Choreographing surprise. The relation between dance, music and expectation.

Abstract

This thesis adapts the ITPRA theory by David Huron to dance. The ImaginationTensionPredictionReactionAppraisal theory is designed to analyse listeners' emotional and physical responses to musical events, based on memory and exposure. According to a number of musical conventions, listeners create expectations about succeeding musical events. This thesis presents a number of conventions in dance through which spectators create expectations about succeeding choreographic events. Such conventions are natural laws of the body, time, space and genre. Moreover, this thesis explores ways in which musical expectations influence choreographic expectations. For example, expectations regarding melody and rhythm in music interact with expectations about direction and rhythm in dance. Although a number of researchers, such as Ivar Hagendoorn and Corinne Jola, start using neuropsychological or neurocognitive experiments in order to investigate spectators' emotional and physical responses to dance or dance in combination with music, there is still a lack of statistical information regarding these expectations. This thesis presents a number of experimental methods to gather this kind of statistical information.