Dancing to “groovy” music enhances the experience of flow

Abstract

We investigated whether dancing influences the emotional response to music, compared to when music is listened to in the absence of movement. Forty participants without previous dance training listened to "groovy" and "nongroovy" music excerpts while either dancing or refraining from movement. Participants were also tested while imitating their own dance movements, but in the absence of music as a control condition. Emotion ratings and ratings of flow were collected following each condition. Dance movements were recorded using motion capture. We found that the state of flow was increased specifically during spontaneous dance to groovy excerpts, compared with both still listening and motor imitation. Emotions in the realms of vitality (such as joy and power) and sublimity (such as wonder and nostalgia) were evoked by music in general, whether participants moved or not. Significant correlations were found between the emotional and flow responses to music and whole-body acceleration profiles. Thus, the results highlight a distinct state of flow when dancing, which may be of use to promote well-being and to address certain clinical conditions.

Flow in music performance and music-listening: Differences in intensity, predictors, and the relationship between flow and subjective well-being

“…Ruth, Spangardt, and Schramm (2016) provided empirical evidence for the influence of a concentrated form of music-listening (analytical music-listening) on flow, that is, lower levels of analytical listening reduce flow when listening to complex music. Bernardi, Bellemare-Pepin, and Peretz (2018) investigated the occurrence of flow while either listening and dancing to music or listening to music without moving. The results here showed that music listening does evoke flow, depending on the music listened to.…”

A Constructionist Approach to Emotional Experiences with Music

“…First, regarding the musical expectancy mechanism, some investigations have found that violations of musical expectancies correlate with physiological and experienced changes in arousal, but not of valence (Egermann et al, 2013;Koelsch et al, 2008;Steinbeis et al, 2006), whereas others have found changes in pleasantness and liking ratings (Cheung et al, 2019;Shany et al, 2019). Second, regarding the evidence for the effects of rhythmic entrainment on valence, the evidence is contradictory: some studies have found significant effects (Bernardi et al, 2017(Bernardi et al, , 2018Labbé & Grandjean, 2014;Witek et al, 2014) while others have found no association (Janata et al, 2012). And third, regarding the effects of music on experienced tension, perhaps the most informative evidence has been provided by Illie and Thompson (2006) who compared the effects of musical loudness, tempo, and pitch height (and their equivalents in vocalizations) on the participants' valence, and tense and energetic arousal (Schimmack & Grob, 2000).…”

Identification Model of Writhing Posture of Classical Dance Based on Motion Capture Technology and Few-Shot Learning

“…This paper proposes to apply the motion capture technology to the tumbling posture recognition model of classical dance, establish a database to obtain the three-dimensional data of human motion in real time, and match the human posture based on the feature plane to obtain the Google model of human characteristics. Applying the above data to the posture teaching and analysis in the process of dance teaching is helpful to improve the teaching level of teachers, Mobilizing students' learning enthusiasm has good reference and application value [ 13 , 14 ]. Human motion posture analysis first rose abroad.…”