 Karl Grammer
University of Vienna, Austria
Dance as a dynamic motion system
Summary
Thinking about dancing, several stereotypical pictures probably arise in your mind: a discotheque full of twitching people; a ballet ensemble performing Swan Lake; a couple dancing an erotic tango; perhaps even a tribal dance around a fire, celebrating some special occasion. Dance is ubiquitous in all cultures around the world in various styles.
"In dance, man (...) cultivates his movements (...) into their most artistic skillfulness, affecting movements into an aesthetically most delightful ritual." (Eibl-Eibesfeld, 1989, p. 697)
Various ethnographic records, as well as dance reviews in popular media, emphasize the aesthetic and artistic facets and the cultural importance of dance, judging individual dancers, dance companies, and choreographers, and telling us much about styles and quality of dancing. But as literature research reveals, little is known about the deep roots of this beautiful and ubiquitous form of human expression. That is why we focus our research on the evolutionary meaning of this motion behavior: Why do we dance? This question can be answered primarily through the exploration of the functions of dance and in the motions which are carried out during dancing.
In this talk we will analyze rhytmic motions in dance as recurrent states in a dynamic system of body parts. In this view dance is the embodiment of the self and it is a system carrying personality information, which is useful for the representation of individual action tendencies and the affective bandwidth of possible actions in interactions with other people.
Resume
http://evolution.anthro.univie.ac.at/institutes/urbanethology/staff/grammer.html |
