Movement Vocabulary Research Articles

Unveiling the hidden narratives: investigating gender, identity, and activism in contemporary dance performances within the realm of social arts

Objectives: This study shows how contemporary dance serves as a dynamic platform for challenging and redefining notions of gender and identity. By analyzing a variety of contemporary dance performances, the research aims to reveal the underlying narratives that reflect and contest societal norms. Through a detailed examination of choreographic choices, movement vocabulary, and thematic elements, the study highlights how these components contribute to the deconstruction of traditional gender constructs. Methods: Additionally, the research investigates the role of contemporary dance as a form of activism, focusing on how performers use their craft to entertain, raise awareness, and provoke dialogue on social issues. An artificial neural network (ANN) was employed to estimate the relationships between gender fluidity, the challenge of social norms, and their effects on transformation potential, activist participation, and artistic expression. Results: The results indicate that increases in both gender fluidity and thechallenge to social norms significantly enhance transformation potential, activist participation, and artistic expression. The accuracy of the ANN's predictions was validated through linear regression analysis, demonstrating acceptable error margins compared to experimental results. Conclusions: This study ultimately underscores the transformative power of contemporary dance in shaping social discourse and advocacy.

"The Neon Dress Drags a Wide Belt, Fluttering to Heaven"

This paper deeply analyzes the artistic characteristics of the dance "Flying Sky". By exploring its unique historical origin, movement vocabulary, dance design and the inheritance and development of skills, it shows how the work skillfully integrates classical beauty and modern aesthetics, vividly interprets the elegance and dexterity of the flying sky myth, and conveys profound cultural connotation and artistic charm.

The cruel optimism of contact improvisation: Dancing between neoliberal subjectivation and practices of commoning

Within the social world of Contact Improvisation, the question of class relations remains conspicuous by its absence. Whilst ongoing debates in the global Contact Improvisation (CI) community and recent scholarship have foregrounded the problem of Whiteness, there have been few attempts to provide intersectional analyses of the racialised, classed subjectivation of contact dancers. To make such future enquiry possible, this paper dismantles originary CI myths about ‘natural’ movement, also attended to by Bojana Cvejić, and explores the question of social antagonism through analysing the dance form’s discursive norms and movement vocabulary. As this essay argues, the contact dancer occupies a paradoxical subject position: between a neoliberal embrace of risk-taking and precarity, and a cruelly optimistic prefiguration of the commons.

Examining the Artistic Voices of Community College Dance Students Using a Narrative Inquiry Approach

ABSTRACT In this study, we use a narrative inquiry approach to understand how students construct their artistic voices as part of their educational experience in California community college dance classes. Data collection techniques included semi-structured interviews, video recordings of a dance performance, and a reflective one-page journal where participants described the attributes of their artistic voices. Participants included ten community college dance students. We used socio-cultural theories and the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) framework to analyze individuals’ personal construction and movement vocabulary. We present three findings to inform dance teachers. First, deeper self-understanding was a foundational component of students’ artistic voice. Second, the performance of the artistic voice was guided by students’ construction of personal-interpretative narratives that inspired their bodily choices. Third, the construction of the artistic voice was sustained through three types of power negotiation (compliance, resiliency, and resistance).

Protest Is Mental Health: Afrocentric healing in a dance movement therapy session

Abstract: Cultural ideals are repeatedly coded into hidden messages through drums, sampling, and signifying, which is all embodied through various dance styles. This transformation brings new meaning to political, social, historical, and cultural issues. The policing of the black moving body has become an international symbol of struggle, pain, oppression and injustice. How strong is a symbol? To be seen is to be remembered. When will we forget what has been learned? When will we receive what our ancestors have earned? The purpose of this research is to deepen an understanding of the sub- group or ethnic group known as African- Americans in the new world, also known as, the Americas. This paper begins with an introduction to phenomena such as present day stereotypes, social constructs and mandates on what is considered by Brenda Dixon Gottschild to be the "black dancing body" in America. The discussion to follow deals with how policing the black dancing and moving body occurs throughout various interlinked systems in America. The black female and male forms are constantly violated by lack of access to education, diagnosis of illness and reinforced stereotypes of aggression. An embodied exploration of the Pan- African dance technique known as Umfundalai (pronounced ma-foon-da-la) provides a deeper understanding of protest within the arts. This writer will show therapeutic values inherent in the stylized movement vocabulary of people of the African Diaspora and the utilization of their culture as a viable resource for healing in an acute care psychiatric hospital.

