An Analytical Review of the Crystal Jubilee Dance Concert

Running head: CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 1

MUS 354 - Popular Music

Arizona State University-Tempe

December 12, 2020

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 2

Introduction: The Fusion of Popular Music and Performance Art

The mood that a dance piece can create sometimes is the most important aspect of a

dance performance. Numerous dance elements have to combine to form the best mood for the

audience to enjoy the dance. On January 20th, 2017, a dance concert called the Crystal Jubilee

was held at the Walker Art Center. It was a combination of various types of dances where

contemporary dance companies like the Poreotix and Quest Crew among other growing dance

companies from various choreographers. The performances featured ten unique and the most

nerve-wracking pieces all with different aspects of dance with the sheer power of human body

and gravity. However, in this paper, the pieces featured will be the opening piece, the “Obit”

which featuring two dancers. The other pieces are the “Moon” and the closing performance that

featured a piece called the “Ricochet.”

Concert performance history holds great importance owing to its representation of the

society and culture of the time, which moves beyond a focus on the aesthetic to the emotional

and social more broadly defined. As Bower (2016) notes, concert programming of the 19th

century is an intriguing example of an effort an effort to construct a “collective emotional

experience” aimed at uniting a disparate audience on an emotional level and to some extent, not

a little, as the title of the book suggests, to some extent, the social choreography of a

performance, the psychology of performance, and its controlled and purposeful dance, suggests,

the physical behavior, and to some extent, the social aspects of the performance, the physical

performance and social aspects of performance, and the emotional and social behavior of the

audience, is more broad and more integrative. In the case of The Crystal Jubilee, this was the

case. The Crystal Jubilee. The dancers were engaged in far more than a rhythm and gesture

literal reenactment of individuals in a community. The participants of tension, awe, and laughter,

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participants of awe, rhythm, and tension, the atmosphere becomes participatory. Bower (2016)

social choreography of performance shifts the focus from a static and passive lens of a

performance is an exhibition on stage to a more rhythmic and cooperative activity. The

collaboration is not aimless, without purpose; the collaboration is not random. The collaboration

is not aimless, without purpose; the collaboration is not random.

Culturally, the way a concert stage is set up indicates how the emotions of the social

histories and identity changes portrayed in a performance are embodied. According to Schroeder,

the stage for racial and ethnic traditions in dance often becomes a site where the embodied

aesthetics weave culture into culture into affective relays. Mood, then, becomes a tool for

identity artistry and the shifting of difference and belonging. This is perhaps the reason why The

Crystal Jubilee, for the multitude of choreographic sources, was perhaps one of the first works to

most fully articulate contemporary dance as a site of representation and hybridization. The

coming together of various dance forms, in this case, creates affective dissonance, where it both

supports and counters the dominant cultural frameworks. As Schroeder puts it, this is what

performative layering does to the concert stage: it positions the spectator to a state of stillness to

ponder the multitude. For this, then, is what I mean to say when I say mood is culture: it is a

rhythmic, choreographic dialogue, wordless, of feeling illuminated through a finely honed

emotional grammar (Schroeder, 2018).

The psychological aspects of costume design for a performance greatly impacts the

emotion conveyed to the audience. As a dancer, a costume serves more than just a decorative

function. It is psychologically a part of the dancer’s self and aims to enhance the emotional

intensity and purpose of the devised story. It is this argument that allows for a better appreciation

of the costume and fabric design of The Crystal Jubilee, where the colors and the texture of the

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fabrics, along with the choreography, were probably intended to serve as signifiers of the

dancers’ emotional outpour to the audience. The relationship of the body to the fabric in

Kwong’s description suggests the formation of a discourse kinetic texture which audience

members could engage with, in order to interact with the performance at its pinnacle moment.

The type of visuals that Kwong describes pose a question concerning the emotional nature of

materials: what feelings, for example, does silk invoke as opposed to coarse cloth, or a reflective

surface in comparison to a dark one? The description of the performance emotion by Kwong

(2019) is an esthetic integration of the psychological, visual, and kinetic. Merely the feminine

invention of a dancer, without the photographic art of a designer and process of a costume,

would have remained as beauty only on the surface, but this has touched the heights of

expression, and this very ascent forms the emotional outline of the concert.

