Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T06:06:01.556Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Comparative Study of the Movement Accentuation of the Body in Different Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Deborah Bertonoff*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv
Get access

Extract

The three gods of the Indian pantheon are represented in sculpture with many arms, so as to symbolize a multiplicity of actions executed simultaneously. I find a similar manifestation in the classical Indian dance: a contrapuntal simultaneousness in pointing out the direction, and rhythmical accentuation, of the movement executed by the different parts of the body, each of them acting and reacting in its own way. The stony position of a quasi-polyrhythmic phenomenon in the sculptures is transformed in the dance into a polyrhythm of movement.

From my own choreographical and research work, from always having observed and used bodily reactions in the dance, I have long been aware that every part of the body has a mind and sense of its own. (This is, from a different angle, the same conclusion which led Ouspensky, in his New Model of the Universe, to say that during a dream each one of the different parts of the body thinks independently of the other parts, and in a different way from the others.)

Type
Multi-Part Techniques in Folk Music and Dance
Copyright
Copyright © International Council for Traditional Music 1967

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)