Discurso feminista e identidad americana en la danza moderna: Martha Graham y el significado social del cuerpo femenino

. Este artículo reflexiona acerca de los conceptos del discurso feminista y de la identidad americana en el contexto de la significación social del cuerpo danzante tal y como está representado en las coreografías de la bailarina americana Martha Graham. Aquí abordamos el impacto de las obras revolucionarias Heretic (1929) Lamentation (1930), Primitive Mysteries (1931), Frontier (1935), Letter to the World (1940) y Appalachian Spring (1944), explorando su significado social con referencia a la demarcación de la masculinidad y de la feminidad en la visión de danza de Graham. La iconografía visual, las partituras extraordinarias y la atmósfera sensorial creada por y para estas coreografías seminales son experiencias únicas de una danza artística específica que construye el discurso feminista. La contribución de Martha Graham a la formación de la danza moderna y sus característicos movimientos de ‘contract and release’ que forman la Graham Technique, en la que la energía se localiza en el centro del cuerpo, está saturada de emoción humana. El discurso feminista incorporado en estas coreografías habla del amor y de la muerte, de la opresión y de la libertad, de las limitaciones del género y de la lucha por identidad. Su contribución iluminadora a la danza contemporánea se basó en sus frases de movimiento corporal únicas y en su cuestionamiento sin concesiones de los cuerpos construidos socialmente. Martha Graham creó un nuevo vocabulario de movimiento que revolucionó la danza y se configuró debido al ‘cultural embodiment, cultural communication and the whole shift in the Western lifeworld at the beginning of the twentieth century’ . Palabras clave. Martha Graham, Graham Technique, danza moderna, significado social, discurso feminista, cuerpo femenino, grupos sociales, identidad americana, paisaje musical, cuerpo danzante femenino.

Exploring the Educational and Social Value of Caribbean Dance in Collegiate Education Programs

The purpose of this research paper is to share my findings of the educational and social value of Caribbean Dance. While teaching Afro-Caribbean Dance at New York University, writing assignments and informal interviews influenced the approach to teaching cultural dances to novice and advanced dancers. The Dance Education program at NYU features an African Diaspora track for graduate students pursuing a teaching profession in African and Caribbean dance. This paper investigates the reasons why dances of the African Diaspora have been a miniscule fragment of dance study over the years in collegiate settings as well as the effects on community building and empowerment amongst college students. Research materials included historical timeline of the dances and how it relates to the movement vocabulary of African, Caribbean, and Latin dances. I used written assignments, informal interviews, academic journals, and texts on the history of Caribbean dance to investigate the ways students will be impacted while taking this course. My results demonstrate a counterintuitive effect of both education and social value based on the overall experience of the course and designing the curriculum for dancers to explore the richness of Caribbean dance. My study suggests that the reason why African and Caribbean dances have been categorized as unnecessary in dance education is due to the racism and cultural oppression that is exposed, making the course an act of social reform. I strive to provide a ritual and historic experience, personalizing the West Indian tradition and contextualizing it. Colonialism and slavery played a prominent role in the creation of folk dances that developed in the West Indies, in particular my study in Trinidad and Tobago. Learning a cultural dance is intended to recover the embodied knowledge that already resides in the people and the land it was created on. Therefore, the paper will include the method(s) for non-dancers and dancers to learn folk dances for educational purposes.

Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema by Usha Iyer

Reviewed by: Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema by Usha Iyer Namrata Rele Sathe (bio) Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema by Usha Iyer. Oxford University Press. 2020. 288 pages. $140 hardcover; $38.95 paper; also available in e-book. In Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema, Usha Iyer deconstructs the spectacle of the dancing body in Hindi cinema to reveal the industrial and material realities it conceals. Iyer’s project deviates from previous studies of Hindi cinematic song-and-dance, which have primarily focused on the ideological dimensions of these sequences. Instead, Iyer is more interested in the industry practices that, in her words, “[alert] us to questions of virtuosity, labor, and pleasure undergirding the production and reception of popular Hindi film dance.”1 Locating her study between the 1930s and 1990s, Iyer deploys the dancer-actress as an “analytical category” to explore the “construction of gender, stardom and spectacle” in dance sequences.2 Iyer decodes the star texts of various dancer-actresses, including those of Sadhona Bose, Vyjayanthimala, and Madhuri Dixit, to explicate the “social norms for female performance” that informed the reception of their dancing bodies and the ways in which these actresses sought to “challenge or subvert these through their movement vocabulary.”3 Iyer’s comprehensive and meticulous study is [End Page 199] strengthened by vivid descriptions of the dance sequences that the author analyzes. Take, for example, this elegant description of renowned dancer-actress Helen’s famous dance sequence from the film Caravan (Nasir Hussain, 1971), “Piya Tu Ab Toh Aaja” (Come here my love): “With her elegantly splayed fingers, [Helen] harnesses the camera into a crane shot that follows her as she traverses the space of the set, climbing stairs, sprinting into a gilded cage, gliding down a slide, and emerging in the next match-on-dancing-action shot before the ready, waiting camera to inaugurate the sung part of the song with her trademark sequin-encrusted shimmy.”4 In the introduction, “A Corporeal History of Hindi Film Dance,” Iyer presents the book’s central theoretical concept of the choreomusicking body, which the author defines as “the many bodies that produce the on-screen performing body.”5 The choreomusicking body concept brings into focus the collaborative work of the on-screen dancer(s) as well as off-screen professionals who contribute to what we finally witness on film. This is vital research, Iyer argues, as it serves to unearth the forgotten work of those performers who were part of authoring some of the most spectacular and memorable dance sequences in the history of Hindi cinema. These include classic sequences such as Vyjayanthimala’s sensuous turn in “Main Kya Karoon Ram” (What am I to do, oh God!) from Sangam (Union, Raj Kapoor, 1964) and Madhuri Dixit’s superhit dance number “Ek Do Teen” (One, two, three) from Tezaab (Acid, N. Chandra, 1988) to more recent hits such as the larger-than-life set piece dances of Om Shanti Om (Farah Khan, 2007). This chapter also provides an overview of the history of dance in Hindi cinema, starting from its pre-sound days, to demonstrate how Hindi cinematic dance evolved as a heterogeneous form derived from folk, classical, and international influences. In chapter 1, titled “Dance Musicalization and the Choreomusicking Body: Corporealizing Theoretical Frameworks of Film Dance and Music,” Iyer outlines a taxonomy of song sequence performances based on the activities of the on-screen actors and their relation to space and mise-en-scène. Iyer introduces the concept of dance musicalization, wherein the author argues that the “inclusion of dancer-actors may alter the music composed in popular Hindi films so that it responds to their dancing skills and bodily comportment.”6 The song-and-dance sequences are classified into two major types: the narrative number and the production number. Iyer’s focus is on the production number, an explicitly constructed dance spectacle that contributes to the construction of the female star text. The chapter centers choreomusicology as an analytical approach to posit that dance and music are not binary but instead exist as “two sensory planes [that] are seen as being in a state of mutual...

Turning Movement into Words: The Technique Writings of Tamara Karsavina and Agrippina Vaganova

The Ballerina Tamara Karsavina’s career as a writer deserves attention and warrants a further assessment of her legacy. She left an impressive body of writing that documents her history and describes ballet’s specific and complex vocabulary of movement. I focus on Karsavina’s writing about ballet technique so as to shed light on her teaching approach and dance values through a contrast with those of her near contemporary in the Imperial Ballet School and Company, the famed pedagogue Agrippina Vaganova. Particular emphasis is given to Vaganova’s Basic Principles of Classical Ballet, Russian Ballet Technique and to Karsavina’s extensive writings in The Dancing Times.