Overview of the Performance and Musical Setting

In dancing, story-telling, and using different global forms and styles, the Crystal Jubilee

concert shows how the performance and the narratives are rooted in the body and how they cross

cultures. As Kosstrin (2020) notes, globalism in mid-century American dance created 'staged

encounters' which is the American way of globalism dances. The global aesthetic is still around

and it shows how choreography is a cultural conversation and a form of dance. Dancers today are

able to combine hip-hop isolations and balletic precision, which is able to create a choreographic

language that surpasses the borders of countries. As Levin and Schwitzer (2017) note, this

layering situates the performer’s body as the place where national and transnational identities

come together and are in conflict. Crystal Jubilee exemplifies this blended beauty. Its structure

shows how groups of different stylistic origins are brought together. The performance of dance

in the eleventh century is different from this in the twenty first century as the former was based

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on the culture of a particular place whereas the latter is a combination of many ideas, motions

and emotions from many cultures. The concert closes the gap between dance and choreography

by globalizing it, which turns the stage into a place where people can cross the borders of

thoughts and expressions, that dance unifies people. That is the rhythm in which Kosstrin (2020)

refers to as “the dance of the world made smaller”.

In relation to the context and impact of any concert, audience understanding remains

critical and defining. Ha (2017) notes other reviewers of the same dance have different opinions.

For example, while the British reviewers appear to be more concerned with the emotional side of

the business, Hong Kong reviewers appreciate and point out more the details of the dance’s

control and mastery. These different frames of interpretation show the strong influence a culture

may have on how its members respond to a given set of stimuli. In the case of The Crystal

Jubilee, it is possible that the members of the audience subdivided the same gestures into frames

of different emotions, hence different forms of engagement. This is what Levin and Schweitzer

(2017) mean by ‘plural spectatorship’; that is, a shared experience with a group, but with

different understandings to each. This feature of performance seems to enhance it by turning

what is normally regarded as consumption into an active and constructive process of

engagement, as a “viewer.” Kosstrin (2020) has suggested that the globalization of dance has

created a broader set of criteria, making it possible for audience members to consider aspects of

culture and appreciate it at the same time. Thus, The Crystal Jubilee is more than a work of art. It

is an example of an intercultural phenomenon and an experiment in its reception that tests the

ability of movement to go beyond difference and how difference may still be embedded in

variety.

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The structure of The Crystal Jubilee concert aligns with history where performance art

was a form of protest. Graham (2018) notes that early spirituals employed rhythm and movement

as a form of secret communication and transformed entertainment into means of saving a culture.

This demonstrates how dance can be considered a form of historical record as creative acts are

stored in bodily movements. The concert’s combination of technical achievement with strong

emotional expression echoes what Graham refers to as the “performative survival of history”

(2018) where history is physically remembered through art. Pittman, Waller, and Dark (2015)

also argue that some forms of social dance; folk, square and contra, rest on coordinated rhythm

as a means of telling stories in relation to one another. This also can be seen in concert dance

where dancers rely on achieved unison to express a sense of community and shared experience.

The Crystal Jubilee in integrating innovation with this historical legacy, positions itself with the

unbroken lineage of expressive endurance. Levin and Schweitzer (2017) take this further by

claiming that performance is a “living text” through which social histories are performatively

and continually re-written. The concert’s varied works are therefore narrative segments in a

communal story about endurance, culture, and transformative dialogue.

The concert goes beyond just cultural fusion to include what can be termed embodied

spirituality. Ferdinand (2015) shows how Robert Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee

incorporated sacred emotion into the secular concert setting and invented what he calls “the

sacred performed in public space.” In the same way, the pieces in The Crystal Jubilee translated

spiritual energy into movement, bringing transcendence into motion. Graham (2018) advances

this argument by suggesting that the foundations of African American performance art often

integrate worship and craft, culminating in a compelling cadence of profound praise and

exuberant rejoicing. This blend of sacred purpose and artistic intent bestows a sense of

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transcendence upon the concert. It is also supported by Pittman et al. (2015) who argue that in

dancing as a group, there is a moment of lifted elevation–a brief loss of self to the experience

which they call individuality. The lenses of these scholars give Pittman the Jubilee’s

choreography. It is innovative in design, yet also ritualistic in nature. It is a rhythm ceremony

where the boundary between dancers and audience is blurred by the spiritual bond created

through movement. Such performances reiterate the argument that dance, even in starkly modern

environments, serves as a medium through which transcendence and collective release can be

experienced in the same moment.

