Examining the Correlation Between Dance and Electroacoustic Music Phrases: A Pilot Study

Abstract

In this paper, we will present a pilot study that explores the relationship between music and movement in dance phrases spontaneously choreographed to follow phrases of electroacoustic music. Motion capture recordings from the dance phrases were analyzed to get measurements of contraction-expansion and kinematic features, and the temporal location of the peaks of these measurements was subsequently compared with the peaks of a set of audio features analyzed from the musical phrases. The analyses suggest that the dancers variably accentuate their movements to the peaks or accents in the music. The paper discusses the findings in addition to possible improvements of the research design in further studies.