Watching or Listening: How Visual and Verbal Information Contribute to Learning a Complex Dance Phrase.

While learning from observation is generally regarded as major learning mode for motor actions, evidence from dance practice suggests that learning dance movement through verbal instruction might provide a promising way to support dancers' individual interpretation of and identification with the movement material. In this multidisciplinary project, we conducted a study on the learning of dance movement through two modalities, observation of a human model in a video clip and listening to the audio-recording of a verbal movement instruction. Eighteen second year dance students learned two dance phrases, one from observation and one from verbal instruction, and were video-recorded performing the learned material.