Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This essay examines the possibility that dance bodily knowledge can be transferred to the creation of sculpture and it can greatly improve the illusion of the sense of movement in three-dimensional forms. I argue this subject by focusing on the corporeal sensory skills that set dancers apart from those without dance experience. This is a challenge to the status quo because the manner in which we are taught to perceive and create objects of art hinges mainly on the sense of sight. Vision has been the primary sense used by man to create, judge, and review artworks. This article asserts that a heightened sense of spatial awareness and somatic perception developed with dance education and practice affects the art one creates. Research shows that we do not perceive the world and the things in it only visually but also through our body’s sensory system, such as the reception of stimuli through the sense of touch and produced within the human organism by movement and tension, the sensing of one’s muscles, bones, heart beet, and breath. Findings suggest that dance education has the potential to sharpen one’s perception of the body in movement, and this knowledge can greatly improve the manner an artist represents the illusion of movement in figurative sculpture.