Stage expressiveness in romantic ballet : investigating how a dancer’s gestural vocabulary can contribute to a more authentic and emotional performance

Abstract

This dissertation analyses how introducing each dancer’s personal expressiveness and gestural vocabulary, making room for individuality and diversity in interpretation, influences romantic ballet performance by allowing dancers to showcase authenticity, which can lead to a more emotional performance. The paper also analyses the way nonverbal communication is perceived by the artists on stage, as well as audience, and how can that offer insights about the current pantomime used in ballet performances. Moreover, it is questioning whether dancers could express themselves more freely on stage if the choreographed gestures would be eliminated from ballet. The aim of this research is to discover whether ballet performances could become more meaningful by changing the approach on ballet pantomime and the dancers’ training. This study contains insights on the connection between gestures and the psychology behind them. It analyses the link between the details of nonverbal communication and how the brain perceives it and creates emotional responses to it. Another important aspect presented is the introduction of actor training techniques into the dancers’ training which, alongside to the analysis coming from psychology, would detect if that results into a more emotional response in terms of expression. Therefore, half of the practical research was concentrated on exposing ballet dancers to techniques that help the performer connect to their characters, access emotions easier and help them connect to and actively respond to a partner, inspired by the Rasaboxes exercises and the Orazio Costa Mimic Method. In order to collect data, I created and analysed the results of an online survey about original ballet pantomime in comparison to the reconstructed pantomime created during the practical research inspired by actor training. Furthermore, by reconstructing a scene from the ballet Giselle, as well as choreographing a short piece that followed the structure of a ballet performance, valuable data was registered about how gestural vocabulary affects performance, from both the performers point of view as well as the audience’s. This research is of great significance as it promotes the revision of ballet pantomime, as well as the introduction of acting for dancers as part of dance schools’ curriculum. Moreover, it underlines that important parts of a dancer’s training are neglected that should be more worked upon.