Dancing the Elements Karl Schaffer, Erik Stern, and Scott Kim

This list of elements is presented to jump-start non-dancers’ thinking about the art of dance.

• Space.

  The parts of the body can be used to create shapes of many different levels, usually divided into low, medium, and high. The levels are relative, though medium usually refers to the height of the body as we walk normally. The body can also move through space, creating directions, paths, and floor patterns. All of these aspects of space involve dimension: the movements may occur in a line, along a flat plane, or curve through space.
  

• Time.

  All movement takes place in time, and has duration. Repetition of movement can create rhythms. The most essential repetition that underlies a rhythm is its pulse or beat. The speed of a beat determines the tempo. To stress a beat creates an accent. A single rhythmic pattern can be composed of many of these aspects of time.

• Energy.

  Energy refers to the quality with which a movement is performed—the how of the movement. Energy can be looked at in a variety of ways: the emotional, the muscular, the initiation. Examples of words used frequently to describe qualities of motion include swing, suspend, percussive, sustained, collapse, extend, contract, and rebound.

• Other elements of dance.

  In addition to the dance elements there are descriptions and analyses of how the body operates. These descriptions take different forms, such as the parts of the body, the motions of the joints (e.g., flexion, extension, adduction, abduction), and what are called basic locomotor patterns (walk, run, hope, jump, leap, skip, gallop, and slide).

In the descriptions above, aspects of dance are depicted individually, but when one is dancing, one is engaged in many or all of these aspects at once.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Karl Schaffer and Erik Stern co-direct The Dr. Schaffer and Mr. Stern Dance Ensemble. Karl Schaffer teaches mathematics at DeAnza College in Cupertino, California. Erik Stern teaches dance at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Scott Kim, the third author of this article, writes the puzzle column for Discover Magazine.