ABSTRACT
Dance-making is a multi-layered phenomenon that involves the interaction between cultural, social, technological, and biological forces. From the perspective of the brain, creating a dance piece is a complex cognitive task: generating new movement phrases, choosing between movement phrases that are to be improved or not. Nevertheless, very few studies have characterised the process of dance-making from this perspective, and most of them have focused solely on the ideas conveyed. Here, the choreographer is a decision-maker that observes movements generated by the dancer and chooses to see a repetition of the same movement or to see other movements. We developed a quantitative methodology to characterise the choice patterns of the choreographer throughout her creative process. Specifically, we video-recorded and hand-scored the creation of a dance piece by the choreographer Sylvia Rijmer (Portugal) while working individually with four dancers. We have found evidence that there was a preference to spend more time working in sequences of movement phrases than working in repetitions, across the four dancers. Subsequently, we generated questions for an interview, together with selected video clip excerpts from the dance composition process, with the aim of confronting the choreographer with our analysis. Our study shows that decision-making processes in the performing arts can be revealed by using quantitative methodologies. These can potentially be generalised to other choreographic styles, leading to a better understanding of these artistic practises. We believe that our study creates a shared ground for discussion and future collaboration between cognition scientists, social scientists, and artists.
