Dance, Doctor, Dance!

I believe that there is a philosophy behind your show, concerning the importance of dance... can you explain it a little for us?

Dance is important in so many ways. It provides people with benefits to health and well being, it makes people feel great and watching dance can make you smile or weep. Thousands of people have told me why they dance or don’t dance and these stories are deeply personal, sometimes moving, and they reveal that dance can play a central part in people’s lives – in a good and bad way. Lots of people tell me that for them dance is breathing, such that they have to dance to live. But then some of those people stop dancing for large periods of their lives and they feel huge wells of emptiness. One woman in her 60s wrote to me to tell me that she didn’t dance because her husband wouldn’t dance and it had been a frustration for her all of her life. Once her husband passed away she said that it was too late for her now to start to dance. People tell me that they only feel truly alive when they dance. As a Psychologist I think these feelings suggest that dance, and the absence of dance, plays an important part in people’s lives.

At the Shimmy, we have long arguments about dance as a universal language (we generally conclude this is a fiction). Has your research suggested any commanalities in international attitudes or techniques in dance?

This is a big question. I don’t believe that dance is a universal language. However, I believe that the expression of certain emotions through natural movement will be universally understood. We know that certain areas of the brain become active when people watch human movement which expresses emotion, but we need to test to see if the same areas become active for people around the world. We have carried research in our lab which shows that people’s ability to recognise emotions expressed through different dance forms (Kathak, ballet, jazz, contemporary, etc.) changes depending on their cultural background and with their experience with particular forms of dance. This is particularly the case when the dancers are expressing subtle changes in complex emotions. However, when the dancers are expressing the big emotions (happy, sad, anger, fear, etc.) people find it very easy to recognise the emotions regardless of the form of dance or their cultural and dance background. The question of whether people can universally recognise the hormonal and genetic make up of people is still to be answered. We think we know that people can recognise these features expressed through dance from within a culture. So, yes and no. Some natural movement can be universally understood (we think).

How do you get what must be serious and difficult research into a show that is going to wow the fickle fringe fans?

I’ve presented the material in many different formats for many different audience types. For the fringe I’ve made the show fun, interactive, varied and informative. It's not a straightforward lecture with a Q&A, it's not a pure dance performance and I have left out all the graphs and equations. So what’s left? I talk about and interactively demonstrate four things in the show: 1. How dance and thinking are related; 2. how we recognise emotions through dance (at the end of this section we have a different live dance performance each night – in the final week of the fringe Anthony Middleton, who is a member of the Ballet Boyz company, will be dancing three new works created for the show, a solo a duet (with Isabel Slingerland) and a trio (with Isabel and Debora Renzi); 3. how freestyle dance is thought to be related to our genetic and hormonal make up; and 4. how dance is related to health. It's a fun, informative show that is accessible to all.