The interaction between tradition and progress at The Crystal Jubilee exemplifies how

contemporary dance features both continuity and disruption. As Monk (2014) considers Derek

Jarman’s Jubilee, he examines this duality, emphasizing the dialogue between the historical

motifs and punk rebellion that interacts with the past and present. Likewise, the concert

reinterpreted tradition not in the sense of nostalgia, but rather as a base for innovation. As

LaMothe (2015) states, a Haitian contemporary dancer performs a “dedouble,” a multiplicity of

identities in which tradition and modernity exists together. This thin layer of dynamic

coexistence was visible in the concert’s changing moods of restraint and release. Levin and

Schweitzer (2017) underline that the presence of such dual structures in performance indicates

cultural multiplicity and, therefore, how art deals with the differences in time and ideas. The

Crystal Jubilee, through its choreographic differences, proved that in dance, innovation does not

come from the absence of tradition but its re-imagining, as a constellation of creative continuity,

shifting the history into alive expression.

The concert’s aesthetic elements also carried implications of gender and performative

identity. According to Low (2018), Nyah Mak dancers in Malaysia use glamour to perform

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social agency during cabaret contexts that are highly restrained. The stylization of glamour thus

becomes a way of exercising power. In a similar way, The Crystal Jubilee's hyper theatricality,

with its bold costumes, over-the-top humor, and melodramatic movements, can be read as a sign

of freely expressive joy. Levin and Schweitzer (2017) state that Canadian performance art tends

to employ camp and parody to subvert the dominant gaze, transforming spectacle into critique.

This is similar to Monk’s (2014) interpretation of Jubilee as a form of “celebration” of the

‘transgressive’ aesthetics of artifice as authenticity. The concert’s exuberant style embodies a

powerful form of performative liberation. In motion, identity is complex and unduly simplified.

The Crystal Jubilee aligned bodily over-exaggeration, unrestrained joy, and deep emotional

sincerity to illuminate how the body is a site of resistance, creativity and self-determination.

The many uses of improvisation further enriched the performance’s choreography.

Primicias (2015) argues that dance improvisation blends form and freedom, demonstrating that

creativity can be understood as a process, not a fully formed outcome. This was in evidence in

the seamless flow of the ensemble and solo passages in The Crystal Jubilee, where the

constructed choreography of the ensemble’s synchronicity gave rise to a short dance of

improvisation. Pittman et al. (2015) describe social improvisation as exchanges of shared

awareness and responsiveness. This principle exists in the current form of concert performance

and has been remarked by Kosstrin (2020) who speaks of dance in the age of globalization as

doing the emerging changes. The concert’s improvisational spirit, then, represented artistic

response to the condition of uncertainty of the modern world. Each uncontrolled gesture

evidenced the position that creativity is the product of letting go of certainties. The Crystal

Jubilee was an assertion of the value of live performance, its power to seize ephemeral acts of

imagination and turn them into shared illumination.

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Reflection on the concert's movement and the audience’s emotional response to music

deserves further analysis. Ferdinand (2015) demonstrates how rhythmic shifts in The Chariot

Jubilee achieved narrative momentum, transforming orchestral sound into emotional

architecture. The Crystal Jubilee also had musical rhythms that enabled the audience to perceive

and the dancers to execute rhythmically coordinated movements. Graham (2018) notes that

during social and spiritual performances, music and movement have a dialogic relationship in

which both works to animate and to be animated in turn. Williams (2015) builds upon this by

dissecting the rhythm in hip-hop performance as a cultural mnemonic, an articulation of silenced

voices and collective struggle. The concert's soundscape, then, performed a richly woven

soliloquy accompanied by multilevel discourse and silences, control and abandonment. Each

beat functioned as connective tissue, weaving individual choreography into a communal pulse

that all dancers could feel. This sound and movement synergy was further confirmation that in

performance art, rhythm is an intensely social and sensory quality that stirs deep tissues, thus

making emotional empathy effortless.

Choreomusical Expression and Rhythmic Interpretation

The dancers in the first piece portrayed their dance skills in a manner that showed the

expertise they had developed over time in their careers. The ensemble, harnessed and roped to a

pole at the center of the stage, flew around the pole connected to the center of the stage. Their

bodies were free-flowing as they intersected creatively and skillfully as the roped coiled around

the metallic pole. The uniformity of their dances showed their proficient and proper preparation.

