Toward a psychology of responses to dance performance

Abstract

This paper applies contemporary principles in cognitive and social psychology to understand how Western ballet and modern dance is imbued with emotional and narrative meaning by an audience. These include nine Gestalt concepts of visual form perception as well as cognitive heuristics of representativeness and availability in concept formation and memory. Ekman’s concepts of universal emotional states are applied to dance and culturally imbued meanings of “number” found in solos, duets, and trios are illustrated in well-known modern dances and ballets. It is argued that these principles help represent and reinforce the audiences’ ascription of relationships and emotional states in narrative dances as well as construct them in abstract and plotless dances. The paper briefly describes burgeoning empirical research in the area and integrates comments from student choreographers on their use of these principles with psychology students’ proposals for research.

Keywords:

• application of psychological principles to dance
• visual form perception and dance
• imbuing emotion to abstract dance
• interdisciplinary teaching in dance and psychology
• psychology and esthetics