The project deals with the relationship between anatomical structure and aesthetic values in dance. The project's title refers to the work of William Forsythe, using the rotation of the hip as motivation for improvised movement material. The project is anartistic and scientific exploration of the anatomical functionality of the dancing body andhow it affects artistic expression.
Phase 3: Scientific data on dancers, especially contemporary dancers, still need to be improved. There are few articles about the specific needs of contemporary dancers.While Phase 2 is just a tiny segment of the scientific and artistic research on contemporary dancers, Phase 3 can provide further knowledge by researching other protocols. This phase investigates what other measurements of the dancing human would be necessary to understand their physical capacity more broadly. Withoutmeasurement, it is impossible to assess a dancer's status quantitatively. Monitoring anathlete's status is routine in the athletic world and is starting to appear in some dance training and performing institutions. It provides crucial information such as their trainingreadiness, injury risk, and current training load. It may also include psychological status and health status.For example, overtraining is a common problem in dance institutions, especially inwinter. In sports, overtraining is an easily monitored condition. If the resting heart rate(heart rate after waking up) is high, the cause could be overtraining. With the help ofsmart gadgets (smartwatches and smartphones), daily heart rate monitoring becomesaccessible for everyone. It only takes some easy protocols to use in dance institutionsto be up to date with the available sports science.
Phase 3 will research what monitoring systems exist, what types are being used in thedance world globally, and what is feasible to implement at Khio. It would bridge phases1-2 into a future project of actualizing a comprehensive dancer status monitoring systemand data collection in Khio. Matthew William Onarhein-Smith will be assisting with the research in phase 3. He has an extensive dance career as a performer, teacher, and maker. In addition, he is trained as an osteopath and treated patients in a large multidisciplinary clinic in New Zealand. His Osteopathy master's thesis investigated training load in dance and compared anexternal measure of training intensity and heart rate against a self-reported method.Training load has become an essential variable in sports as high loads are associatedwith overtraining, and large and sudden load increases are associated with injury. Incontrast, low loads are associated with ineffective training stimulus or detraining.The project leader Zsuzsánna Baloghné Rózsavölgyi next to her dance pedagogymaster’s degree she has a master's degree in sports kinesiology. Together with MatthewWilliam Onarhein-Smith we see the need for a comprehensive monitoring systemcreated for dancers.
