagement with the musical dimension has long been overdue.

한국 사교춤동호회의 인터넷 매체활용에 대한 연구 - 소통과 아카이빙 측면을 중심으로

한국 사교춤동호회의 인터넷 매체활용에 대한 연구 - 소통과 아카이빙 측면을 중심으로

Music and Wellbeing in Everyday Life: An Exploratory Study of Music Experience in Ghana

In this paper we highlight the experience of music in everyday contexts in Ghana. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and semi-structured interviews, we examined how people experience and use music in everyday life in potentially beneficial ways to enhance subjective wellbeing. In contrast to previous research where music’s self-regulatory role has been highlighted primarily in the context of solitary music listening, for the participants in our study music also played a crucial role as a form of social and participatory performance practice. This was particularly evident in the strong connection between music, religion, and social dance.

The Dance Theatre in the Film Pina

Dance Theatre is a kind of comprehensive performance form of high difficulty, based on the generalized dance, pursuing a return to the traditional dance form. Pina Bausch’s Dance Theater will be promoted to a mature period using a special theatre style, which blends various art categories, even elements in life [1]. Speech, voice, sign language, pantomime, social dance, circus, live music, stage devices, natural environment objects, cinematic montage and other elements are combined to form a new diverse and rich dramatic stage language. This paper is mainly to explore the Dance Theater in the film Pina.

The Prohibition of Social Dance Hall and the Entertainment and Amusement Trades Control Act in Times of War in Japan

The Prohibition of Social Dance Hall and the Entertainment and Amusement Trades Control Act in Times of War in Japan

On a sound analysis of Korean Trot singer Nam in-su’s voice

The word “‘trot” means “walk quickly” and the fox-trot, which refers to the performance rhythm of social dance and it is now being used as a word relating to musical genre and performance. The late singer Nam In-su was Korean who performed in the early stage of Korean trots, and he had sung about 1,000 songs for about 20 years since his debut in 1938. His representative songs are “Sorrowful Serenade” (1938), “Vanish Away, the 38th Parallel (the Cease-fire Line of the Korean War)” (1949) and “Parting at Busan Station” (1953). His songs consoled Korean people against the sorrow of a lost and colonized home country and healed the pain generated from the division between South and North Korea and the loss due to the Korean war. This paper analyzes the acoustic components of his vocal voice that induce the softness and liveliness. His voice crosses over three octaves, and even when he sings quickly, his high-pitched sound spreads wide. The sound connection between measures is natural and smooth. In addition, deep vibrations appear at all frequency bandwidths, and pronunciations of lyrics are accurate, so his voice sounds very lively. This study will be helpful in understanding the value of popular singers’ vocal voice supported with acoustic analysis.

노인의 생활무용 참가의 동기요인과 라이프스타일 및 성공적 노화의 관계

노인의 생활무용 참가의 동기요인과 라이프스타일 및 성공적 노화의 관계

Motor abilities necessary to be successful at dancing

The aim of the study was to determine the relation between motor abilities and the rate of success in dancing of 85 students of the Faculty of Kinesiology. Efficiency in dancing was represented by the marks given to the subjects by five experts after performing each dance on the basis of a video recording. The variables’ sample to determine motor abilities consisted of the results achieved by measuring motor abilities of coordination, realization of rhythmical structures, balance, movement frequency, flexibility and explosive strength. By means of regression analysis a statistically significant relationship was established between a predictor set of the students’ motor abilities and the overall dancing efficiency criterion (R = 0.67), the predictor set and the folk dances efficiency criterion (R = 0.67) and the predictor set and the social dances’ efficiency criterion (R = 0.62) (p < 0.01). Predictors with the highest rate of the relationship of the predictor set with the overall dancing efficiency criterion and folk dancing efficiency are drumming without the rhythm and side-steps with a 360° turn. The students with a higher level of rhythmic abilities and coordination will be more successful in performing dancing structures.

