Choreomusicology: Sensorimotor Synchronization of a Dancer with Musical Rhythm and Narrative in Classical Ballet Variation

This dissertation explores sensorimotor synchronization between dance movements and musical rhythm. It considers this as a form of corporeal articulation and expressive gesture for the embodiment of narrative in classical ballet solo dance. It also aims to bridge the gap between descriptive studies and empirical analysis of rhythmic synchronization. The goal is to understand how narrative, music, and dance interact through a dancer’s synchronization with rhythm to create meaning in solo performance. These aims were addressed in three empirical studies, guided by the following main questions: 1. What meanings may sensorimotor synchronization of a dancer with musical rhythm generate in classical ballet solo dance? 2. How can these meanings contribute to narrative embodiment? 3. How do dancers communicate with their characters in the narrative? 4. How do dancers interact in synchrony with musical rhythm? 5. What is the influence of the musical context on a dancer’s entrainment to music? A qualitative method was applied to answer questions 1 and 2, involving interviews with choreographers, artistic directors of ballet companies, and teachers. For questions 3 and 4, a triangulated qualitative approach was employed, incorporating relevant literature, interviews with dancers, and observation of rehearsals and live performances. Question 5 was analyzed quantitatively using Motion Capture technology to compute and analyze the foot alignment of dancers with the musical beats while executing the “Promenade in Arabesque” technique in solo dance. The most significant finding from this study is that sensorimotor synchronization is an intrinsic human behavior that serves as the primary form of interaction with music in dance, containing various processes and multi-layered mechanisms. Throughout synchronization, dancers interact physically, emotionally, and mentally with rhythmic patterns and the metric structures of music in a dynamic interplay between bottom-up and top-down processes. Within these processes, ballet dancers integrate the textual, aural, and visual narrative of the story, music, and choreography to embody a multimodal choreomusical narrative. This choreomusical narrative, with the collaboration of audiences and other theatrical elements, produces a new emergent property different from its components. Rhythmic synchronization is an attractive and powerful artistic expression, enabling choreographers and dancers to portray characters, embody plots, and develop narrative interpretations. These processes of meaning generation and narrative embodiment entail the interplay of four main mechanisms: kinesemiotics, kinetic metaphor, emotion induction, and kinesthetic empathy with the collaboration of audiences. All these mechanisms involve subjective and objective dimensions that give various meanings to the different forms of dancers’ synchronization. These forms involve the duration of synchronization in isolated and sequential ways throughout a dance repertoire, the engagement of the limb(s), and the forms and intensity levels of synchronization with beats. The differences among these forms lie in the semantic, metaphoric, and emotional tones they evoke, influenced by their distinct temporal and spatial dynamics. However, the empirical research performed indicates that the synchronization and prediction schemes of the dancers for micro-timing can be affected by contextual factors, especially repetitions within a musical environment. This finding is significant for enhancing our understanding of human prediction processes. This project is the first investigation looking at sensorimotor synchronization in classical ballet from both conceptual and technical perspectives. The novel insight and findings from this dissertation, in theory, can contribute to the theoretical principles of narrative language in dance, specifically classical ballet. This contribution can be applied in academic studies, dance companies, and schools to train ballet students. In practice, the insight of this dissertation can develop the understanding of the artistic staff in ballet companies—involving choreographers, directors, composers, conductors, and trainers—about the function of entrainment for narrative embodiment and support their abilities in meaning generation via musical interaction.