They engaged the audience as the hall roared with thrill and excitement. The ‘moon’ on the other

hand involved six dancers, three men, and three women. They lay down on the floor illuminated

to look like the blue sky with an overhead light which projected their giant images on the screen

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behind them. The projection creates a gravitational confusion on the audience as the hall went

silent in surprise. As they progressed, the dance acts created humor, and the audience could

comprehend the images. The ensemble shows good rehearsal and expertise through their stage

coordination (Dittrich, Troscianko, Lea & Morgan2016). The last performance of the concert, the

“Ricochet” portrayed the best coordination and rehearsal as the ensemble creatively and

uniformly ran forward and launched themselves on a wide transparent plastic panel. They

pressed against it and slid down and mashed their faces on the floor. It created humor and uproar

in the crowd as audience imitated their moves. They totally engaged the audience.

The free nature of movement and formation in the choreography of The Crystal Jubilee

showed how deeply the two elements could blend. Movement is called a language, and the

meaning and interpretation of some actions goes beyond text. As Levin and Schweitzer (2017)

state, a contemporary performance situates a dancer’s body as a vivid body of cultural

ethnography, where moving the body conveys messages far beyond words. In The Crystal

Jubilee, along with the tension of repetition and improvisation, the performers translated and

converted emotion into motion, rhythm into elaborate tales, and time into layered stories. Monad

(2014) describes dance in a similar manner, as an art work that temporally collapses history into

one rich gesture. In the described excerpt, layers of time and identity can be found in. Over the

years, the principle of dedouble, or doubling, coined by LaMothe (2015) has become

fundamental. As a body and artist positioned in between the body of the past, the body of the

present, and these two, her work enables the dancer to read the exact geography of time,

movement, and identity. With this understanding of the concert, we extract how choreography

becomes not only reflection, but also reinvention, portraying an athletic conversation where the

dancer, without effort, becomes the epitome of change.

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The acts performed in the concert also included acts of choreography that marked

resistance, with some movements serving as an assertion of culture. According to Williams

(2015), hip hop dance began as “a vocabulary of defiance”, which is to say, an assertion of one’s

identity that is expressed in rhythm as well as in the reclaiming of space. The performers in the

Jubilee appear to have mirrored this ethos by using forceful, energetic movement as an assertion

of their visibility in the confines of formal concert structure. Levin and Schweitzer (2017) claim

that the moment urban or folk elements enter the institution of the stage, they defy the verticality

of art by democratizing its expression and form. These elements of street and concert

choreography together place the performance in a genealogy of defiant art. Monk (2014) also

indicates that these transgressive acts performed in works of Jubilee style often confuse either

end of the continuum of spectacle and critique. The Crystal Jubilee, with all its choreographic

exaggeration and jest, celebrated the politics of the body. It transformed defiance into grace,

commentary into rhythm, and dance into a living metaphor of a creative and proud gesture of

defiance.

The integration of rhythm and tempo during the concert demonstrated the manner in

which the fifth element constructs emotional landscapes. Shifts in tempo and rhythm into

“spiritual crescendo,” where movement and music become one. This was evidenced in The

Crystal Jubilee where the pacing and rhythm of the dance mirrored the emotional shifts between

exultation and tranquility. Milian (2019) also captures the thriving of the dialogue between sound

and movement which explains the dance as an intermedial constellation of sensory meanings.

The dancers in the displacement section who moved perfectly in time to the shifts in rhythm

provided the audience with an experience that integrated sight and feeling of the choreography.

Harris 2020, in his commentary on Aboriginal dance, also observed that rhythm functions as the

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“spiritual pulse” of the dance. in which the performance is rhythmically and culturally anchored.

The integration of diverse rhythmic elements in the concert underscores the choreography as an

in-depth emotional architecture that revolves around the audience. Silence, compassion, and

empathy are the emotional elements mastered through tempo, pulse, and exquisite timing.

Another keystroke attribute of The Jubilee choreography is improvisation, or an element

of free movement, having structure simultaneously. As pointed out by Primicias (2015),

contemporary improvisation serves as a fusion of art forms. This allows performers to implement

the blurring of boundaries as control and creativity. There were parts in which performers were

able to respond as if to a deep, free dialogue, although much of the interaction seemed highly

scripted. Performers were described by LaMothe (2015) as dualistic, as the energy within the

space transcended their individual elements, and the motion of the group fundamentally became

in control. Again, Levin and Schwietzer (2017) points out that improvisation offers the audience

an experience of co-authorship, as the performance offers unidirectional responsiveness and

participatory elements. Slip the improvisation within The Crystal Jubilee did not simply remain

an absence of form, but in fact a revelation. It uncovered the dancer as a site of truth, both

vulnerable and artistically expressive. The dancer equally expressed intention, which his focus

on free movement, depicting the deep thought of the choreographer, who perceived absence of

form as central to the artistry of performance.