노인복지관 커플댄스 현장에서 나타나는 ‘풍기문란’에 대한 탐색 - 규율권력과 자기통제

Senior sport ‘Social Dance’ which aged people in Senior Welfare Center like as being health and promoting friendship is spotlighted. However, the name Social Dance is changed to ‘Happy Dance’, ‘Friendship Dance’ , ‘Couple Dance’, ‘Silver Dance’ for refinement because the name is considered as negative and unwholesome meaning in Korea. For that reason, some of the Centers try to regulate naming ‘Social Dance’. Thus, the purpose of the research is to study what kind of reasons are socioculturally influencing. In short, How negative awareness of Social Dance affects seniors and the social workers. For this examination, total 15 seniors who are participating in Social Dance program in a center and 7 social workers who manage a senior program in a center were interviewed using an inductive reasoning approach over nine months. To analyze the collected data, content analysis, thematic analysis and triangulation methods were used for the trustworthy purpose. The results of this study are as follows: First of all, the seniors who participated in Social Dance were aware o f the fact that Dance is unwholesome and decadence and felt so self-conscious from social pressure. in other words, It indicates that self regulation is being worked by disciplinary power. Secondly, the reason for the regulation is that previously framed strategy of Social Dance in media gave negative influence to the seniors socioculturally. In spite of social prejudice, the seniors wan to do Social Dance as friendship, physical activity, relationship and socialization in a public place, not in a private place.

현대 도시민속으로서 한국 사교춤에 대한 문화상호적 접근

현대 도시민속으로서 한국 사교춤에 대한 문화상호적 접근

Somatics: A Buzzword Defined

I recently traveled with a group of college students on a day trip to New Orleans, LA for an observation of social dance and culture. The students’ assignment included finding moments of spontaneou...

Stunning Males and Powerful Females: Gender and Tradition in East Javanese Dance by Christina Sunardi

Reviewed by: Stunning Males and Powerful Females: Gender and Tradition in East Javanese Dance by Christina Sunardi Russell P. Skelchy (bio) Stunning Males and Powerful Females: Gender and Tradition in East Javanese Dance. Christina Sunardi. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015. New Perspectives on Gender and Music. xxxiii + 217 pp., 18 black-and-white photographs, 8 line drawings, 2 maps, 1 chart, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-252-08059-2 (Hardcover), $95.00; 978-0-252-08059-3 (Paperback), $30.00; 978-0-252-09691-4 (E-book). Christina Sunardi's Stunning Males and Powerful Females adds to a growing body of literature at the intersections of gender, performance, and music. Her choice of Indonesia, specifically a small city in East Java called Malang, as a site to explore gender, power, and dance proves especially productive. Indonesia is not only historically rich in the performing arts; it is also a country where strict conceptions of gender roles are policed through local customs and mass media and by state and religious authorities. Conversely, the politics of identity and gender are continuously negotiated in both public and private spheres, especially in the performing arts. Java also has an extensive history of cross-gender dance. In the broader context of female and male impersonation in theater, such as wayang wong in the Yogyakarta court, ludruk in East Java, and ritual and social dances like seblang and gandrung in Banyuwangi, the dance traditions described in this book fit quite well. The book opens with a preface describing various locales where Sunardi studied and observed the performance of drumming, dancing, and singing. [End Page 158] She observes that the importance of "embodying femininity" is not merely for visual impact but also for how the power of femaleness and of dance performance contributes to Indonesian ideas about tradition, history, and identity (iv–xiv). This premise drives her study of how male and female performers expressed, embodied, and reproduced female power in East Javanese dance and music traditions. In the process of studying performance, Sunardi intriguingly finds a self-reflexive awareness of how her own sexed, mixed-race African American body shaped her fieldwork interactions and conclusions. Sunardi explains how, as a dark-skinned American whose complexion was similar to that of many Javanese people, difference was mitigated because she was perceived as "less foreign" than white Americans (xxvi–xxvii). Sunardi's ethnic background (among other characteristics) led some performers to be more comfortable with her, perhaps believing she would be more sympathetic to their East Javanese subaltern perspectives on music and dance relative to the central Javanese traditions, which are more prestigious (and more researched). Her identity as a researcher was further complicated because some Indonesians believed her to be a man who dressed and lived as a female (waria), based in part on her interest in cross-gender performance combined with her height, broad shoulders, and athletic build. Sunardi's discussion of mixed-race identity and misrecognition suggests further areas to explore, especially as nonwhite and mixed-race researchers increasingly complicate and confound local preconceptions and stereotypes of the Western researcher. The main body of the book consists of six chapters in which Sunardi examines East Javanese cross-gender dance traditions like Beskalan and Ngremo. Each chapter produces a theme supporting the argument that performance contributes to cultural processes where gender and sex boundaries are continuously negotiated in ways affecting how maleness and femaleness are performed. Drawing from research in gender studies, ethnomusicology, and anthropology, chapter 1 describes how ideas such as "contingent masculinity" (Blackwood 2010) and "female masculinity" (Halberstam 1998) influenced her approach. Sunardi examines the ways performers in East Java expressed and demarcated femaleness and maleness based on classifications of dance into particular gendered styles. She suggests that although gendered dance styles form the basis of East Javanese dance, most performers understood that a person's ability to perform a gendered style did not map directly onto biological sex. Her explanation of how competence was assessed according to a dancer's personality or disposition effectively addresses how crossgender dance blurred gender boundaries both onstage and in the quotidian lives of males performing "female dances." The chapter concludes by addressing the relationship between Islam...

