I’ve never elaborated because I didn’t know if these colors were actually rhythm-induced, or if they were just my personal associations about how dance steps should be performed to these rhythms. For example, slip jigs are typically meant to be feminine, elegant, light and airy, so my pretty-pastel association makes sense.

However, the other day I was thinking about my set dances. All my hornpipe sets are typically dark browns, such as the Ace & Deuce of Pipering, the Roving Peddler, the Rambling Rake, etc. The Drunken Gauger is a treble jig, and is very light blue and green.

But my Piper, a hornpipe set that I dance at an uncommonly slow speed (73 bpm) is also light blues and greens. I also have another normal speed (~104 bpm) Piper that is dark brown and forest green, just like any other hornpipe. Then I remembered that when a hornpipe (4/4 or 2/4 time) is slowed down enough, it essentially becomes a jig (6/8), in that the multiples of 4, 6, and 8 will “meet” at some point. So this means that maybe these simple mathematics could explain the changing colors of the Piper, going from a brown hornpipe at speed 104 to a light green/blue treble jig at speed 73.

Of course, although this is pretty interesting and it is some compelling evidence, it still isn’t proof that I have rhythm-induced synesthesia. It is totally possible that since the choreographer of the slow Piper (Michael Ryan) was using a slower tempo, and therefore was choosing more jig-like steps, I came to associate the dance more with a treble jig than with a hornpipe. It isn’t that the choreography was originally styled for faster hornpipe, and I’m just doing those faster hornpipe steps to extremely slow music. The steps are actually even faster (physically, my feet are moving faster) than they would be in a hornpipe at speed 104, and the steps feel much more similar to treble jigs that I’ve danced.

My logic has circled back, so again, I’m back to the question as to whether my synesthesia is induced by the actual rhythm, or if it’s just an association that helps me perform the steps in a way that congruent with the music. Anyway, it’s food for thought, and definitely something to experiment with at some point.

Contemporary Irish dance choreography by Kate Spanos presented at the 7th Annual Conference of the American Synesthesia Association (ASA) (original blog post). Performed at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario on 28 September 2008.
Music is “Pulses” from Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” with voice-over text by Kate Spanos.
More information about the ASA can be found at http://www.synesthesia.info.

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Color Play (May 2008, Belltable Arts Center, Limerick, Ireland; photo by Maurice Gunning)

This weekend I presented at the 7th Annual National Conference of the American Synesthesia Association in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I performed a solo dance entitled “Color Play,” choreographed as part of my MA work at the University of Limerick. This choreography is the beginning of what I hope will become future research exploring synesthesia in dance, the language of dance, and dance perception and cognition.

Color Play (September 2008, McMaster University, Hamilton Ontario Canada; photo by Carter Jones)

Read a review of the performance by Amy Ione at the University of California, Berkeley.

Color Play (September 2008, McMaster University, Hamilton Ontario Canada; photo by Carter Jones)

“Color Play” is the second in a series of dances exploring dance perception, the first being “Sound Play,” which was created and performed in Fall 2007 at the University of Limerick. “Sound Play” is an Irish dance choreography that aims to create a visualization of space as a “ball” of sound that moves from corner to corner of the room through a surround-sound speaker system. The music is “The Eccentric” by Shooglenifty, with sound manipulation by John Greenwood.

Sound Play (November 2007, Irish World Music Academy, University of Limerick; photo by Maurice Gunning)

The abstract below describes a summary of the motivation for and the goals of “Color Play”. The dance is a contemporary choreography informed by Irish dance vocabulary, with music Music For 18 Musicians: Pulses (tracks 1 and 7) by Steve Reich and voice-over text by myself.

Kathleen A. Spanos, University of Limerick, Ireland
Color Play: Synesthesia in Irish Dance

Unlike other art forms dance is uniquely multi-sensory in that it exists in both space and time simultaneously, with a literal mixing of visual, auditory and kinesthetic stimuli in dance perception. This is particularly true in Irish dance, which is highly rhythmical and thus consists of an additional acoustic element. As an Irish step dancer I experience synesthesia in the form of colored movements and rhythms. I have created a choreography in which I deconstruct some Irish dance vocabulary by way of synesthesia and that is built around four basic movements, each of which is paired with a primary color.

In dance the basic units of movement are kinemes, morphokines and motifs, which in language translate to phonemes, morphemes and phrases. Dance is similar to language in that both communicate something by relying on our ability to understand the syntax of these basic elements. The “grammatical” rules of dance are applied to its minimal units so that we can understand the overall concept or symbol communicated by the dance. In dance perception a fusion of the senses is required to understand an overall concept and this is often referred to as a symbolization process. In my choreography, this process is illustrated through overt colored-movement associations.

For a select group of people, the basic components of language give rise to synesthetic experiences. Because dance is analogous to language in the sense that it can be broken down into minimal units it stands to reason that there can exist a form of synesthesia that similarly associates colors with dance elements. In my choreography I will demonstrate a practical analysis of colored-movement associations with the aim of elucidating the symbolization process involved in dance perception.

Color Play (May 2008, Belltable Arts Center, Limerick, Ireland; photo by Maurice Gunning)