Perception and Movement Imagery as Tools in Performative Acts Combining Live Music and Dance

In this article I discuss movement imagery and perceptual strategies as tools in enhancing performative acts of playing music and composing performance material combining music and dance.

In my earlier research I have introduced the concept of multiple embodiment in classical ballet and developed co-authored choreography with dancers. The concept of multiple embodiment in ballet suggests treating the fixed vocabulary as qualitatively open and therefore a basis for interpretation, improvisation and composition of new dance material. Directing the dancer’s experience in an open-ended way with movement imagery and perceptual strategies gave the performer new, sometimes surprising information about performance possibilities and thereby enhanced interpretation of dance material. (Salosaari 2001) Movement imagery has helped creating open-ended tasks in dance and thus enabled co-authoring in dance making projects. (Salosaari 2007; Salosaari 2009).

Not only dance, but other art forms as well, are embodied. In playing a musical instrument, the sound is made using body movements. In workshops with a musician and a dancer, reported in this article, I ask whether the tools created for dance creation would work also in music making. I ask whether movement imagery and perceptual strategies can initiate music interpretation and improvisation?