If you’re happy and you know it… clap your hands.
But what if you can’t clap as a part of your performance? How would you show happiness on a stage? Or sadness. Or anger.
A part of being a performer is knowing how to act – even for a dancer. Knowing how to shape my body to portray the emotion the song demands. To express through my core the feelings the musicians are putting into their music.
Part of this puzzle is knowing what emotion the musicians want you to play, we’ll come back to that at another time. But when you know that, you have half the pieces. The other half is what you do with your body to transfer those emotions from your ears to the eyes of the audience.
Exploring Emotional Range
There are many techniques for bringing emotion into your dance. But the simplest and the best place to start is to actually take a look at what you naturally do when you are happy. Angry. Sad. Frustrated.
What do you do with your body. Your face.
What happens when you bring your emotions into your body when you dance? Does it change the quality of your movement?
How we bring emotion into our dance has been something I have been exploring. How can I let people know what I hear in the music? No, how do I let them know what I FEEL.
This is a work in progress for me, and from what I’ve been told, for all artists. Actors are constantly working on how they portray emotions and dancers work on the same thing as they re-discover themselves and their movements in the music they are dancing to.
If you are interested in exploring the emotions that come through music, check out an APB Dance Belly Dance class. We explore movements in space, but you’ll also start to get some insights into who you are in the movements and music – which is the start of your journey for finding emotions.
