INTRODUCTION OF

DANCE
PREPARED BY: Ms. ELAIZA JHEL A.CABALUNA
Instructor
The Elements of Dance are the foundational concepts and
vocabulary that help students develop movement skills and
understand dance as an artistic practice.

The acronym BASTE helps students remember the elements:

Body
Action
Space
Time
Energy
In dance, the body is the mobile figure or
shape, felt by the dancer, seen by others.
The body is sometimes relatively still and
sometimes changing as the dancer moves in
place or travels through the dance area.
Dancers may emphasize specific parts of
their body in a dance phrase or use their
whole body all at once.
Another way to describe the body in dance is to
consider the body systems—muscles, bones, organs,
breath, balance, reflexes. We could describe how the
skeletal system or breath is used, for example.

The body is the conduit between the inner realm of

Intentions, ideas, emotions and identity and the outer
realm of expression and communication. Whether
watching dance or dancing ourselves, we shift back
and forth between the inner/outer sense of body.
Action is any human movement included in the act of
dancing— it can include dance steps, facial movements,
partner lifts, gestures, and even everyday movements such
as walking. Dance is made up of streams of movement and
pauses, so action refers not only to steps and sequences,
but also to pauses and moments of relative stillness.

Dancers may use movements that have been

choreographed or traditional dances taught by others who
know the dances. Depending on the dance style or the
choreographer's decision, dancers may also revise or
embellish movement they have learned from others.
Dancers interact with space in myriad ways. They may stay
in one place or they may travel from one place to another.
They may alter the direction, level, size, and pathways of
their movements.

The relationships of the dancers to each other may be based

on geometric designs or rapidly change as they move close
together, then apart. Even when a dancer is dancing alone in
a solo, the dancer is dynamically involved in the space of
the performing area so that space might almost be
considered a partner in the dance.
Dancers may also orient their movement towards
objects or in relation to natural settings. Sometimes
dances are created for specific locations such as an
elevator or on a raft in a lake for site-based
performances.

Spatial relationships between dancers or between

dancers and objects are the basis for design
concepts such as beside, in front of, over, through,
around, near or far.
The keyword for the element of time
is When? Human movement is naturally
rhythmic in the broad sense that we alternate
activity and rest. Breath and waves are examples
of rhythms in nature that repeat, but not as
consistently as in a metered rhythm.

Spoken word and conversation also have rhythm

and dynamics, but these timing patterns are
characteristically more inconsistent and
unpredictable.
.
Rhythmic patterns may be metered or free rhythm. Much of
western music uses repeating patterns (2/4 or 3/4 for example),
but concepts of time and meter are used very differently
throughout the world. Dance movements may also show different
timing relationships such as simultaneous or sequential timing,
brief to long duration, fast to slow speed, or accents in predictable
or unpredictable intervals
Energy is about how the movement happens.
Choices about energy include variations in
movement flow and the use of force, tension, and
weight. An arm gesture might be free flowing or
easily stopped, and it may be powerful or gentle,
tight or loose, heavy or light. A dancer may step
into an arabesque position with a sharp, percussive
attack or with light, flowing ease. Energy may
change in an instant, and several types of energy
may be concurrently in play.
Energy choices may also reveal emotional states. For example, a powerful
push might be aggressive or playfully boisterous depending on the intent
and situation.
Some types of energy can be easily expressed in words, others spring from
the movement itself and are difficult to label with language. Sometimes
differences in the use of energy are easy to perceive; other times these
differences can be quite subtle and ambiguous. Perhaps more so than the
other elements, energy taps into the nonverbal yet deeply communicative
realm of dance.