Tapping the Plate or Hitting the Bottle: Sound and Movement in Self-accompanied and Musician-accompanied Dance

Abstract

Unravelling correspondences between musical sounds and dance movements can lead to insights into the selection and development of culturally modified sensory, motor and perceptual capacities. Gaining these insights requires the development of holistic methodologies to analyse sound and movement concomitantly. The cultural training of performers and their intersubjective dynamics orient the interactions between sound and movement in any performance genre. As an entry point into considering the intimate entanglement of music and dance, this article opens with an account of the direct correspondences between sound and movement in Afro-Brazilian stick-dancing before analysing the more obscure relationships between sound and movement in West Sumatran plate-dancing. The rhythmic swinging of hand-held plates can be accompanied by tapping sounds created by dancers or by musicians. Differences between the timing of movement-related sounds in self-accompanied and musician-accompanied plate-dancing reveal how humanly organised expression is shaped by the interplay of bodily skill, perceptual processes and cultural experience.

Keywords:

• Music
• Dance
• Perception
• Action
• Choreomusicology
• Minangkabau

Acknowledgements

Two Macquarie International Travel Grants and a Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship funded fieldwork in Indonesia and Brazil. Special thanks go to Professor John Sutton, Associate Professor Greg Downey, Dr Uwe Pätzold, Dr Indra Utama, Bang Murtala, Alfira O'Sullivan and Danielle Corrie. All shortcomings are my own.