Practical Resources for Dance Educators!

Greek traditional dance’s transition from its “first” to the “second” existence took place in the context of the urbanization as this took place in Greece. This transition was accompanied, among others, with its teaching into a classroom that had to follow the principles governing every educational process. In this new context, the dance teaching is subject to literacy processes, which, in this case, are related to a literacy of dance and therefore of culture, that is to a dance and cultural literacy. The aim of this study is to look at dance as an educational subject that can lead to critical literacy through dance’s multiliteracies as a synthesis of dance, movement, cultural and art literacy, with specific reference to Greek traditional dance. For this, literature-based research methodology is adopted that includes analysis and evaluation of relevant published literature. The literature review showed that Greek traditional dance, in the modern education framework, can be perceived in the light of critical literacy based on its multiliteracies, which are related to the concepts of movement, dance, art and cultural literacy.

This article is about language and lived experiences and analysis of movement of dance within Physical Education studies in Denmark with a special focus on how the language of movement and dance can be related to lived body and movement experience. The issue of the challenges and possibilities of expressing movement experience and analysis in words is discussed at the general level and exemplified in the context of a dance educational event where the movement theory of Rudolf Laban is applied. A central question arising out of this example of working with language and lived experience of movement is: What influence does language have on our way of understanding and communicating a dance experience? The article proposes that a bodily anchored lived language – through an ethic-aesthetic phenomenological approach – may supplement, expand and broaden a given professional terminology in order to articulate, communicate and unfold the experiential dimensions of dance.

ABSTRACTThis article forms part of a larger qualitative, conceptual project that investigates the ways in which Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) can contribute to the larger field of dance research and education with reference to dance, new technologies and particularly notions of space in screendance. Screendance refers to a dance that is specifically made for the camera or the screen, or rendered in either film, video or digital technologies, resulting in a form that is both screen related and kinesthetic. This article aims to introduce an alternative vocabulary for observing and analysing the ways in which screendance and specifically, Rosas danst Rosas, utilises space. Observation within the context of LMA refers to recognising changes regarding the Body, Effort, Shape and Space patterns observable in a mover. Therefore, this observational and analytical approach facilitates an awareness regarding the specific spatial, temporal and dynamic qualities attributed to the movements, gestures and expressions perceived in Rosas danst Rosas. This article demonstrates the applicability and efficacy of LMA as a framework for observing and analysing screendance as a hybrid of dance and screen, with reference to space in Rosas danst Rosas.

International audience

Laban Movement Analysis: In Dance Education

We present in this paper an automated dance evaluation method based on dynamic time warping and Laban movement analysis. Our method can evaluate pose similarity, timing accuracy and stylistic quality. We validated our methodology using 400 dance fragments with varying proficiency levels, and achieved 97% accuracy.

In recent years, due to the reasonable price of RGB-D devices, the use of skeletal-based data in the field of human-computer interaction has attracted a lot of attention. Being free from problems such as complex backgrounds as well as changes in light is another reason for the popularity of this type of data. In the existing methods, the use of joint and bone information has had significant results in improving the recognition of human movements and even emotions. However, how to combine these two types of information in the best possible way to define the relationship between joints and bones is a problem that has not yet been solved. In this article, we used the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) to build a robust descriptor and present a precise description of the connection of the different parts of the body to itself and its surrounding environment while performing a gesture. To do this, in addition to the distances between the hip center and other joints of the body and the changes of the quaternion angles in time, we define the triangles formed by the different parts of the body and calculate their area. We also calculate the area of the single conforming 3-D boundary around all the joints of the body. We use a long short-term memory (LSTM) network to evaluate this descriptor. The proposed algorithm is implemented on five public datasets: NTU RGB+D 120, SYSU 3D HOI, FLORENCE 3D ACTIONS, MSR Action3D and UTKinect-Action3D datasets, and the results are compared with those available in the literature.

A method for adding a target emotion to arbitrary body movements of a human form robot (HFR) is developed. The additional emotion is pleasure, anger, sadness or relaxation. This paper proposes a motion rendering system that modifies arbitrary basic movements of a certain real HFR to add the target emotion at intended strength. The system is developed on the assumption that movements can be emotive by processed on the basis of the correlations between movement features and expressed emotions. The movement features based on Laban movement analysis (LMA) are adopted. An experiment using a real HFR are conducted to test how well our system adds a target emotion to arbitrary movements at intended strength. The results of experiments suggest that our method succeeded in adding a target emotion to arbitrary movements.

Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), proposed by Rudolf von Laban, is widespread method for describing, notating, and interpreting human movement. Effort is one of major components of LMA that is commonly used to scrutinize or analyze the kinetic movement from viewpoint of ‘dynamic’ qualities. Effort comprises four factors and they can provide qualitative parameters about dynamic features of movement for describing a body movement. In this study, we proposed a computational model of Weight and Time Effort, and applied it to robot platforms to develop robot gesture motion diversification method. Experiments with certified movement analysts are conducted to check the validity of our model.

