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body’s surface and can be perceived by an outside observer. However, there are also movement
analysis methods dedicated to internal movement processes, for instance the broad
field of biomechanics, which is playing an increasingly important role in dance training.
Biomechanics, a branch of biophysics, examines the mechanical conditions behind
human movement. 34 It was primarily developed in the 1970s as an independent scientific
discipline. While it initially found application in sports and industrial sciences, it soon
made inroads into orthopedics. Biomechanical analysis defines the body as a mechanical
apparatus, as a collection of rigid segments connected at the joints. Every movement can
be divided into separate joint movements for investigation. The biomechanical perception
of movement as a change in position of a point on the body, a body part, or the entire
body in space within a certain time period is correspondingly mechanistic. Simplification
is necessary in order to make the human body’s highly complex movement processes
measurable and calculable. Movement is thus transformed into quantitative and descriptive
data.
Biomechanical investigation includes anatomical, physiological, and body–mechanical
knowledge that is separated into three main fields of analysis: (1) movement description,
(2) analysis of muscle activity and muscle function, and (3) analysis of forces that impact
the body.
Producing, recording, and evaluating biomechanical data requires special measuring
instruments from simple inclinometers and accelerometers (manual and electronic) to
extremely complex technical procedures that can only be accomplished in appropriately
equipped laboratories. The most common methods in the latter category are Motion
Capture, used to record and reconstruct movement as well as to calculate extrapolated
values like speed and acceleration; electromyography, used to research muscle activity;
dynamography, to record the forces impacting the body (pressure distribution measurements
using force platforms, for instance); and dynamometry, to measure muscle function
and muscular strength production. 35 These procedures are often used in combination,
and the data are synchronized in order to create a complex profile of movement’s
cause and effect.
Biomechanical analysis becomes interesting for the dance when considering the optimization
of individual movement processes, an efficient training design, health, and
injury prevention (like it is used in its main areas of application in sports, sports sciences,
medicine, and physiotherapy). Biomechanical knowledge about ideal movement
execution, on the one hand, and knowledge about one’s own movement processes (including
the physical requirements), on the other, can assist dancers in improving their
technique and allow for the best–possible utilization of individual abilities. The dancers,
their teachers, physiotherapists, or dance medicine physicians can recognize vulnerabilities
and trace the origin of problems in particular movements and thus appropriately
adjust training and prevent injury. 36 Accordingly, biomechanical methods are especially
relevant for dance techniques that are geared towards shaping and reproduction of certain
movement processes.
As opposed to competitive sports, dance practitioners still have problems in doing
biomechanical movement analyses that include all the measurement processes. Expensive
instruments and elaborate measuring techniques require financial resources, experts, and
laboratories that are usually only found at universities, in hospitals, or rehabilitation
struct movement archives for other dance
forms as well.
34 About biomechanics, see Yiannis Koutedakis /
Emmanuel O. Owolabi / Margo Apostolos:
‘Dance Biomechanics. A Tool for Controlling
Health, Fitness, and Training’ and Margaret
Wilson / Young-Hoo Kwon: ‘The Role of Biomechanics
in Understanding Dance Movement.
A Review’, both in: Journal of Dance Medicine
& Science, Vol. 12, No 3, 2008, pp. 83–90 /
109–116.
35 For a detailed description of these
methods see Koutedakis 2008, pp. 83–85
and Bettina Bläsing: ‘The dancer’s memory.
Expertise and cognitive structures in dance’.
In: Bläsing, Bettina / Puttke, Martin / Schack,
Thomas: The Neurocognition of Dance. Mind,
Movement and Motor Skills. Hove / New York:
Psychology Press, 2010, pp. 79–81.
36 Much biomechanical information has been
obtained over the course of sports science
investigations. However there are now also
studies about all these fields of application that
deal especially with questions relevant to
the dance. For instance, individual movement
sequences (i.e., plié, balance, and jumps)
or stress on individual body parts (i.e., the
ankle joint) have been analyzed. For an overview
of specific studies, see Wilson 2008, pp. 111–114
and Koutedakis 2008, pp. 85–88. However,
further research is necessary for problems
specific to dance.