Movement Experiences in Preschool Music Classes

Active bodily involvement in music is a key component of musical understanding. Rudolf von Laban developed a movement framework introducing the “effort elements” of time, space, weight, and flow. He proposed that by experiencing combinations of these elements, individuals internalize a movement vocabulary that fosters expressive music performance. In this article, I discuss findings that have confirmed the importance of active bodily engagement in enhancing musical comprehension, and share practical considerations drawn from my experience in conducting preschool music classes based on Laban’s movement framework. The suggested playful activities provide music educators with a new perspective on incorporating movement in preschool music classes.

Editorial: The Politics of Performing House: Transnational Perspectives

Asking, What is the relationship between housing and performance?, editors Laura Levin and Sunita Nigam insist that the lines between the two begin to blur when we attend to the aesthetic and embodied dimensions of housing, on the one hand, and the homely, spatial, and thematic concerns of certain performances, on the other. Considering contexts of housing crises, shortages, and discrimination, the editors argue that houses of all kinds must be treated as processual, performative practices and as intended and unintended displays that reveal much about the material contexts in which they are embedded. As important zones for the realization, rehearsal, thwarting, or abandonment of private and collective fantasies, all houses are ‘dream houses,’ whether these dreams be good or bad. Levin and Nigam make a case for paying attention to aesthetic references, movement vocabularies, narratives about housing, scripts for housing practices, and the gendering and racializing of certain roles—all aspects of ‘practising house’—that make spaces (real and imagined) meaningful for those who perform them and spectate them. They argue for the importance of reading housing practices both in relation to local conditions and through transnational and hemispheric frameworks, asserting that the performative politics of housing brings into view shared experiences of dwelling, citizenship, and belonging that cross—and, more crucially, contest—geopolitical borders. In doing so, they emphasize how housing practices are haunted by the rupture that colonization created with existing Indigenous modes of dwelling, especially as a consequence of establishing settler-colonial territory and domestic spaces.

Vocabulary of Movement in the Poetry Contained in the Epistle of Forgiveness: A Lexical Study

Vocabulary of Movement in the Poetry Contained in the Epistle of Forgiveness: A Lexical Study

‘The Effect of London’: Urban Atmospheres and Alice Meynell’s London Impressions

Abstract This essay examines urban atmospheres and emotions in the 1898 essay collection London Impressions by British writer, poet and suffragist Alice Meynell. I argue atmospheres are spatialised emotions and investigate the atmospheric dimension of Meynell’s text and her impressions, through a vocabulary of immersion and movement. Within her own manipulation of a ‘visual’ vocabulary, Meynell transforms impressions into atmospheres, the visual into sensorial, moving from the painterly to atmospheric experience, notably through the medium of fog and smoke and other climate indicators. I argue urban atmospheres are the main feature the text brings forth (even through – and perhaps especially because of – the filter of the written word). By probing the application of the history of emotions’ methodologies within architectural and urban history, I argue the concept of ‘atmosphere’ is a productive analytical category to examine visual and textual sources.

The Kalaripayattu Salutation: Movement Makes Meaning

Vanakkam is the ritual salutation performed at different stages during the learning and practice of kalaripayattu, the martial arts system of Kerala. All vanakkams are united by their devotional character despite using expressly martial movements such as kicks and blocks. At the same time, there are differences in style, structure, and the interpretation of symbolism and significance even among Hindu kalaris, with even further greater variation in the vanakkams used in Muslim and Christian kalaris. Moreover, each weapon of the kalaripayattu form has its particular and specific vanakkam. This article uses the conceptual terms in the Natya Shastra, natya dharmi (what is suitable for the stage) and loka dharmi (what is suitable for daily life), introducing a very early binary of categories as separate, not interchangeable, classifications of movement. It looks to Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s ‘From Movement to Dance’ as she examines ‘how meaning emerges in dance’ to decode the process of representation as it applies to the kalaripayattu vanakkam. It then goes on to analyse vanakkams through their shared choreographic structure in order to show how context affects the way movement vocabularies are read. How does a kick transcend its ordinary signification and take on ritual meaning, and how is this meaning influenced by Islam, Hinduism and Christianity?

