The pleasure of music and dance in the brain – interdisciplinary conversations

Presentation:

This 2-day symposium will bring together researchers and practitioners with expertise in music, dance and the brain, in order to initiate an interdisciplinary conversation on the fundamental role of pleasure of music and dance in human life. The study of music and dance is well established within the social sciences and the humanities, and has started to become studied in neuroscience in recent years, but these different approaches are rarely brought together in a constructive conversation. The main aim is to explore different scholarly perspectives on the role of pleasure and emotions in music, dance and the brain by bringing together these scholarly perspectives with insights into the practice of dance and music.

The symposium will be framed around three interrelated themes:

1/ Music and dance across borders and time
2/ Dance and polyrhythmic music
3/ Music and dance as man’s medicine

Questions to be explored will include:

• What is the role of pleasure and emotion in music and dance?
• How and why do music and dance circulate over time and space?
• What research, recording and curating technologies may advance knowledge on music and dance?
• What role does polyrhythms play in linking sound and movement?
• How might we account for the centrality of rhythm in human life?
• Is there a link between rhythm and creativity?
• What is the current state-of-the-art research on music and the brain trying to achieve?
• How might research on music and dance help to understand and treat neuro-psychiatric disorders?

Program:

March 29, 2016

9h15 Welcoming of participants

9h45 Introduction - Morten Kringelbach

Session 1. Music and dance across borders and time

Cross-cultural perspectives on music and dance across time and space, informed by the deep evolutionary history of the brain.

10h Funmi Adewole (De Montfort University) "Contemporary dance in multicultural Britain in the 1990s"

10h40 Peter Stenbæk (Musician and Creative Director, Denmark) "Moving bodies, moving minds - a practitioner's perspective"

11h20 Hélène Neveu Kringelbach (University College London) "Subversion and experimentation in urban Senegalese dance events"

12h Session1 discussion

12h30 Landing Mané (dancer and drummer) & Jamo Jamo Arts African drumming and dance performance

13h15 LUNCH

Session 2. Groove, dance and polyrhythmic music

Polyrhythm as an essential element linking music with dance, with a specific focus on the concept of groove in the brain.

14h30 Peter Vuust (Århus University) "Groove on the brain: rhythmic complexity and predictive coding"

15h10 Adrian Poole (University College London) "Groove in Cuban dance music: an analysis of son and salsa"

15h50 Aurélie Helmlinger (CNRS/Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie) "A tremendous musical embodiment: cognitive analysis of the spread of steelbands"

16h30 Jean-Pierre Changeux (Collège de France) "Creativity In Art: A Neuronal Hypothesis"

17h Session2 discussion

March 30, 2016

Session 3. Music and dance as man's medicine

The potential therapeutic opportunities offered by music and dance in rebalancing the brain and body in disease and suffering.

10h00 Morten Kringelbach (Oxford/Århus University) "The pleasure of music and dance"

10h40 Jerome Lewis (University College London) "Music, pleasure and culture: How pleasure in musical participation can drive cultural transmission"

11h20 Carine Plancke (University of Roehampton) "Rhythmic attuning and the transmission of joy: Relational dynamics in Congolese ikoku dancing"

12h Session3 and general discussion

13h END OF THE CONFERENCE