The Effects that Dancing at Different Speeds has on a Viewer’s Auditory Perception of the Music’s Tempo

The Effects that Dancing at Different Speeds has on a Viewer’s Auditory Perception of the Music’s Tempo.

How does the speed of a dance alter the viewers perception of the music’s tempo during a performance?

Researcher

Savannah Frederick

Class of 2023

Problem Statement

There is a problem with the lack of clarity between the correlation of the speed of dance and the viewers tempo perception. It is known that music plays a huge role in the way that a dancer performs, however it unclear the role that a dancer has on the music.

Dance (Faster)

Dance (Slower)

Significance and Value of Study

Through my research I will uncover whether or not dance has the power and capability to alter the way music is perceived. This research will be significant to dancers everywhere because it has the potential to prove that this art form can alter something as large as music. If my research proves successful, it can also help inspire and motivate dancers, showing them how valuable their talent is, and teaching them not to take dance for granted. Even so, if my research proves unsuccessful, the dance industry can strive to become more fueled and determined to be able to reach this goal in the near future. Dance is one of the most powerful forms of art and entertainment, and I intend to show that through this research.

Hypothesis and Assumptions

Music tempo will be altered based upon the speed at which a dance is performed. My hypothesis is that the faster paced the dance is, the faster the tempo will be percieved, and vice versa.

Proposed Method of Study

I have chosen to use a correlational and qualitative research method to collect and analyze my data. This is my chosen research method because I will be testing whether or not different speeds of dance have an impact on how fast or slow the viewer hears the music. I will be gathering quantitative data, and my data will come from a survey that I create including my creation of dance choreography.

Definitions and Variables

The variable I am measuring is the music tempo perceived by individuals watching a dance performance at varying speeds.

Limitations

I had multiple limitations to my research, first of all being survey format. In my survey, participants watched video A first, followed by video B. This means that participants viewed the video with the slow choreography first, and the video with the fast choreography second. Perhaps my data could have been different if i had shown my videos in a different order. My second limitation is my number of participants. I only got 20 participants in total for my survey, which was not enough to meet the Central Limit Theorem. Lastly is my age demographic. My age cohort was between 26 and 57 years of age, including all millennials and gen x’s. I potentially could have gotten different data if I had chosen a different age cohort.

Conclusion

From all of the data that I collected, I can conclude that the speed of dance does have an impact on how one perceives music tempo, however more research needs to be done on the topic. This does in fact also prove my hypothesis to be true.

Next Steps

For anybody who will choose to replicate my research in the future, I encourage them to try a different age cohort and see how the results comply with mine. I also encourage trying multiple trials to see if the video order in the survey changes the data. What I mean by this is have a trial like I did where participants watch video A followed by video B, and then after a set amount of days, follow up with another trial with the videos swapped. Video B followed by video A. Lastly I would encourage posting the survey on multiple online websites rather than just passing out flyers. I feel like posting the survey online would gage a wider audience of participants than what I did by passing out flyers.

Results and Findings

55% of survey respondents thought that the music tempo was different between the two videos. 55% is not significantly large, however it does tell me that over half of the respondents found a correlation between dance speed and music tempo.

More specifically, 50% of the respondents thought that when the dancing was slowed down, the music was playing at a slower tempo and vice versa, when the dancing was sped up, the music was playing at a faster tempo. While this is just half of my respondents, there needs to be more research to see a clearer trend, more significant trend.

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