Style in the Dance and Human Movement Studies

Abstract

This article ultimately identifies style in the dance and human movement studies by contrasting it with technique in various dance forms. The essay concludes that “style” in dance forms (and other physical activities) is centered in the human capacity for language use, which permits the construction of personal identities and self-awareness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Many thanks to Julian Erskine, the producer of Riverdance, for kindly providing the still used in Figure 1.

Notes

The first hard shoes had wooden taps with metal nails. It was common practice in the 17th–19th centuries to hammer nails into the soles of a shoe in order to increase the life of the shoe. Dancers used the sounds created by the nails to create the rhythms that characterize hard-shoe dancing. Later the soles were changed into resin or fiberglass to reduce the weight and increase the sounds of the footwork [Wikipedia].

Some would say that this is an aesthetic, not a stylistic difference; however, my attempts at explanation encourage readers to develop a coherent, consistent way of talking about these things. I do not say that my method of seeing these things is the only available or possible one.

Structurally, we may say that a mobile, self-activating, signifying, human body has eighty-nine degrees of freedom that moves in at least one dimension of time. It has 79,228,162,270,000,000,000,000,000 moves available to it [see Williams 1975 for a complete analysis].

Written in “Labanotation,” a script published by Rudolph von Laban in 1928, and now widely used to document movement in many systems in the world.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Drid Williams

Drid Williams has taught the anthropology of dance in Africa, Australia, China and the United States. Her sixth book, The Dog Has Five Legs, was published in 2014. Unlike those that preceded it (all about some aspect of the dance), the “Dog” is about college life in China, where she taught Aboriginal Australian Art, an introduction to Social Anthropology, and a remedial English class. Greatly enriched by her experiences there she returned to the United States, where she resides in Rockford, MN. She is currently working on a book based on a thesis she wrote, entitled Perspectives from the Past: A Dance History Textbook.