ABSTRACT
Dance creativity is based on multimodal expressions, sometimes using physical movement to communicate abstract concepts to the audience (Okonski et al., 2020). Two studies explore audience interpretation examining how abstract emotional messages are communicated, jointly by dancers and choreographers, through the use of bodily movement and spatial elements. Participants viewed a performance where dancers conveyed a difficult experience with breast cancer using movement. When the dancer stumbled downwards, this could represent a feeling of struggle or sorrow, whereas upward lifts could convey a sense of strength or hope. In Study 1, participants were selected for their experience with movement (dance majors, n = 15) or verbal metaphor (literature majors, n = 16), or both dance and literature training (n = 14). In a second study, a control group was given the same task (n = 15). Written responses suggest that participants perceived multiple abstract emotional messages in the dance piece. Emotions serve as a target domain in a verbal instantiation of a conceptual metaphor. Many participants also described physical/spatial elements used to communicate these messages, showing that they could also map target concepts to what might serve as a source domain in a conceptual metaphor. Results suggest that metaphor can be conveyed in dance performance and strengthen the hypothesis that conceptual metaphors are not merely linguistic devices but instead shape much of cognition, including some components of the emotional and aesthetic elements of dance appreciation.
