Genre Specific Music’s Influence on Music-Induced Movement

ABSTRACT:
This study will examine how genre specific music influences different areas of the body in dancers. 

THESIS STATEMENT:
Music is around us all and it is hard to ignore. Many times we find ourselves singing a tune that we hear walking down the street. In my study, I would examine a different music genres influence on parts of the body and if there are similarities in the different dancers.

PROCESS:
I used a group of three dancers and had them improv to four different types of music: Young & Beautiful by Lana Del Ray, Architect of the Mind by Kerry Muzzey, My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from “Titanic”) by The Piano Strings Ensemble, and African Samba Music by Drums of the World. I recorded them and then watched to see movement tendencies. I took these results and compared them across the dancers and then compared them to the four songs to see if they have similarities in their movement.

The data does not show all music choices. I chose music choices one- (Young and Beautiful (DH Orchestral Version) by Lana Del Ray)– and four- (African Samba Music by Drums of the World)– because they specifically showed what I wanted to be seen.

DATA:
by order of appereacne: Paige St. John, Hazel Black, and Marissa Thomas

music choice #1

music choice #4

RESULTS:
Genre Specific_Music_Influence Movememnt_Edit

Above are the results in graph form. The first set of graphs showed the comparison of movement between the two music choices for one specific dancer. The final graph showed the comparison to all the dancers for a specific piece of music.

Overall, I found that the dancers showed small similarities from each other. One to two movement choices were the same but never a vast majority. When the dancers were compared to themselves, their movement tendencies started to show. Many of the dancers still went back to the same movement vocabulary even though the songs were differentiated.

My research answered my hypothesis but it created a new question:
Is it limiting to revert back to the same movement vocabulary or does it allow the dancer to be an individual and brodcast their talents?

I believe it just depends on the time and place.