PhD | ‘From Motion to Emotion: Using Improvisational Theatre as a Tool for Enhancing Musicians’ Expressiveness’ – Jenifer Yáñez Villahermosa

PhD | ‘From Motion to Emotion: Using Improvisational Theatre as a Tool for Enhancing Musicians’ Expressiveness’
PhD-Candidate: Jenifer Yáñez Villahermosa
Institution: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Promotor: Dr. Sara Strandvad
Supervisors: Dr. Karolien Dons & Dr. Naomi de Ruiter-Wilcox

Recent investigations have shown that musicians’ motor behavior is a significant source of perceptual information during performances, as it helps audiences differentiate musicians’ expressive intentions better (Waddell & Williamon, 2017). However, how musicians can purposefully use their bodies to communicate those expressive intentions effectively, or how they ultimately develop or enhance their “expressiveness” is still understudied. For this reason, most approaches in higher music education lack clear goals, specific tasks, and systematic teaching patterns (Karlsson & Juslin, 2008; Meissner, 2021).

Using the genre of Improvisational theatre as a basis, this study aims to design and develop a teaching method that would help students enhance their expressive skills and achieve the flexibility to adapt their motor behavior to the musical piece, enabling them to have an embodied performance experience and to effectively convey their interpretation to better reach their audiences. By providing a space for music students to explore their motor behavior through embodying diverse characters and physicalities, and by exploring affective states or fictional realities through improv exercises, this research also seeks to gain understanding of the effect this type of training may have on students’ performance experience, as well as its implications in other areas of their development.