Mechanisms for Affect Communication from Dance: A Mixed Methods Study

Dance is a multifaceted creative act that has been used to communicate emotions throughout human evolution. Despite this history, there has been no empirical exploration of components of dance that allow it to communicate emotion. We address this with a mixed methods study in which a quantitative study with dance viewers builds upon qualitative findings with dance artists. Qualitative analysis revealed proposed components of dance responsible for emotion communication are narrative content, social interaction, emotion portrayal intent, and textural quality of movement. These elements were then manipulated using dance video stimuli to quantitatively test viewers' emotion perception accuracy. Results revealed emotion portrayal intent (i.e., expression intent in dance creation) is an important factor for viewers to accurately perceive emotion, regardless of narrative content. While prior studies have focused on the perceiver's role in emotion perception from dance, this is the first study to demonstrate emotions are perceived from dance based on intent during dance creation. Findings highlight the nuanced structure of emotion communication in dance, for which we pose a theoretical framework. Together, dance holds possibilities for studying distinct mechanisms for creative communication that may be important for the study of generalized affect communication outside of creative arts contexts.