Dance : negotiating emotion through motion.

• Main Author: Chua, Nina Tsai Tse Pei.
• Other Authors: Caroline Pluss
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology::Affection and emotion
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/44189
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This exploratory study of dance, through Singapore’s hip-hop dance scene, describes and analyzes the social processes of how emotional responses to society are negotiated through dance and how dance has helped dancers better manage emotions faced in everyday life. Identifying dancers as performers who have to elicit various emotions for performances, data was collected through dance journals, interviews, focus group discussion, and participant observation through taking of dance classes, observing rehearsals and partaking in a dance concert. Findings indicate firstly, that dancers portray emotions through bodily movements and this portrayal is a reflection of their response to their understanding of society; this tends to reproduce typifications. Secondly, dance requires dancers to practice emotion work in order to elicit certain emotions for performances, yet outside of performances; dance is an alternative reality dancers retreat to “be themselves.”