Observation: key to learning dance better

The best way to master dancing is to imbibe the art of observing the sequences demonstrated by the instructor and not merely listening to spoken explanation, new research has confirmed.

When a dancer learnt the set of movements first by sight and then with the help of verbal instructions, he/she was better able to reproduce the dance phrase than if they had initially been taught the dance by listening to spoken instructions, the findings showed.

"Thus, learning by visual observation actually works better than learning by mere spoken instruction," said study co-author Bettina Blasing from the Bielefeld University in Germany.

The study involved 18 dance students from the Palucca University of Dance in Dresden. Each study participant learnt two dance sequences - one first by watching and one first by listening.

Ten days after the experiment they were suddenly requested, without any prior warning, to perform both the dance sequences they had learnt.

In their evaluation of the video recordings, the researchers checked how thoroughly the dancer performed each sequence.

The results showed that students learned better from the visual model.

A written questionnaire completed by the participants also indicated that they preferred the visual learning modality and that they felt more sure of themselves when performing if they had learnt the dance sequence mainly by observing it.

The research article detailing the results of this study was recently awarded "Best Paper" at the 2014 conference of the German Society for Cognitive Science.