비언어적 무용극 창작을 위한 연출적 특성 - 매튜 본의 <호두까기 인형!>을 중심으로

This study focuses on the importance and value of directing within the contexts of the dance theatre as a total art by exploring the directing style and method of Matthew Bourne through examining his < Nutcracker! >. The specific directing features from the analysis are the following. First, he wrote a realistic scenario to achieve a dramatization by using subtext from reinterpreting the original novel and ballet. Second, he attempted to maximize the dramatic expression of non-verbal performance by using logical plot and creative scenes. Third, to convey some continuities from the original, he transformed the original characters into completely different modernized personals having unexpected humor. Fourth, he used original Tchaikovsky''s music as a motif that becomes the center of his dissolution and re-creation. Fifth, he used various style movements such as folk ballet, gymnastics, pair skating, headbanging, Spanish dance, fashion model movements, and the 60s’ social dance along with contemporary dance movement vocabularies. Sixth, he pursued popularity by employing homages and parodies throughout the work by adapting stylistic elements inspired by other performing arts fields such as theater, movies, and musicals. Seventh, he and his stage-art designer, Anthony Ward, create several visual metaphors symbolizing the duality and illusion that crosses reality and fantasy.

Transatlantic connections in John McGahern’s The Leavetaking

ABSTRACT John McGahern is most often regarded as an artist of the local or the “self-enclosed world,” as Declan Kiberd puts it. His works explore the lives and loves of characters in settings that correspond closely with the localities of McGahern’s youth in the north-west of Ireland. Accordingly, the themes of his work are often aligned with those of other “provincial” Irish realists, in Kavanagh’s sense of the word: religion, exile, and local identities or selves. This paper, however, focuses on instances where McGahern contrasts the self with the non-self in distinct national-cultural terms. Specifically, in The Leavetaking, as well as the short stories “Doorways” and “Bank Holiday,” he introduces American characters (women in all three cases) as much, it would seem, to provide the spark of a love-interest for those stories’ drifting male protagonists as to provide a commentary on Ireland by way of comparison with America and American perceptions of Ireland. In doing so, McGahern deploys a transatlantic vocabulary of circulation and movement that reflects the openness of his enclosed locality to the non-local, the self to the non-self.

PLitPE: an intervention for physical literacy enriched pedagogy in Canadian elementary school physical education classes

ABSTRACT Background: Although physical literacy is explicitly defined and integrated into Canadian provincial physical education curricula, limited empirical evidence substantiates the development of physical literacy in elementary physical education. Despite physical education curricular expectations, developing and assessing physical literacy in students may be difficult for teachers with little to no background in physical literacy or physical education. Purpose: The primary purpose was to explore the effect of a curricularly linked physical literacy enriched intervention in elementary school physical education. A secondary purpose involved an examination of the intervention’s effects on sex differences. Design: A quasi-experimental controlled intervention trial with a matched comparison group was used to determine the impact of a curricular-based physical literacy enriched physical education intervention on students’ development of physical literacy. Teachers (n = 6) and students (n = 131) from four Saskatchewan elementary schools participated in either a PLitPE (experimental) condition or a usual practice (control) condition. The PLitPE intervention was created using learning principles consistent with physical literacy and Self-Determination Theory. PLitPE instructional elements were developed with input from thirteen teachers who were members of the local school division’s physical education professional learning community. An embedded professional development model was used where a mentor teacher was present to facilitate and support the implementation of the PLitPE intervention. The Physical Literacy Assessment for Youth tools were used to assess motor competence (PLAYfun), student self-description (PLAYself), and movement participation (PLAYinventory). Each domain of physical literacy (physical competence, psychological, and behavioural) was evaluated using these tools. Results: Significant differences, favouring PLitPE over control, were observed for average motor competence (M = 49.4, M = 40.0, p < 0.001, PLAYfun), movement vocabulary (M = 10.3, M = 7.5, p < 0.001, PLAYfun), environmental participation (M = 423.9, M = 390.1, p < 0.05, PLAYself), and a reduction of sex differences on average motor competence and movement vocabulary. Statistically significant relationships with low to fair correlations between PLAYfun and PLAYself variables existed. Conclusions: This study provides empirical evidence supporting physical literacy enriched physical education. PLitPE developed the psychological domain (affective and cognitive) and significantly improved physical competence, however, the intervention did not manifest in improved behaviour. Concerning sex differences, the intervention yielded an equal and substantive improvement in both males and females in the intervention group. Future studies should consider the addition of reflective approaches, as well as the construction of positive challenges for children.