Choreography can communicate more than just a sequence of movements. As Monk

(2014) points out, it can evoke powerful emotions when it uses abstraction. This allows dancers

to interact with their audience instead of only watching the performance. In The Crystal Jubilee,

the dancers’ gravitational motifs of falling, lifting, and orbiting rhythms translated the intended

physics of the work to a poetic expression. Abra (2017) argues that contemporary British dance,

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similar to the British modern dance of the 20th century, intertwined movement and meaning

metaphorically to articulate identity politics. This suggests, then, that The Crystal Jubilee

occupies a narrative abstraction tradition in dance and modern British dance, which incorporates

ideology through movement. Milian (2019) explains that intermedial choreography enables a

multisensory approach to the work by layering movement with sound and silence. The

movement of the arms and the spacing in the dancers’ formations functioned as a visual

metaphor, reinforcing the idea that meaning in dance can be suggestive rather than

representative, where the movement captures an idea of tension and transformation.

The concert's choreographic composition pivots on cultural hybridity. In her work, Harris

(2020) states that the fusion of the Indigenous with the contemporary, the settler-infused

traditions, often gives rise to what she terms "intercultural performance zones." Such zones exist

simulatenously with the traditions, being as distinct entities. This synthesis was present in the

Jubilee ensemble, which amalgamated contemporary folk and ritual forms in choreography with

Western and Eastern technique and motifs. Constructing on this, LaMothe (2015) explored

notions of hybridity within the context of cultural performance and spiritual doubling, where the

performer simultaneously presents various cultural selves as on a continuum. Levin and

Schweitzer (2017) drew on a similar coinage in describing such performances as ‘cross-border

corporealities’ in which a self is presented through movement. Such frameworks help elucidate

how The Crystal Jubilee amalgamated artistry and structure. Uniformity was not the aim when

the differences were embraced. The complexity and richness of the performance as a whole was

presented in the multiplicity of voices that each dancer's movement echoed. The performance, in

this sense, presented diversity as a dialogue through movement instead of juxtaposition. Rhythm

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and empathy were choreographed to exist in a dialogue with one another and as silenced voices

to the movement.

In the concert choreography, the intertwining of vulnerability with strength was conveyed

while remaining sensitive to the discipline’s larger issues. For Sarah Low (2018) on the Mak

Nyah cabaret performances in Malaysia, stylized exaggeration is a way of working with fluid

forms of gender and empowerment. Similarly, the Jubilee was bold in disrupting binary bodily

inscriptions by simultaneously incorporating both masculine and feminine elements. Levin and

Schweitzer (2017) remark on Canadian performance that, regarding gender, a distinction is made

of viewing it as an active, performative process rather than a static identity. These were possible

due to the aesthetic multiplicity as elaborated by Monk (2014) which is a defining feature of

avant garde dance, where the body is the site of continual metamorphosis. This was clear in the

concert with the principles of such choreographic ideas when the same gestures simultaneously

articulated dominance, softness, and irony. In the process, the work shifted the politics of gender

from representation to expression. This is an important movement within choreography,

demonstrating the discipline’s capability to articulate and reorganize identity through movement.

The stage evolved as context, and the choreography’s spatial design for the audience

transformed that context. Levin and Schweitzer (2017) state that in such contexts, the space of

performance acts as a geography of attention. The space’s proximity, direction, and alignment

determine the relationships that are structured narratively. Jubilee’s dancers exhibited this with

their pointed attention to the vertical and horizontal spatial axes and the contrasting visual and

imaginary delineations of flight and groundedness. Milian (2019) observes that in dance, spatial

manipulation is to dance as modulation is to music. This idea of movement as an expressive tool

within a musical framework. Harris (2020) reinforces the idea that dance often shapes and holds

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space for the narratives that Indigenous choreography traverses over the land as memory. This

context helps in understanding the stagecraft of the work The Crystal Jubilee. The patterns of the

dancers as they spiraled, converged, and dispersed caused the surface and the emotional arcs to

interrelate and illuminated the tension between gravity and release that was central to the

concert. The relationship, distance, and geometry of the bodies functioned to narrate sculpted

space, while the distance and interrelation sculpted the surface. The emotional arcs and surface

interrelate to highlight the tension juxtaposed with release that was at the core of the

performance.

