An Expressive Bodily Movement Repertoire for Marimba Performance, Revealed through Observers' Laban Effort-Shape Analyses, and Allied Musical Features: Two Case Studies

Abstract

Musicians' expressive bodily movements can influence observers' perception of performance. Furthermore, individual differences in observers' music and motor expertise can shape how they perceive and respond to music performance. However, few studies have investigated the bodily movements that different observers of music performance perceive as expressive, in order to understand how they might relate to the music being produced, and the particular instrument type. In this paper, we focus on marimba performance through two case studies—one solo and one collaborative context. This study aims to investigate the existence of a core repertoire of marimba performance expressive bodily movements, identify key music-related features associated with the core repertoire, and explore how observers' perception of expressive bodily movements might vary according to individual differences in their music and motor expertise. Of the six professional musicians who observed and analyzed the marimba performances, three were percussionists and experienced marimba players. Following training, observers implemented the Laban effort-shape movement analysis system to analyze marimba players' bodily movements that they perceived as expressive in audio-visual recordings of performance. Observations that were agreed by all participants as being the same type of action at the same location in the performance recording were examined in each case study, then across the two studies. A small repertoire of bodily movements emerged that the observers perceived as being expressive. Movements were primarily allied to elements of the music structure, technique, and expressive interpretation, however, these elements appeared to be interactive. A type of body sway movement and more localized sound generating actions were perceived as expressive. These movements co-occurred and also appeared separately. Individual participant data revealed slightly more variety in the types and locations of actions observed, with judges revealing preferences for observing particular types of expressive bodily movements. The particular expressive bodily movements that are produced and perceived in marimba performance appear to be shaped by music-related and sound generating features, musical context, and observer music and motor expertise. With an understanding of bodily movements that are generated and perceived as expressive, embodied music performance training programs might be developed to enhance expressive performer-audience communication.

The Relationship Between High-Level Violin Performers’ Movement and Evaluators’ Perception of Musicality

“…For instance, Davidson (2002Davidson ( , 2012 found that sometimes the absence of movement, when used in conjunction with the use of movement, also conveys increased expressivity to audiences. In addition, various localized regions of the body have been shown to have varying impacts on the perception of expressivity (Dahl & Friberg, 2007;Davidson, 1994Davidson, , 2012Juchniewicz, 2008) and certain specific bodily movements have more impact on perceptions of expressivity than other movements (Broughton & Davidson, 2016). When comparing patterns of movements among performers, researchers have found musicians of like-instruments often use similar motions (Broughton & Davidson, 2016;Davidson, 2012;Wanderley, 2002;Wanderley, Vines, Middleton, McKay, & Hatch, 2005).…”

“…In addition, various localized regions of the body have been shown to have varying impacts on the perception of expressivity (Dahl & Friberg, 2007;Davidson, 1994Davidson, , 2012Juchniewicz, 2008) and certain specific bodily movements have more impact on perceptions of expressivity than other movements (Broughton & Davidson, 2016). When comparing patterns of movements among performers, researchers have found musicians of like-instruments often use similar motions (Broughton & Davidson, 2016;Davidson, 2012;Wanderley, 2002;Wanderley, Vines, Middleton, McKay, & Hatch, 2005). Individuals, however, also develop their own shapes and patterns of movement that remain consistent across performances and within performances (Broughton & Davidson, 2016;Davidson, 2007).…”

“…When comparing patterns of movements among performers, researchers have found musicians of like-instruments often use similar motions (Broughton & Davidson, 2016; Davidson, 2012; Wanderley, 2002; Wanderley, Vines, Middleton, McKay, & Hatch, 2005). Individuals, however, also develop their own shapes and patterns of movement that remain consistent across performances and within performances (Broughton & Davidson, 2016; Davidson, 2007).…”

A Device for Children’s Instrumental Creativity and Learning: An Overview of the MIROR Platform

“…The LMA, which was originally created to describe, visualize, interpret and document human movement, in our case was used with a more specific application in the field of dance and movement education. This approach has been used with excellent results in the field of musical studies (e.g., Broughton and Davidson, 2016 ). In our experiment we observed four factors of the category Effort , which are: Space (direct or indirect), Time (sustained or sudden), Weight (light or heavy), and Flow (free or bound).…”

How Shall I Count the Ways? A Method for Quantifying the Qualitative Aspects of Unscripted Movement With Laban Movement Analysis

“…The versatility of LMA (and systems emerging from it) is evident from its use in diverse types of research: it has been used to evaluate fighting behaviors of rats (Foroud and Pellis, 2003), to analyze behavior of non-human animals in naturalistic settings (Fagen et al, 1997), to diagnose autistic individuals (Dott, 1995), to evaluate motor recovery of stroke patients (Foroud and Whishaw, 2006), and to characterize the development of infants’ reaching movements (Foroud and Whishaw, 2012). Several studies have also used LMA-based systems to describe, recognize or create bodily emotional expressions for applications in human-robot interactions, interactive games such as the Xbox, and in animations (Camurri et al, 2003; Zhao and Badler, 2005; Rett et al, 2009; Barakova and Lourens, 2010; Zacharatos et al, 2013); to identify the brain mechanisms underlying the production of some of the LMA motor elements (Cruz-Garza et al, 2014), to compare expression in musicians (Broughton and Davidson, 2014, 2016), to study emotion recognition (Melzer et al, 2018) and to capture individual differences in decision-making style (Connors et al, 2014, 2016; Connors and Rende, 2018).…”