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"The Effect of Theatre Lighting on a Dancer's Balance"
Guthrie, Hannah
Guthrie, Hannah
Abstract
Description
Success of a dance production lies in a dancer’s ability to be otherworldly, show complicated physical movement effortlessly, and to take the audience on a journey. Beyond the physical requirements and demands of dance, other factors of a performance environment can help or hinder a dancer’s ability to perform at their physical best. The success of movement in the dance vocabulary; turning, jumping, and even simple balance actions can be susceptible to the introduction of theatrical elements not utilized in the dance studio space. Brighter, more drastic lighting can affect visibility, forcing the dancer to rely on their instinctual muscle habits and proprioception for success. This statistical analysis using the bootstrapping method (a statistical method that t simulates repeating a study a large number of times) looks at the effect of theatre lighting versus ambient lighting through the measurements collected from the a sample of seven university dance students executing the Star Excursion Balance Test on a force-plate. From the results of this analysis, it was found that a dancer's balance swayed more in the anterior-posterior direction under theatre lighting conditions, indicating the need to facilitate more proprioceptive awareness in these directions, and that exploration of future studies should view the actions and sway in the anterior-posterior direction as a primary indicator of instability and risk of injury.
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University of Wyoming. Libraries