Physical Culture Drills and Alberta Girls Stepping Together Across Time

By embodying movement vocabulary and physical culture drills drawn from a 1911 textbook of physical exercises, in this girl-centred research project we examined how Alberta girls (aged 7 to 22) during the COVID-19 pandemic challenged ideas about Alberta settler girls who lived 100 years ago. Using performance-based historiography as a methodology, participants explored what embodying physical culture movement vocabulary could reveal about archives, past girls, and themselves. Debriefing led to insights concerning relevant social issues, such as gender equity, and current experiences like a growing appreciation for pre-pandemic community-oriented life. In asking provocative questions about the past, these girls demonstrated their potential to shift perceptions of how historically located and contemporary girls are imagined.

Becoming a Caterpillar: A Multimodal Perspective on Metamorphosis in Butoh Dance

Butoh is a dance and somatic movement approach that emerged in Japan in the 1960s and today is practiced around the world. Due to its stylistic idiosyncrasies and lack of a formalised movement vocabulary, butoh is often referred to among its practitioners and in the literature as an indeterminate or ‘formless’ dance. While ‘metamorphosis’ has been recognised as butoh’s core aesthetic trait (Fraleigh 2010; Baird and Candelario 2019), what this entails in practice has been little explored.This video article examines metamorphosis in butoh dance from a sensory anthropology perspective which attends to the micro-phenomenological dimensions of the practice. The author, a dancer-anthropologist, focuses on a practice of ‘becoming a caterpillar’ that she learnt at a butoh workshop given by Semimaru of the company Sankai Juku in London in 2014. Through a praxeography of selected exercises, integrated by a somatic or ‘from the body’ perspective (Farnell 1999), the author argues that the same techniques ‘scaffold’ (Downey 2004) metamorphosis by emphasising fluidity of bodily movement as well as the ‘isolation’ of body parts. Perceptual aspects of the practice are explored and reflected upon multimodally through a combination of textual, graphic, dance, and performance reenactments. Responding to ongoing debates on the value of integrating multimodality in anthropological research, practice and dissemination of scholarship, the article proposes that multimodality can extend the conceptual and methodological reach into experiential dimensions of bodily practice by foregrounding both sensory and imaginal aspects of doing.Drawing on anthropological studies of perception in ritual action, the video article argues that butoh metamorphosis relies on a principle of ‘illusion’ whereby a change in the dancer’s kinetic organisation engenders a visual impression of their bodies transforming into something else. This metamorphic logic is by no means exclusive to butoh but is found in other styles of performance, including puppet theatre. Kapferer’s (2004) notion of virtuality is mobilised here to highlight how the reconfiguring of perceptual patterns through performative action can effect transformation by means of ‘modulating reality’ and ‘adjusting its dynamics’.As shown by the example of the caterpillar, in butoh dance the transformation is double: on the optical and imaginal level of the dancer’s bodily form, as coinciding with a ‘view from the outside’, and on the somatic level of the practitioner’s lived body as experienced ‘from the inside’. It is further argued that a butoh dancer’s propension to somatically relate to imaginal dimensions of the practice relies on the phenomenological principle of sensory reversibility, whereby tactility-kinaesthesia ‘merges’ with the sense of vision.

Edith Segal in Detroit: on stage and on the picket line

ABSTRACT Edith Segal reimagined her relationship to her audience and created new methods of performing to support political causes during the three years she lived in Detroit, Michigan. She broke away from the expectations associated with modernist aesthetics championed by New York City dance critics and immersed herself in various roles within the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). In oral history interviews and her own writing, Segal described recruiting interested labor groups to attend the FTP's productions, which in turn created new audiences for theater and bolstered her view of how socially relevant productions could impact audiences. She adapted modern dance movement vocabulary to support theatrical scenarios and worked as part of a production team to communicate the main concepts of several plays. Throughout this process, Segal redefined how modernism could support leftist performance and shifted her focus to the audiences she most wanted to serve.