The humorous aspects of the choreography also highlighted an improperly grasped form

of sophistication. Monk (2014) comments that avant-garde performance art’s use of irony and

humor serves as critique and allows the artist to defuse some of the gravity. The comic sections

of The Crystal Jubilee, especially the “Ricochet” part, “exhibited this sharp-witted sensibility.”

As Low (2018) notes, in cabaret dance, humor serves as both a defensive and offensive weapon,

and, paradoxically, a performer confronts those in power. In a similar vein, Williams (2015)

described humor in American hip hop culture as a form of resilience, or a survival rhythm

disguised as laughter. Low interprets The Crystal Jubilee as humor as critique, playful as it was,

it was clearly not lacking in a subversive intent. The multiple vantage points as discussed allow

laughter to be a potent instrument of choreography in a performer’s arsenal. The Crystal

Jubilee’s paradox is to suggest that work which uplifts also uplifts. To The Crystal Jubilee, this is

an art in utmost form.

Visual Aesthetics and Popular Music Identity

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The ensemble in the first piece had costumes that resembled the swimming costumes

which interested the audience. Their entrance into the stage was exciting and filled with laughter.

These costumes were appropriate as the motion created as they swam through the air looked like

they were in a pool of water. In the moon, the dancers wore shiny tight costumes that were

differentiated in color which deemed appropriate as it enhanced visibility and differentiated their

moves. The dancers in the “Ricochet” had sleeveless shirts and shorts with different colors as

well. These costumes and their movements created an acrobatic form of performance that

entertained the audience (Dittrich, et al. 2016). The costumes were appropriate regarding their

coordinated acrobatic moves, and it aided their downward spins.

The designers of The Crystal Jubilee thesis costumes used more than aesthetic appeal;

they understood costumes as a symbolic language which captured the emotional underbelly of

the concert. It is as if everything costumes went beyond the movements of the body and

expressed something more profound than words. This body–fabric relationship of dynamics is

precisely how body and costume convey meaning. The body and the costume translate dynamics

into a meaning, and Cunningham (2019) vividly describes how a costume serves and functions

as a visual appendage of a character and how it influences and guides the audience's emotional

and intellectual response. Costumes as a gesture, step into the dancer's emotional architecture,

the term used by Barbieri (2017), in association with the merging of the body and the fabric as

performative elements. Costumes enriched that emotional architecture by using light, texture,

and form to trigger contraction and expansion, in support of Bystrova (2016) whose thesis argues

that design has a symbolic function which aligns the visual framework with the emotional

response from the audience. The combination of fabrics, hues, and motion in the costumes used

in the performance ‘The Crystal Jubilee’ fostered heightened emotional arousal. This emotional

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intensity, in turn, fostered an elevated narrative. This demonstrates the collaboration of the

costumes and the performance to transcend visual design and transform it into a narrative, a

storytelling element.

The designer costume's resonance entails the ability to oscillate between realism and

abstraction. The designers of The Crystal Jubilee chose to imitate neither the emotional essence

nor the rhetoric of the text. This redoing of the costume captures, and the idea of costume is stem

from emotion rather. This is the idea supported by Jablon (2016) modern design focuses on

feeling-based honesty. In order to articulate on emotional honesty, the fabric must possess

psychologic coherence. This is the idea forwarded by Merz (2016) who costume art is the work

of contrasting shape and texture to the story. The concert’s costumes achieved this unity with

smooth sculptural lines and aesthetic functionality that sports. This is in line with Hann’s (2019)

costume theory which states that costume is a compromise between ideology and appearance.

The concert's stark, powerful, visual language, which at once challenged the surfeit of the images

and meanings, clearly signaled that simplicity could articulate complex ideas and feelings. This

showcases again costume’s ability to materialize an idea.

The colors in the costumes added a choreographic level of meaning. The designers used

colors to divide the dancers but also to reflect changes in the atmosphere or tone. This

exemplifies how an intentional color scheme enriches the narrative. As Tawfiq and Marcketti

uncovered about color in ceremonial dress, the color in costumes carries its own emotional and

cultural narrative; the same is true for live performance, in which color colors the audience's

emotional attention. This aligns with Cunningham's (2019) analysis of designers' use of contrast

to create a visual rhythm. The Jubilee's controlled shifts of spacial metallic blue and silver

elegantly accented moments of stillness and movement, supporting Barbieri's (2017) assertion

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that color functions as a visual score. The resulting integration of color, movement, and affect

created an invitation to a dialogue. Barbieri argues that costumes offer an easy entry into the

emotional texture of a performance. He would be right to claim that the Jubilee integrated

movement and affect harmonically, alongside the costume color becoming a strong, non-verbal

element of the performance's emotional palette.

