International Dance Styles >> Concert Dance



Concert dance

Concert dance also chiefly known as performance dance or theatre dance in the United Kingdom, is performed for an audience and is not participative. Concert dance is not wholly in a concert or theatre setting.

By compare, social dance and participation dance may be done without an audience. Typically concert dance performances are choreographed to set music, whereas social dances are likely not to be choreographed and are danced to changing music. Exceptions comprise non-standardized social dances such as the argentine tango, the salsa or the swing.

A few ceremonial dances, baroque dances and erotic dances are dances combining social and concert dance; here participants take the roles of performer or of audience at unlike moments.

Concert dance hybrid-genre performances have a important element of dramatic enactment integrated. "Dance Theatre" is performed prior to an audience at the theatre. The words dance-drama, dance-theatre and theatre-dance are interchangeable. Today ballet, and, for instance, the Persian classical courtroom dances, and the temple dances of India survive first and foremost as a theatre dance.

Contemporary ballet is a form of dance influenced by both classical ballet and modern dance. It takes its technique and use of pointework from classical ballet, although it permits a greater range of movement that may not adhere to the strict body lines set forth by schools of ballet technique. Many of its concepts come from the ideas and innovations of 20th century modern dance,including floorwork and turn-in of the legs.