Social dance remains unexplored involving nonverbal messages sent and received while dancing. The research I will be conducting involves examining the nonverbal communication of dance among individuals in a social setting.

When communicating to others there are “three basic channels by which we can communicate”, these three ways of communicating are “words, music and dance”. (Changing Minds. 2016) Some people find certain ways easier to understand than other ways. For example when interacting with someone from a different country it would be easier to communicate through music or dance instead of words because you may speak different languages.

“Studies indicate that words account only for 7-10% of communication.”(Changing Minds. 2016) This is why I feel the audience connected better to my dance compared to my song I feel I put more emotion into my dance than I did into my song. Music can add more emotion to a song because of “pitch, speed, emphasis” and music can add more to a speech. (Changing Minds. 2016) “Studies have shown that 30-40% of communication is through the music” this shows the music adds meaning and more emotion than words and communicates a lot more to an audience than just words alone.(Changing Minds. 2016) “Body language accounts for up to 50% of a communication, yet it can be very subtle and very easy to misunderstand” this is because using movement and action shows a lot to a person and you can see how they are feeling without them even saying anything.(Changing Minds. 2016) I have found that dance/ body language is easy to misunderstand as when communicating my dance to the audience in my performance each audience member understood something from the performance but not everyone understood the main story I was trying to get across as some audience members received a different story.

Before starting to perform a dance you need to “set the tone of the dance” this will connect to the audience straight away and they will know the mood of the dance without you even dancing. (CMe. 2009) This is something I did in my dance performance to try and get the story across. When creating a dance you need to plan the climax within dance which is something I did to show a story and more emotion building throughout the performance. The climax creates “the undeniable passion that builds inside”. (CMe. 2009) Then the drop comes after the climax which is mostly the end of the music which I showed the drop in emotion after the happy climax. And another part to emotionally connecting to a dance breathing is a very important part because personally breathing helps me feel emotion and flow with the music instead of being tensed up and trying to perform every move perfect. Plus the style of dance I used for my performance was a contemporary style so it was slow and required my dance moves to flow and to breath throughout them. When putting these emotions and climax and drops into a story it helps the audience connect more and when me as a performer puts emotion into the dance it will help the audience connect more to the performance.

Storytelling through dance is difficult to do most people try and make dance entertaining instead of actually telling a story through dance.

In ballet, and still less in dance’s many other forms, modern choreography doesn’t often try to bring an audience through an actual story, telling them about what happened and how it happened, and most of all, making them feel that they actually know the people who the story is about (Johnny Nevin. 2013)

This is something I noticed and is one of the reasons I focused on dance within musical theatre for my dissertation. This is why I wanted to do a dance without lyrics then a song with barely any movement to show to an audience the difference with how that audience connects to the performances and the character.

“Dance is a major art form that express emotion, feeling, and art itself.”(SERCHE96. 2015) this is why I feel it is good to use the emotion to express words instead of telling a story through words. “Body movement is a great way to describe what’s going on and doing it intentionally to speak a story can go a long way” (SERCHE96. 2015)

It can tell stories more creatively

This opens up doors of opportunity and creation, you can say anything without saying a word, and express genres from sadness, to light hearted, to horror, and suspense. All with dancing to the feeling of the story (SERCHE96. 2015)

 It’s a different way to tell a story and more interesting in my opinion. This shows you don’t need words to tell a story.

One particular woman involved with community dance says

I love to perform, I like what the audience can give me… If I do something right I know by their reaction. If they’re feeling it, I’m definitely feeling it. Movement is motion, emotion - if were feeling it, it comes across stronger when we’re performing. (FCD, 2001, P.40) (Amans, 2008, P18)

This shows the audience make a big impact on the performer and can be a big part of the performance. It also shows if the emotion of the performer is strong enough they can get the audience to feel the emotion. This in turn will make the audience connect with the character on stage and the performance.

“It may be that witnessing performance serves to educate a community dance audience (Jasper, 1996).”(Amans, 2008, P.69) This shows that you need a story behind the performance in order for it to be engaging and interesting to the audience. And you can educate people through these performances.

The relationship between matters of description and of interpretation was of great concern in Dance Analysis (1988) where we proposed that while the link can be made quite explicit, it is always a continuous matter since these concepts are interdependent and culturally specific. (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999, p.7)

This quote is saying the interpretation and description of a dance is dependent on cultural changes and society. Because if society’s perception changes on understanding dance then dance will change.

To the extent that critics attempt to remain on the ‘surface’ of the dance, and claim to describe it without interposition their own points of view, they mislead their readers (Adshead-Lansdale 1993-94) (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999, p. 7)

 Critics looking into stories through dance don’t see a story but this is because they aren’t trying and it is all to do with the way the audience or in this case the critic sees the performance.

An alternative to seeing description as capable of reflecting some pre-exsisting reality is to see the dance text as an open construction, having the fluidity and enigmatic quality of art. (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999, p. 7)

This is simply explaining that if the audience is open to their interpretation they will see what they want to see through a dance and they will get a story from it and see it as a performance.

“A description then becomes a text; other texts can similarly be constructed and this practice sets competing views in opposition or creates complementary structures.” (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999, p. 7) the description or story the audience gets from the performance turns into text in their head and they see conversations between dancers for example in ‘Movin’ Out’ a duet between dancers can tell a conversation of love and proposal without actual text. This quote is also expressing that because each audience member sees a different story in the performance they will have different opinions on it.