Exploring the percussive routes and shared commonalities in Cape Breton step dancing

• Main Author: Mats Melin
• Format: Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: Cape Breton step dancing; dance movements; dance tradition; Breton Island; Canada
• Online Access: https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Exploring_the_percussive_routes_and_shared_commonalities_in_Cape_Breton_step_dancing/19832071

Cape Breton step dancing is the regional label, given to the vernacular form of percussive step dance found in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. Whether improvised or choreographed into a routine, this dance genre has, alongside the local fiddle tradition become emblematic for the Cape Breton community identity. Exploring the Percussive Routes and Shared Commonalities in Cape Breton Step Dancing is the first academic study where the investigation is focused on visual, aural and kinaesthetic transmission processes at work in the Cape Breton dance community. Observing, participating and sensing by utilizing phenomenological hermeneutics as a research method are the three transmission processes which are analysed individually and symbiotically. The study observes how Cape Breton step dance movements are embodied and also how they migrate from body to body by means of the three sensoria. Observations on visual transmission, for example, draw on recent research in the cognitive sciences, and what aspects of the dance tradition that are acquired by direct observation in different community contexts are explored. Aural, or ear, learning probes the interconnected transmission environment of the home as one example, and furthermore looks at the particular local soundscape that informs dancers of sound and rhythm preferences in the Cape Breton music and song tradition and its relationship to dance movement. As a means of transmitting cultural knowledge, kinaesthetic transfer, alongside visual and aural processes, could be seen as a key component for shaping the aesthetic, stylistic and movement preferences of step dancing in Cape Breton. Kinaesthetic transfer is the bringing out of somatic, or felt, dimensions of movement; in other words, the proprioceptive or kinaesthetic awareness of movement’s kinetic vitality. The combination of these three transmission processes at work in different dance contexts enables and informs the individual dancer of the Cape Breton community’s preferred style and aesthetic criteria ...