Instructional DVD video lesson with code switching: its effect on the performance level in dancing social dance among grade 10 special program in the art students of the Philippines

Abstract This paper shows that the experimental group who are exposed to DVD Video Lesson that uses code switching language has an average mean score in the pretest of 1.56, and this increased to an average mean of 3.50 in the posttest. The control group that uses DVD Video Lesson that uses purely English language got an average mean of 1.06 in the pretest and increased to 1.53 in the posttest. Based on the results of the performance posttest taken by the two groups, the experimental group has a dramatic increase in scores from the pretest to posttest. Although both groups had increased in their performance scores from pretest to posttest, the experimental group (code switching language) performs well in the posttest than the control group. As revealed in this findings , there is a significant difference in the posttest scores between the experimental group who are exposed to DVD lesson that uses code switching as a medium of instruction and the control group who are exposed to DVD lesson that uses English. The students who are exposed to the Video Lesson that uses code switching perform well than those students who are exposed in DVD video lesson that uses purely English language. DVD Video lesson that uses code switching as a medium of instruction in teaching social dance is the useful approach in teaching Grade 10 Special Program in the Art students. The language used (code switching) is the powerful medium of instruction that enhances the learning outcomes of the students to perform well. This paper could be an eye opener to the Department of Education to inculcate the used of first language/local language or MTB-MLE, not only in Grade I to III but all level in K to 12 programs, since education is a key factor for building a better nation.

Performance and Temporalisation: Time Happens eds. by Jodie McNeilly, and Maeva Veerapen

Reviewed by: Performance and Temporalisation: Time Happens eds. by Jodie McNeilly, and Maeva Veerapen Julia Moriarty Performance and Temporalisation: Time Happens. Edited by Stuart Grant, Jodie McNeilly, and Maeva Veerapen. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. ix + 247 pp. $95.00 cloth. Performance and Temporalisation: Time Happens is a new addition to Palgrave MacMillan's Performance Philosophy series, edited by Laura Cull, Alice Lagaay, and Freddie Rokem. The series includes monographs and collections of essays that explore the relationship between performance and philosophy, allowing for a wide range of understanding within each of those terms. Its expansion of performative modes and philosophical studies allows the series to address not only the philosophy of performance but also performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-performance. This collection of essays is divided into four parts, and in this way, the collection is able to explore comprehensively its central argument: that time is "not a given, natural, objective phenomenon, but a condition and product of processes of human activity" (1). The book takes a necessarily interdisciplinary approach, including writings from not just the expected theatrical artists, dancers, and visual artists but also a variety of performance-makers (broadly construed), including architects, poets, and critics. The collection is intentionally wide in scope, allowing it to become a work of "performance philosophy" that addresses the many iterations of and approaches to both performance and philosophy, plus the many combinations thereof. Part I: World, Space, Place contains five essays that look at the ability of a physical place to affect the understanding of time. Jeff Malpas kicks the book off [End Page 336] with a deconstruction of the positionality of time and space in "Timing Space-Spacing Time." He breaks the philosophical argument into five major subarguments that peruse the points of layering and differentiation between temporality and spatiality and roots these explorations in philosophy and practical examples. "Situated Structures," by Amanda Yates and Gemma Loving-Hutchins, examines the performativity and temporality of architecture through the presentation of microarchitecture, as well as site- and time-specific pieces of architecture, as examples of how architecture can engage time and space. "Suspended Moments," by John Di Stefano and Dorita Hannah, works from Antonin Artaud's demand that theatre be a space of immediacy to investigate how real-life events can take the theatre from a place of artifice to a liminal space of change for the audience. In Ian Maxwell's "My Big Fat Greek Baptism," the reader is taken on an autoanthropological study of the transcendent quality of ritual in the Greek orthodox tradition, as different rituals lie on top of each other, creating a cultural palimpsest of community and meaning. And finally, "A Shared Meal," by Jeff Stewart, looks at meals as cross-sections of divinity within the everyday mundane. Part II: Self, Movement, Body includes five essays that evaluate the role of movement and body in the performance of time. "The Crannies of the Present," by Brian Massumi, plumbs the murky depths of the cognitive gap between sensation and action, finding that the potentiality of action is directly tied to time and the subjectivity of experience. Jack Reynolds's "Time Out of Joint" presents the converse argument to Massumi's chapter; Reynolds engages Heidegger's triple layering of the temporal to argue that a poststructuralist understanding of the cognitive gap is an insufficient means of viewing that phenomena. Erin Manning ping-pongs the argument back to the poststructuralist side in "Three Propositions for a Movement of Thought" by proposing that the body is not a subject that moves but a movement in itself: The body begins in movement, is more than itself, and does not depend on an a priori intentional subject. Conversely, Lanei Rodemeyer, in "The Body in Time/Time in the Body," uses non-visual bodily activities to consciously situate and gender bodies in a fundamental structure. Maeva Veerapen's "A Moment of Creation" lives in the "moment of waiting" between two dance partners in an improvised social dance, reflecting that dance reveals the performance of time. Part III: Image, Performance, Technology presents another five essays but moves more firmly into the realm of performance. Jodie McNeilly constructs her own method of analyzing the temporal...

