Choreologia

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the dance theory of Miki Wakamatsu who is a representative dancer, choreographer, professor and director of dance in Japan. It was extracted from his writings and personal interviews, focusing on the general problems in dance and his approaches to creating dance works.
The following conclusions has been reached:
1. As to the general problems of dance, dance is a conjugation with “Mu” which means “saturation of energy”. Dance communication is not only between the dancer and the audience but includes the intervention of Divine Spirit. Dance is an effective response to stress relief in crisis. The psychosomatic sense of the dancer has 3 phases; joints-muscle sense, skeletal sense and molecular sense. Wakamatsu's attitude toward creating dance works is being intellectually flexible and allowing self-criticism.
2. As to his approaches to creating dance works, contents are extracted from living daily life. Contents pursue the full range of emotion, energy of movements, vitality of living and reality. Approaches to dance works balance between the abstract and the concrete through editing movements, and creating caricature in movements.
Therefore, Wakamatsu's dance work is the challenge of putting his art at the intersection between the contemporary era and himself.

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This paper is part of a series of ongoing studies intended to examine the structure of body expressions of the basic techniques in dance movements in Peking opera in Taiwan. Based on previous studies on the basic techniques (Fu 1997, 2001, 2002, 2004), this paper aims to clarify the features of techniques and expressions in four areas of the body (head, hands, legs, and body). Moreover, examining the features of the expressions of the different parts of the body in terms of the Chinese perspective of body, this paper aims to clarify the principles of the body area techniques.
The terms of dance movement in opera had been described as “dance expressions in opera (an opera itself, not its acting script)”, but in 1989, Wang, for the first time, used the terms, “dance movements in opera.” Now, both in China and in Taiwan, these terms are widely used. In addition, because the terms of dance movements in opera include dance movements in all operas including Peking opera, this paper inserts “Peking”: dance movement in Peking opera. Players of the dance movements in Peking opera are called Peking opera actors.

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The logical and numerical analysis of traditional performing arts including Traditional Japanese Dance has long been considered to be almost impossible. However, the recent motion capturing technique has made quantitative processing of dance body motions possible. We have been studying about the analysis of Traditional Japanese Dance by using motion capture systems, and already reported the quantitative characteristics of the class of fundamental motions “Okuri” focusing on the motion of ankles. This paper describes the investigation about “Tame” pattern found in motion of ankles. The result of the analysis implies the “Tame” pattern in ankles might be resulted from the subtle time lags of the motions in shoulder, breast, hip triggered by the vertical motion in the center of the gravity. Thus, the result of the research shows the possibilities of extracting the characteristics of feminine impression by the motion analysis of fundamental motion “Okuri”.

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