The article is devoted to the problem of personal involvement in dance activity. The author applies an interdisciplinary research methodology: on the one hand, a semiotic analysis of the dance language is carried out and the features of the dance sign are considered, on the other hand, a psychological description of the dancer’s personality is given, a psychological portrait is created. According to the methodology of the cultural-historical approach, the sign is taken in its instrumental function and orientation. The author puts forward a hypothesis about the dual orientation of the dance movement as an expressive language: orientation on the viewer as a visual component of the sign and on the dancer himself through the kinesthetic component. The material of dance as a type of artistic activity is the body of the dancer, which undergoes reinterpretation and symbolization. Not only the body, but also the whole personality can become the material of dance, it can be included and transformed in the course of the dance activity. The bi-directionality of the dance sign can lead to a discrepancy, a rupture of the function of the dance movement, which is expressed in an object relation to one’s own body, in strict control of movements and the non-involvement of the emotional and sensual sphere of the individual in the dance activity. Stage forms of dance contribute more to this discrepancy, developing mainly motor technique in isolation from the semantic side of movement and focusing on the visual expressiveness of dance. On the other hand, ceremonial, sacred, ritual dances, many forms of modern free dance contribute to the integral inclusion of a person in the dance and are aimed at transforming the personality in plastic action. On the basis of biographical material, the destinies of outstanding dancers and dance teachers are analyzed. It is shown how an object attitude to one’s own body and one’s own personality can lead to an internal split and loss of subjectivity. A contradiction may arise between a person’s experience in dance and her/his behavior in real life. It is removed under the condition that a person carries out a transformative activity – work on himself/herself.

This study investigated the benefits of practicing belly dance and explored the phenomenon of prejudice within the teaching of this modality. Using a qualitative review approach, the historical context of belly dance, its relationship with physical education and the teaching/learning process were analyzed. The results showed that belly dance contributes to integral education, promoting the appreciation of life and improving the health and quality of life of practitioners. It was concluded that the body language of dance can be a powerful tool for expressing feelings and emotions, as well as providing a connection with cultural roots and promoting female self-esteem. Thus, prejudice towards belly dancing is unjustified, as it offers an enriching and empowering form of expression.

In emotion research, a sophisticated framework for how emotions are expressed through the face is beginning to emerge, but our understanding of how the dynamic human body transmits this information is extremely limited. Dancers have been found to show superior accuracy in recognising emotion from whole-body movement displays in comparison with non-dancer controls, but it is currently unclear why this occurs. The present study aims to bridge this gap by exploring the relationship between emotion recognition and visual fixation patterns in three different groups: professional dancers, amateur dancers, and non-dancer controls. In this study, participants watched a series of 5–6▒s dance sequences and completed a binary-choice emotion recognition task while eye-movement data was collected. Professional dancers were significantly more accurate in identifying dance movements with a positive valence when compared with the non-dancer group but showed the poorest overall recognition of negative valence. No significant differences emerged between groups for visual-fixation on any of the target features; rather, all groups appeared to adopt holistic visual-processing strategies. These results are discussed in relation to response bias, the methodological limitations of data collection, and potential observation strategies used by participants. Subjective perceptions of emotion are also explored in relation to quantitative features of movement (through Laban Movement Analysis). Finally, suggestions for future research are presented based on gaps that still exist within the literature.

In this paper, we design a natural interface based on Labanotation, a 2-D graphical editable movement symbols, to describe the desired motion as input. A weighted directed hierarchical graph is built. Graph edge represents a unique motion from one pose to another pose and indexes by Labanotation symbols for retrieval. A motion metric is proposed to measure similarity between two motions based on Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) on the middle level. Experiments show that the presented system is easy to use and have a high quality of retrieval results. This interface can be easily applied on the mobile devices.

Kelly Nipper’s video installation Weather Center (2009) is emblematic of the presence of dance in recent visual art. Nipper’s persistent fascinations with Mary Wigman, Laban Movement Analysis, and expansive notation practices result in live performances, moving-image installations, and photographs, creating visual art that reveals how dance and its particular histories can function as malleable material within the museum.

This chapter uses a conceptual-theoretical framework to further knowledge about the effectiveness of various leadership and followership styles and the relationship between leadership, authentic leadership, embodied leadership, and followership after the technological revolution. Laban Movement Analysis, a nonverbal body–mind model, is applied to illustrate embodied leadership. The findings are that (1) leaders and followers are likely to be viewed as authentic when they synchronize their inner world (somatic sensations) with their outer expression (verbal language), (2) the country’s or region’s cultural climate impacts organisational culture and the structure of leader–follower interaction, and (3) the cultural climate can limit or prevent the adaptation of a minimal hierarchical (horizontal) structure.