Across Borders and Genres in Malaysia and Thailand: The Changgong Rhythm of the Andaman Sea Coast

This article looks at the music of a borderland region in Southeast Asia and how a particular drum accompaniment common to several local folk genres found there connects different social, linguistic, and/or religious communities. It focuses on the Andaman Coast of Malaysia and Thailand: a confluence of people and cultures in what was once a rural backwater prior to World War II but an area that has also long been exposed to contemporaneous cosmopolitan society from its neighbors in the region. These interrelationships produced a rich musical environment with a shared “Andaman” character, but as the twentieth century progressed and the region became divided along national lines, people and culture ceased to flow as they had previously. Legacies of a common Andaman Coast culture, however, remained extant despite being under-acknowledged. I explore those legacies through ethnographic and musical data from several cases that are united by a shared drumming practice. I refer to it as the changgong rhythm (borrowing the name of its best-known manifestation) and describe its archetypal features and appearances in four separate songs—including two mixed-sex social dances, a musical folk theater, and a ceremonial consecration, each of which holds an important position in the repertoires of its respective musical community. By using this musical phenomenon to bring attention to the common character and social networks of the Andaman Coast region (across borders, genres, and time), we can gain better understanding of some of the complex social dynamics that have shaped the region in recent decades, particularly in the transformations to the livelihoods, lifestyles, identities, and allegiances of its once-mobile populations.

Rehearsing democracy: Enhancing community through the interdisciplinary performance improvisation series ‘Shared Agendas’

This article presents the inter-disciplinary improvised performance series Shared Agendas , an annual event at the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand, as a vehicle for reinforcing effective democratic community interaction. I am referring to interaction that is inclusive, open, non-hierarchical, non-judgemental and socially responsive and responsible. In couching these inclusive spontaneous events as a form of academic meeting, where members work together to solve problems and find a common ground of understanding or agreement, I contend that the artists involved are practising the kind of socially concerned democratic process that we might wish for all groups, organisations or nation states worldwide. Dance therapist Adwoa Lemieux (1988) suggests that, within a danced improvisation, any difficulties and conflicts of interest are evident, physical, real, immediate and therefore immediately resolvable. In this form of community engagement, the conversation is directed towards co-operation, mutual sharing and communication between the performers, technical personnel and the viewers as active critical witnesses. Because of the intense engagement and preoccupation with the process by all participants, including the audience, this kind of performance meeting becomes what Schechner (1988) terms, a ‘ living entity’ or microcosm of society. In describing this theatre of inter-relationship, I draw on the literatures of art and social justice theory, deep ecology, cognitive biology, somatics, perception psychology, education and dance in order to support this discussion.

Assembly Lines and Contra Dance Lines: The Ford Motor Company Music Department and Leisure Reform

AbstractThe automaker Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company Music Department in 1924 with the goal of reviving what he called “old-fashioned dancing and early American music.” Ford's interest in the Anglo-American social dances of his youth quickly grew from dances hosted by the Fords for company executives to a nationwide dance education program. This article traces the history of the Music Department's dance education program and examines the parallels between it and the company's earlier efforts in social engineering—namely the Ford Profit Sharing Plan (better known as the “Five Dollar Day”) and the Ford English School. The Music Department's activities offer an opportunity to explore how industry sought to shape music and dance through Americanization efforts and leisure reform as Detroit rapidly urbanized during the first decades of the twentieth century. Supporters of Ford's revival viewed the restrained musical accompaniment and dance movements as an antidote to jazz music and dances, but more importantly, music and dance served as an object lesson in the physical discipline necessary for assembly line labor. Ford's dance education campaign reveals the degree to which industry was once entwined with leisure reform in southeast Michigan.