Emotion in motion: a kinesemiotics analysis of character interpretation through dance discourse

Ballet is a very popular form of art that attracts audiences of fans all over the world, especially when traditional classical ballet performances are released by established ballet companies. However, very few people really understand how dancers communicate through the interaction between choreographed body-structures and space. As a consequence, new choreographies that, unlike the great classical crowd-pleasers, are not based on well-known stories or characters tend to attract much smaller audiences. Drawing on the principle of Projection, which informs the Functional Grammar of Dance (Maiorani 2017, 2021) and the new interdisciplinary research area of Kinesemiotics (Maiorani 2021), this article will provide an example of comparative analysis of dance sequences that will show how, through different choices of Projections, two different dancers actually express different meanings and emotions even if dancing the same role on the same score. The article will also discuss the implications of such an analysis and its possible automated development in terms of potential for data collection and archival.