Motivation and Gesture in Movement

1
Motivation and Gesture in Movement

• Advanced Choreographic Exploration
• By Jamie McQueen

2
The Creative Process

• Dance is more than dazzling technique, tricks and
  acrobatics. By using motivation and gesture, a
  dancer can communicate experience and emotion. An
  example of this would be a dancer contracting
  their abdominal muscles and rocking back and
  forth when portraying sadness. If a dancer stands
  completely pulled up with perfect alignment and
  clasps their hands to their heart, the audience
  would have a difficult time believing this to be
  a sign of sadness.

3
Expression of Emotion and Meaning Through Gestures

• Gestures are patterns of movement established by
  long usage among society and are recognizable.
• Social Gesture
• Functional Gesture
• Ritual Gesture
• Emotional Gesture

4
Social gestures
H A N D SH A K E
B O W
Embrace
Salute
5
Functional Gestures

• Walking
• up or down stairs
• Rocking
• Sitting

6
Ritual Gestures

• The pledge of allegiance
• Kneeling in prayer

7
Emotional Gestures

• Holding head in hands in sadness
• Arms clasped around body in grief
• Clenching and shaking fists in anger
• Isolating hand held head back and forth in
  confusion
• Arms reaching out for something or someone
  conveys longing or wanting

8
Emotional Gestures In-depth
Pursuit Feelings
Avoidance Feelings
9
Pioneers Use of Gestures

• Doris Humphrey
• Interested in structures and formal aspects of
  dance making
• Wanted to explore what lies beneath the gesture
  and fuse it with the dance
• Created non-narrative (storytelling) and
  non-theatrical movement
• Many of her dances did have social themes, but
  society was portrayed more as a force
• Gestures and dance movement achieved dramatic
  communication

• Martha Graham

• Interested in psychology and motivations of human
  nature
• Used gesture in her dance as an actor/actress
  would
• Her choreography demonstrated the dramatic
  impact of gesture

10
Use of Gestures

• Choreographers must be careful and not use
• these gestures exactly or literally. In doing so,
• they would be creating drama and not dance. In
  dance, these gestures should be abstracted,
  stylized, or distorted. Some examples would be
• prolong or change the timing of a handshake
• use elbows instead of hands
• handshake above your head or close to the floor
• handshake behind your back

11
Summing It All Up

• Modern dancers have a unique way of using
  gestures as their motivation in creating new
  movement. Whether it be a nodding of the head, a
  stomping of the foot, or a shrugging of the
  shoulders, gesture makes movement more specific.