Nadra Assaf

The Meanings of a Modern Dance: an Investigation into the Communicative Properties of a Non-verbal Medium Nadra Assaf

Communication in all its various forms has one common goal: expressing and deciphering ideas. Education in recent years has taken a move towards more global approaches to learning/teaching. Within this context, more innovative and inclusive methods of communication need to be created. The study discussed in this book is an investigation into the meaning-form connections in a modern dance experiment. The results led to the coining of six categories through which modern dance produces meaning and audiences decipher meaning from modern dance: Conflict Resolution, Personal Experience/Trait, Linguistic Structures, Abstract Concepts, Compatibility, and Technical Ability. The final stage of the study looked at a constructivist communication model ¿ecology of meanings model¿, utilized its basic concept to build a communication for modern dance, and configured the newly found categories within it. This resulted in a prototype of a possible communication model for modern dance which could afford choreographers/dancers/dance educators/dance spectators the ability to understand not only what modern dance means but also how.