Costuming for The Crystal Jubilee had cultural symbolism that illustrated the concert’s

connection to our collective visual history. The designers seemed to adopt the communicative

ethos of ritual clothing to suggest universality through abstraction. This is similar to the role of

costume in African traditional performance. As Eze and Akas (2015) point out, in such pieces of

art, dress is a vehicle of cultural memory and codes. The costume’s ritualistic modernization

achieved a conversation between ancestry and invention, which, according to Barbieri (2017), is

the material-spiritual bridge in performance. The fluid outlines of the dancers’ dresses showed an

ambition for transcendence, which is similar to Merz’s (2016) assertion that costume design

promotes cultural empathy through tactile narrative. This meant that symbolic dress had also

been turned into a form of multicultural dialogue. The costume form was inspired by the

underlying theme of the heritage while incorporating modern design elements.

Tactile elements and sensory aspects that accompany the performance of The Crystal

Jubilee and the costumes worn enhanced the level of the audience's physical and emotional

participation. There is an almost conscious effort on the part of the designers to make the

garments sharpen sensory perception. This type of tactile quality burns away the notion that

costume does not invoke an imagined sensation through visual texture. Barbieri (2017) asserts

that costume produces haptic spectatorship and translates sight into touch. By using stretch

fabrics and reflective materials, the performance invited the audience to “see” motion, which

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reinforces Cunningham’s (2019) argument that texture amplifies kinetic empathy. The audience

also remarked on the duet-like quality of the shimmer. It exhibited the performer's skillful

dialogue with the fabric, which supports Hann’s (2019) theory that costume is a co-actor in

motion. The dance-constellations revealed how the interplay of fabric and light in gesture

sculpted, and turned the costume into an emotional center, weaving the audience's visceral

response in a way that not only invited them to watch the dance, but to truly live it.

Costumes have also been described as an effective marker of identity and transition

during the concert performance. With each change in the costume’s color or texture, or even the

change in the cut of the garment, a new layer of meaning was added. This all-encompassing

process of change supports the theories of costume as a communicator put forth by Bystrova

(2016), who classifies the functions of a design as ornamental, transformative, and narrative.

Changing symbols (or, in this case, a ‘dancing costume’) disrupt fixed identity and serves the

purpose of advocating multiplicity, as articulated in Hann (2019). The inclusion of changeable

garments in the performance was also in accordance with global semiotics of ritual change as

described in Tawfiq and Marcketti (2017), where the majority of costumes worn are believed to

have significant meaning associated with one's self or the society in which one moves. The

dancers became, in a way, metaphors of change itself. By not showing the end results, they

illustrate the process of becoming. In this manner, the dancers interact with identity and change

in a way that makes the costume both the mirror and the inspiration to the movement.

In The Crystal Jubilee, the collaboration between the designer and the choreographer

proved the dramatic agency of the costume. The seamless combination of design and

choreography indicated mutual authorship. This unity underscores the changing philosophy of

costume toward motion co-creation, and supports Cunningham’s (2019) claim that clothing must

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harmonize with the dancer’s rhythm for true expressiveness. When design pursues movement,

costume sheds its status as mere ornament and attains its full status as embodiment, which Merz

(2016) calls “kinetic design.” The thematic imagery incorporated within each piece also

represented a new set of dramaturgical principles, supporting Jablon’s (2016) claim that

designers now construct narrative frameworks in partnership with the directors. By merging The

Crystal Jubilee’s thematic imagery with physical mobility, the costumes became narrative

vehicles, demonstrating that performance storytelling derives not only from choreography, but

from the storytelling grammar of the attire as well.

Costume also served as a point of power struggle, where visibility and equality were both

challenged and acknowledged. The designers stripped away level and ornamental hierarchies,

neutralizing the aesthetic. This supports the argument that minimalism can democratize

performance, resonating with the claim of Hann (2019) that costume politics intertwines with

appearance and ideology. The performance’s costume’s lack of decoration and ornamental

accessories was aligned with the observance by Eze and Akas (2015) that ceremonial costume

fundamentally defines a form of social stratification. The emphasis on the performance of the

body rather than the adornment of the body also aligned with the view of Barbieri (2017) that

minimalist design represses the dancer’s body and her corporeal truth. The Crystal Jubilee and its

costumes transcended visual hierarchies and dependencies; the ethical and artistic values of

design were aligned and demonstrated.

