Dance in West Africa - Analysis and description in relation to aspects of communication theory

Book Cover

Imprint

Contents

1. General introduction

2. What is dance?

3. Dance and science

3.1 Ethnology

3.2 The psychological approach

3.3 Historical perspectives

3.4 Semiotic, linguistic and phenomenological approaches

3.5 African dance as a subject of musicology and ethnology

4. The Ewe

5. The Ewe language

6. Religion in Ewe Society

7. Preconsiderations in Communication Theory

8. Comparison of verbal and non-verbal forms of communication

8.1 The visual channel

8.2 Confining and containing the object of investigation

9. Description of a dance-event from a dance-inherent point of view

10. Transcription and notation

11. Evaluation of the data

11.1 Explanation of material

11.2 Evaluation of ‘motion data’

11.3 Basic movement

11.4 Bodily and spatial orientation

11.5 Orientation of observers

11.6 Establishing the space

11.7 Classification of bodily movements

11.8 Corporal segmentation, notation and description thereof

12. Describing the various positions

13. Discussion of dance data

14. From gesture to text

Glossary of terminology

Bibliography