We know that dance and music go together like hand in glove, but why are movement and sound linked? How do humans map sound onto movement and vice versa, and how do these connect to cognition and meaning-making?
As a dance educator, I often rely on the shorthand of sound cues to direct my students. In my perception, these sonic prompts are tied to visual imagery that I think would support the desired movement quality. For example, if I want them to soften and ripple their spine and arms moving upwards from the pelvis to the fingertips, I might use a breathy “fwaaaah” sound, which is what a billowing fabric snapping in the wind sounds like to me. While I sometimes bring visual aids to class, sound is my preferred method of communicating these qualities because I can always use my voice to aid my teaching.
The vocal prompts usually do help the student achieve the quality I am trying to communicate, but not always. Is this because we have different bodies that just move differently? Or because we perceive sonic information differently? Working from the notion that sound resonates in the material body, and therefore moves the flesh and bones, I have begun to research how we experience sound similarly, or differently.
In Resonance: Sound and Movement, I am collaborating with Cynthia Clopper in the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University to better understand (a) the similarities and differences that people see in human dance and abstract shapes; (b) the similarities and differences that people hear in human vocalizations; and (c) how people match sounds with movements. This research is being conducted at the Language Sciences Research Lab at the Center for Science and Industry (COSI) in downtown Columbus, Ohio.
Nearly 100 years ago, linguists (Köhler 1929, Sapir 1929) noticed that, across languages and cultures, humans match words like bouba with rounded shapes and words like kiki with spiky shapes. This pattern reflects sound symbolism, in which rounded sounds involving the lips, like b and o, are matched with rounded shapes, and harder sounds, like k and ee, are matched with spiky shapes. Our project examines how the kinds of sonic prompts that dance teachers use are symbolic of the movement quality that they are intended to convey.
Click here for playlist of video clips demonstrating movement.
Click below for sound clip example:
Project Team and Co-PIs
Tanya Calamoneri, Assistant Professor, Department of Dance, The Ohio State University
Cynthia Clopper, Distinguished Professor, Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University
Project Description
Beginning with data collection in Fall 2023, we have collected data from 50 participants who have each sorted 50 videos into categories based on their assessment of movement similarities. The next step in our research is to collect data from an additional 50 participants on 50 audio files. We are trying to understand how humans understand these unusual sound and movement examples. The final step, which we anticipate completing by the end of the Fall 2024 semester, will be to have 100 participants match audio and video files. We will then analyze all of the data together to understand the correlations and disassociations between sound and movement.
Relevance and Impact
The results of the project will have theoretical implications for sound symbolism in language and dance. Beyond these theoretical contributions, the results will also have applied contributions to dance instruction.
Dance teachers often cue students with sound to elicit a qualitative change in the execution of a movement. We aim to elaborate specific sounds which impact specific movement qualities, in order to better use sound as a cueing tool in dance.
References:
Köhler, Wolfgang. Gestalt Psychology. New York: Liveright, 1929.
Sapir, Edward. “A study in phonetic symbolism.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 12, no. 3 (June 1929): 225-39.