The flow experience in dance professional#

The study argues that processing music places an extra demand on dancersвЂ™ concentration, which presents a unique insight into their experience of flow.

DancersвЂ™ varying levels of awareness of and engagement with music during flow could suggest differing intensities in flow among ballet dancers. Music clearly played an important role in dancersвЂ™ experience of flow. The three dimensions that stood out as most predictive of flow in this study were the merging of action and awareness, autotelic experience and loss of self-consciousness. Dancers commonly associated flow with a highly creative state where they tended to find surprising, very 'organic and natural' movement solutions.

The flow experience in dance professional#

This study found resemblances with Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) dimensions of flow in professional ballet dancers. When experienced in collaboration, the flow was described as 'becoming one with the group'. The interviews were transcribed and analysed deductively and inductively using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The interviews took place during the 2013 productions of Don Quixote in Johannesburg and Camille in Cape Town respectively, so that the dancers could draw on recent performance experience in their recollection of flow. Seventeen ballet dancers from two South African ballet companies shared their experiences in separate semi-structured interview sessions. Furthermore, the study aims to gain an understanding of the role of music in dancersвЂ™ experience of flow. Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) model of the flow state is used for its applicability to professional ballet dancers. The aim of this study is to explore professional ballet dancersвЂ™ subjective experiences of flow in a current performance context. Our results confirm previous findings that associated flow with a state in which the person feels simultaneously cognitively efficient, motivated, and happy, and that these states can be facilitated in groups characterised by trust.Flow, also known as вЂњthe zoneвЂќ, is a positive enjoyable psychological state often linked to optimal performance. While findings concerning movement may be specific to dance, others are more generic to the process of group creativity. Moreover, flow and group settings facilitated creativity through maintaining a desired creative focus for longer, lowering self-judgment and inspiring novel solutions. When experienced in collaboration, the flow was described as 'becoming one with the group'. Effortless attention and enjoyment were predominant themes that emerged from the dancers' reports while describing the flow. Flow is believed to be a psychological state in which the mind and body 'just click', creating optimal performance. We interpreted their responses using qualitative content analysis. The subjective experience of flow in professional dancers was analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). We conducted individual semi-structured interviews with all participants supported by a video-cued recall of experience from the workshop. Six dancers took part in an improvisation workshop, reflecting on their creative practice and any associated flow. Our focus was upon the creative process itself, rather than upon creative outcomes. The role of flow experience in a group creativity task, contemporary dance improvisation, was explored through qualitative content analysis.