Framework for Body Expression: Movement, Space, and Time

The Expressive Dimension of Movement (ME)

The Expressive Dimension focuses on the internal experience and manifestation of movement, often referred to as the Expressive Alphabet (ME).

Expressive Alphabet: Body Involvement and Control (ITC)

This dimension details the Integration of Total Control (ITC) in terms of body parts and physical dynamics:

• Body parts involved.
• Support surfaces, bodily attitudes, and movement (e.g., inertia, centers of gravity).
• Degree of muscle tension.
• Sense of gravity.
• Movement opportunities.
• Spatial concepts (individual and total space, shape distribution, trajectory, spatial locations, symmetry-asymmetry, levels).
• Body rhythm (internal and external).
• Different qualities of movement.
• Body sound (vowel, non-vocal, and instrumental).
• Use and experience of objects.

Inner World (EM): Expressing Ideas and Emotions

The expression of ideas and emotions through movement (abstract and figurative) and sound, with the intention of expressing one's privacy, seeking escape, and achieving well-being.

The Communicative Dimension

Communication Alphabet: Body and Sound Language

This involves the awareness of body language and sound associated with verbal and sign language. Key components include:

Non-Verbal Communication Elements:

• Bodily actions, appearance, physical contact, eye contact, interpersonal distance, gesture, spatial orientation, and interpersonal interaction.

Communicative Sound Components:

• Pitch, intensity or volume, pause, rhythm, and velocity.
• Communicative gesture and sound.

External World: Conveying Ideas and Feelings

Using figurative movement and sound to externalize and be understood by others, conveying an idea, situation, feeling, or emotion offered to the performer from the outside.

• Simulation of moods, ideas, feelings, or situations.

Personal Interaction and Shared Action

Searching for exchange and shared action with another or others with communicative value:

• Corporal Dialogue.
• Synchronization.
• Complementarity.

Discursive Exchange

Using the Communicative Vocabulary (CV) to refer to bodily experiences of expressive, communicative, and aesthetic intent to share.

Detailed Components of Expressive Perception

The expressive gesture serves as the basic unit of movement. Key elements in the perception of body expression include body segments, time, space, and energy (the qualities of movement).

1. Corporal Perception: Expressive Exploration of the Body

• Body Parts: Segmental mobilization (segments, lines, planes).
• Postural tonic activity and postural attitude.
• Feeling of gravity and supports.
• Breathing and relaxation.
• Expression of the face, trunk, hands, and feet.
• Intensity/Energy: The qualities of movement.
• Expression and control of feelings and emotions.
• Plastic figures (shapes/forms).

2. Spatial Perception: Expressive Exploration of Space

• Spatial organization, orientation, and structuring.
• Key elements in space exploration: space occupancy, levels or heights, directions, paths, size, and formations.

3. Temporal Perception: Expressive Exploration of Time

• Temporal organization: Internal and external rhythm as key elements.
• Rhythmic pulse, accent, and rhythmic structure.
• Length and velocity as expressive resources.
• The emotional dimension of sound.