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Dance Learning ▶ Neurophysiological Correlates of Learning to Dance

Dancing: A Nonverbal Language for Imagining and Learning JUDITH LYNNE HANNA University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

Synonyms Dance; Kinesthetic communication; Performing art

Definition Dance is human behavior composed of purposeful, intentionally rhythmical, and culturally influenced sequences of communicative nonverbal body movement and stillness in time, space, and with effort. Dance stylizes movements, some from everyday life, with a degree of conventionality or distinctive imaginative symbolization. Each dance genre has its own ▶ aesthetic (standards of appropriateness and competency).

Theoretical Background Dance can engender visions of alternative possibilities in culture, politics, and the environment. Moreover, dance can also foster creative problem-solving and the

acquisition, reinforcement, and assessment of nondance knowledge, emotional involvement, social awareness, and self and group identity (Hanna 2008). Dance is captivating nonverbal communication that involves attention networks, motivation, and reward. Nonverbal communication includes the bodily conveyance of information through gesture and locomotion, proximity, touch, gaze, facial expression, posture, physical appearance, smell, and emotion. Evolutionary biologists note that humans must attend to motion for survival – to distinguish prey and predator, to select a mate, and to anticipate another’s actions and respond accordingly. Humans first learn through movement, and movement facilitates learning. Sensory-motor activities form new neural pathways and synaptic connections throughout life, and the merger of body, emotion, and cognition in dance may lead to effective communication, the medium of learning. While humans alone among species have art experiences without obvious evolutionary payoff, dance engages innate “play” brain modules that allow us to consider hypothetical situations so that we can form plans in advance of difficulties, symbolically confront current problems, and manage stress. Speech refers to the oral/auditory medium that we use to convey the sounds associated with human languages. Language, however, is the method of conveying complex concepts and ideas, representations of information and relationships, and a set of rules for how these may be combined and manipulated with or without recourse to sound (Clegg 2004:8). Multiple possible “languages of thought” play different roles in the life of the mind but nonetheless work together (pp. 1, 200). Dance is a language that bears some similarities to verbal language. For example, both have vocabulary (locomotion and gestures in dance) and grammar (rules for different dance traditions in putting the vocabulary together and justifying how one movement can follow another). And both languages have semantics (meaning). Verbal language strings together

N. Seel (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6, # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

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Dancing: A Nonverbal