Representing postures and emotions of Taiwanese indigenous folk dances via Labanotation and Laban Effort

Abstract

Taiwanese indigenous people have rich cultural heritages. However, their precious heritages are disappearing day-by-day due to the lack of writing systems in their native languages. One of the most important heritages includes their folk dances; in particular those danced at their festivals. We have collected basic-step dances, 2-step, and 4-step dances of their festivals, and described them by using Labanotation for preservation purposes. Labanotation can represent motion positions of dance, but cannot record dynamic structures such as speeds and accelerations during dancing. These dynamic structures reveal the dancers intentions and emotions. We combined Laban Effort with Labanotation to record both dynamic structures and motion positions. In addition, we proposed a new dance-recording procedure for preserving folk dance systematically and effectively; we apply this procedure to a case study Puyuma Shield dance. In conclusion, this study is important for recording dance position and understanding dancers emotions, as well as for providing a better systematic dance-recording procedure and verifying the effectiveness of that procedure.