Analysis of contemporary dance movement in the presence and absence of a musical soundscape

Perception of dance, like live music, is multimodal. Participants and/or beholders, at the very least, respond to visual, temporal, and auditory cues. An experiment was conducted during a live performance and under controlled conditions to investigate the effect of the presence and absence of a musical soundscape on the kinematics and dynamics of a male contemporary dancer. In addition to the recording of dance movement using 10 Vicon cameras, 20 audience members recorded their emotional reaction to the work in real-time under visual only, auditory only and auditory-visual conditions. We asked: does dance movement vary as a function of the presence or absence of a musical soundscape and what is the effect of the presence/absence of music on audience response? As anticipated, the synchronization of the three dancers in the visual only condition was good although there was some 5% time compression. Judged arousal recorded from audience members was comparable across conditions while valence diverged. Arousal reflected the choreographic structure of a generally more dynamic first half compared with the second half. The ultimate goal is to use motion capture data to predict and aid interpretation of audience response. Further strategies for analysis of this rich data set" analysis of specific sections and contraction-expansion segments, individual points and distances between specific points" are discussed.