MUSIC AND EMOTION
kinesthesia, sound
Music is fundamental to dancing and influences the experience of dance, with or without the additional mediation through an online Zoom class. A common dance instruction given by choreographers is, “to fill the music” with as much movement and expression as possible. Dancers describe the feeling of dancing as one of being "carried by'' the music. An uplifting melody can change posture or make jumps feel higher. These descriptions of how music mediates the experience of moving through space illustrates my perspective that kinesthesia is influenced by sound, one of the conventional five senses.
Even before the pandemic, dancers and teachers were aware of the differences between dancing to live music and pre-recorded music. Live music is always preferred to pre-recorded music as it enables the choreographer to be more creative with the exercises (the musician will tailor what they play to the tempo, rhythm and metre described by the teacher when giving the exercise). The teacher and choreographer interviewed for this project explained that the presence of a live musician meant that the teacher could be more responsive to the dancers in the room by adjusting the exercises or musical choices to fit the energy, the mood, or the abilities of the dancers. Live music also has a depth of quality that is felt by dancers and evokes a more expressive dance experience.
While most classes in London have a live musician in the studio, the pandemic lockdowns restricted teachers to using pre-recorded music played through their phones or laptops. Pre-recorded music choices impacted the experience of the teacher, primarily, as it meant having to prepare for classes in a different way, spending time selecting music and ensuring exercises ‘worked’ with the music (matching tempo, metre, etc.). Where sound also influenced the experience of dancing was through the technical difficulties or microphone issues that were disruptive to the feeling of being immersed in or dancing ‘as one with’ the music. Sometimes these disruptions meant having to stop dancing to wait for the issue to be sorted. As you would have heard but not see on the 'Home Studio' page, the second recording where the microphone cut out - the dancers in the studio were able to continue dancing, but at home dancers were stopped while trying to alert the teacher to the technical issues.
With the return to the studio, classes once again have live musicians present. Dancers prefer the current hybrid classes (as opposed to the online-only classes during lockdown) when there is a live musician in the studio. Even though they are dancing at home, the live music is preferred to the pre-recorded music, as it has an affective element that can shift the mood of a dancer or provide an enjoyable experience of a barre exercise, for example.
The influence of music on the dance experience and its ability to evoke the feeling of flying or shifting a dancer’s posture indicates a connection between sound and kinesthesia. Where space is restricted at home, perhaps the ‘right’ music can minimise the impact of the restrictiveness by evoking feelings of flight and uplifting movements, even in smaller spaces. This interaction can be uniquely explored in a comparison between at home and in studio dancing and would be, in my opinion, an interesting field to study further in dance and digital anthropology.