5 Elements Of Dance
The Elements of Dance Dance can be broken down into the following five elements:
Body: Who Dances? The Dancer!Imagine a body moving with rhythmic steps and motions, usually performing to music. That’s dance. Sounds simple, right? Dance critic Walter Terry put it best this way: “No paints nor brushes, marbles nor chisels, pianos or violins are needed to make this art, for we are the stuff that dance is made of. It is born in our body, exists in our body and dies in our body. Dance, then, is the most personal of all the arts . . . it springs from the very breath of life.”The human body is what others see when they look at dance. Sometimes the body is still; other times it may be in motion. A dancer can use the whole body, or emphasize individual body parts, when moving. When you watch dance, try to notice the position of the body. Is it symmetrical, with the right and left sides doing the same thing, or not? What shape is the body making? Are the shapes sharp and angular, or soft and rounded? Is the body curved, twisted, or straight? Just as some colors in a painting may be more vibrant than others, you may notice dancers who have exceptional body control. They have worked hard to train their bodies (essentially their instrument of expression) to achieve superior balance, strength, and agility. Pay extra attention to how dancers use their breath when working through a dance phrase, or series of movements. Dancers use their bodies to take internal ideas, emotions, and intentions and express them in an outward manner, sharing them with others. Dance can communicate this internal world, or it can be abstract, focusing on shapes and patterns. Action: The Dancer Does What? Moves! Action is any human movement involved in the act of dancing. What do dancers do? They move—this is the action they perform. Movement can be divided into two general categories:
Dancers work together with a choreographer to practice and refine the action of the dance. When the action has been “set,” or finalized, the dancers must memorize their movement sequences in order to be able to perform them. Space: Where Does the Dancer Move? Through Space! We’re not talking about the final frontier here! We’re talking about where the action of dance takes place. Dance moves through space in an endless variety of ways. To better explain, here are some ways a choreographer or dancer thinks about space:
Time: How Does the Body Move in Relation to Time? Choreographers have to make decisions about timing. Are their movements quick or slow? Are certain steps repeated in different speeds during the work? If so, why? We can think of time in the following ways:
So now we have bodies moving through space and time. Isn’t that enough? Not quite. We need the fifth and last element of dance—energy. Energy helps us to identify how the dancers move. What effort are they using? Perhaps their movements are sharp and strong, or maybe they are light and free. Energy also represents the quality of the movement—its power and richness. For choreographers and dancers, there are many possibilities. The effort the dancers use can communicate meaning, depending on the energy involved. A touch between two dancers may be gentle and light, perhaps indicating concern or affection; or it may be sudden and forceful, indicating anger or playfulness. Energy is crucial in bringing the inner expression of emotion out to the stage performance. Some ways to think about energy are:
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