Katsaus koreomusikologiseen tutkimukseen

This article presents an overview of the relatively young field of choreomusicology, its history, and the development of theoretical approaches for the study of dance-music interrelations. Although one can find writings on dance-music relationships at least since the 1950s onwards, examinations of this topic have typically concentrated on specific performance traditions or dance pieces, and theoretical ideas and analytical models presented by particular authors have rarely been applied by other researchers. Therefore, one can justly say that choreomusicology has not existed as a field of research until recent years, when several researchers from different academic backgrounds (especially dance studies, musicology, ethnomusicology, music psychology, and cognitive science) have made efforts to develop the theoretical and methodological basis for analyzing the relationships between dance and music, or more broadly, between movement and sound. This recent upsurge in choreomusicological theorization is related to an increased understanding of music as a phenomenon deeply embedded in human corporeality and to attendant studies of “embodied music interaction”. The article suggests that choreomusicology, although still in its formative stages as an academic field of research, offers new viewpoints to both dance and music scholars, especially to those interested in practices of performance, as well as more generally to studies of multisensory phenomena.