Dance Composition

A Practical Guide to Creative Success in Dance Making

Jacqueline M. Smith-Autard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135872977
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Artes escénicas

Dance composition - the discipline that translates ideas into dances - is an important part of dance education. For over twenty years, Dance Composition has been the leading guide to creative success in dance making, useful to everyone interested in dance composition, at both high school and college levels. This revised and updated edition includes a new chapter exploring creative processes in relation to composing dances.

SECTION 1

The Material Content

Movement and Meaning

THE BASIC LANGUAGE OF MOVEMENT

The word ‘language’ is used here as an analogy only. It is not meant to suggest that the ‘language’ of movement can replace or be the same as language in a vocally communicative context. It is common knowledge that communication can take place through movement. How it communicates is the dance composer’s area of study. Many verbal expressions describe moods or thoughts in movement terms:

‘jumped for joy’	‘shrank back in fear’
‘rushed into the room’	‘bent in pain’
‘threw up his hands in horror’	‘stamped in anger’
‘didn’t know which way to turn’	‘shook with excitement’

It is this ‘natural’ movement language which forms the dance composer’s vocabulary.

A child’s movement is very expressive of his/her feelings. A mother seldom has to ask how he/she feels as she gets to know his/her symptomatic movement patterns. In our culture, it is expected that these are modified as we grow older so that, eventually, it is hard to tell what the typical British ‘stiff upper lip’ citizen might be feeling. In other cultures, restraint is not so marked, although it is generally accepted that one is not mature if one cannot withhold expression of emotions and moods. Often as much as we try to hide feelings, our involuntary movements and body stance give them away, regardless of what we may be saying vocally. The slumped body stance and slow heavy walk are easily seen to be symptomatic of depression or sadness, the tapping fingers of agitation or anger, the hands clenching and rubbing together of nervousness or fear.

ANALYSING THE LANGUAGE

The dance composer has this movement language as a basis but requires a means of analysing the content so that he/she may take the symptomatic human behaviour patterns, refine them, add to them, vary them, extract from them, enlarge them, exaggerate parts of them according to the needs in composition. The movement analysis which is most useful and comprehensive is that which Rudolf Laban presents in his books Modern Educational Dance and Mastery of Movement. Although one can refer to it as an analysis, in that it breaks down movement into various components, it does this only in a descriptive way. It is not a scientific breakdown such as is found in the sciences of anatomy, physiology, mechanics, biochemistry. It is a means by which anyone, with knowledge of Laban’s principles, can observe and describe movement in detail.

It is not my intention to describe Laban’s analysis in depth for the reader could find this in some of the books listed at the back of this book. Table 1 (opposite) is a simplified version which serves the immediate illustrative purposes.

CHOICE OF CONTENT

Laban’s analysis of movement serves the dance composer well because it classifies movement into broad concepts, Each concept suggests a range of movement which may be explored. For example, let us take the concept of ‘travel’. This is defined by Laban as a series of transferences of weight from one place to another. The intention is to move from A-B, and the word travel describes this, but it can be done in numerous ways. Each mode of travelling is characterised by the way in which the mover uses action, qualities of movement or dynamics (called effort in the translation of Laban’s writings) and space, and how the dancer relates the travelling action to an object or person, if this is relevant. In dance, the choice of characterisation depends upon what the mover intends to convey. For instance, to express the joy of meeting the travel may take:

the action form of	leaps, hops, skips, turns, on the balls of the feet, with swinging arm gestures emphasising stretched limbs and body.
the qualities of	quick, accelerating, light, buoyant, free flowing or continuous.
the spatial form of	forward in high level, large peripheral movements.

the relationship form of moving towards another dancer.

On the other hand, to express dejection or distress, the travel may take:

TABLE 1

A summary of Laban’s analysis of movement

the action form of	a slight run … into walk … into fall and slide on knees … body moving from stretched into curled shape … arms gesturing then falling to sides.
the qualities of	deceleration through the movement from quite quick to very slow, loss of tension from light tension to heavy relaxed feeling, the flow becoming more and more bound/held back.
the spatial form of	forward direction to low level moving on a straight pathway from centre to forward centre.

Thus the dance composer can use Laban’s analysis to help the choice of movement content and depict the intention. He/she can choose the action and colour it with any qualitative, spatial or relationship content he/she likes so that the resulting movement expresses in the composer’s own unique way what he/she intends it to say.

There is no one way of showing meaning in movement but there are accepted patterns, which define a general area of meaning, and which the composer should employ so that the work can be understood. These originate from the natural symptomatic movement language of humans. Invariably, people of different cultures will interpret what they see in different ways but, even so, there must be some consensus of opinion on such things as mood and idea which the work portrays. For example, if there were strong, striking, fighting, movements between two dancers, agreement will be on ‘conflict’ rather than ‘harmony’, or, if the movements were to be slow, gentle, surrounding, supporting, unified in time and complementary in space, it would show ‘harmony’ rather than ‘conflict’.

LITERAL MOVEMENT INTO DANCE CONTENT

In addition to the major concern for choice of material that clearly identifies meaning, the dance composer has the responsibility of making movement content as original and interesting as possible. To do this Laban’s analysis may be used as a frame of reference, and different combinations of action, qualities, space and relationship aspects can be tried. The idea of ‘praying’ will illustrate this point. Images in the mind of the literal human movement patterns connected with this concept kindles the imagination at the start – hands together, standing with head lowered, a fall on to the knees or even prostration. This range is made more extensive by the composer’s analysis and subsequent handling of the movements. For instance, the hands together – head lowered movement can be taken:

action, qualitative and spatial form

While standing, from an open sideways extension of the arms, trace a peripheral pathway to forward medium, palms leading, slowly bringing the hands together, fingers closing last, with the head back. Then drawing the arms in towards the body centre, allow the chest to contract and curve inwards. To be taken with a sudden impulse at the beginning of the movement into a sustained closing of the hands – with increase of tension from fairly firm to very firm.

OR

Move the arms from a symmetric position in front of the head, elbows and wrists bent, successively right then left to diagonally high in front then down to the centre position. This should be done while walking in a forward direction four steps – head moving from low to high – with a firm slow quality throughout. The hands finish close but not touching.

It can be seen from these two examples that by having the basic symptomatic pattern in mind, the composer, through analysis, can identify what it embraces in terms of movement content, its action, its qualitative, its spatial usage and then utilise these aspects in his/her own way enlarging them, highlighting parts of the actions (e.g. the clasping hands), add actions (e.g. the trunk movement), alter the rhythm and dynamics or the spatial form.

In other words, the composer uses the analysis, first as a means of observing and identifying the nature of the movement as it is in everyday communication, and second, as a means of enriching it into dance content. This should ensure that the movement is both meaningful and interesting. It is difficult to retain a balance between meaning and originality. Care must be taken that the everyday movement origin has not been lost by too much enrichment. Nor should it be presented in the form of cliché which only leads to dull uninteresting work.

EXPLORING A RANGE OF MOVEMENT

The composer should, therefore, explore and experiment within a wide range, so that he/she becomes fully acquainted with movement and the feeling/meaning connotations. He/she should, at times, set out to explore a full range of movement without using it in composition, for this enriches movement experience and, inevitably, when starting to compose there is a better basis from which to make a choice of content. While exploring, the composer will consciously or intuitively experience the expressive properties of the movement, and the feel of it will be stored in the memory for future use. On the other hand, it may be that, while exploring movement for its own sake, an idea is evoked which will make a composition. In this way, movement itself becomes a stimulus for comp...