Within the field of costume design, the inclusion of humor resulted in emotional

complexity and contrast. In “Ricochet,” the whimsical focus of the costume design humorously

sophisticated the overall product. This shows the costume's capacity to set the mood through

moderation, mirroring Cunningham (2019) assertion that comic costume's central element is

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intentional incongruity. This bit of design humor also addresses the critique of performance

expectations, a point elaborated on by Hann (2019) who describes the costume irony as a

subversive form of irony. The designed rhythm of elasticity and contrast also reinforced the

comic timing, as supported by Merz (2016) who claims that “design wit” is the ability to visually

translate movement through design exaggeration. Such moments of relief underscored the

costume’s narrative adaptability, as it was constructed in a manner to elicit laughter without

losing artistry. The humor in the concert exhibited the ability of visual children’s play to serve a

dual purpose of humor with serious commentary, which garnered a deeper audience engagement

as laughter’s expressive intelligence was highlighted.

The exquisite use of memory and retroflection will for sure mark the imagination and

aesthetic power of the Crystal Jubilee’s costumes. The attire wore seemed to encompass

metamorphosis. This stress put metamorphosis Barbieri (2017) asserts to imagination and

rugged. Such interstitial episodes Barbieri (2017) asserts to imagination and rugged. Such

interstitial episodes underline the symbolism of transformation costumes for Bystrova (2016)

garments symbolize passage and transcendence. The production’s design reinforced

Cunningham’s (2019) depiction of duality of self and symbol of costume as the membrane

between real and imagined. Every twinkling fold and shifting shadow of the production design

abstractly reminded spectators to the fact that at the very base of every performance, there is an

act of transformation. This philosophy that through dance, is art, is for the props. The props are

to explain to the spectators the theory that dance is endless metamorphosis.

Popular Music and Emotional Sound Design

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In the first piece, the music chosen had thrilling beats that were exciting and which

coordinated with the ensemble’s moves. The music almost got me dancing with their moves. The

music in the second piece and the last piece was dramatic which showed the emotion that

accompanied the themes of the dances. The dark and intense colored costumes that the two

companies employed with the music accompanying it evoked some agonizing emotions (Hagen

& Bryant, 2013). The music used in all the pieces complimented the theme of the performances

and their movements.

The pieces performed at The Crystal Jubilee concert were not simply additional elements;

this concert had its music at the center, which determined its rhythms, tones, and emotional

contours. The music served as a maelstrom, leading the listeners through various scenes and

phases, guiding movements and shifts within the ambiance. The emotional structure and musical

organization in concert were outlined by Bowers (2016), who explained that in the 19th century,

concerts were arranged in such a way as to take the listeners on a predetermined emotional

journey by means of intelligently arranged sequences of music. The same is evident in

contemporary productions where, as Bowers (2016) notes, the rhythm generates a certain degree

of narrative cohesiveness. The music of The Crystal Jubilee ascended from thumping pulsations

to ethereal meditative sonorities, and this change of states is what Bowers describes as emotional

arcs. Concertoso which according to Kosstrin (2020), is the transnational performance is an

exchange of timbral codes articulated through sonorities that engender a sense of feeling

together. Concertoso’s incorporation of slow and thick textures and faster, thinner textures

enabled the shifts in the concert to acquire that transnational quality, where music became

dialogue, between motion and feeling. It is through this interdependence that, even though the

dancers were the ones who were moving, the sound structure was such as to allow the dancers to

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release their strongly conditioned internal states, which were echoed in the sounds, thus merging

the architecture of the music with their perceived emotional frames.

The concert's use of rhythm demonstrated both individualism and togetherness at the

same time. Every beat was like a pulse, connecting the performer and the audience. This was

both the performer's and the audience's experience. Graham (2018) describes a similar

experience with spirituals. He labels the rhythm a heartbeat of a group, and individualism and

endurance describes their unity. The dancers’ unity in movement turned this pulse into a shared

emotion, connecting body and sound in experience. This was proof of empathy. It was from

inside them. It was as if it were coming out of them. This feeling was described by Schroeder

(2018). He pointed out how rhythmic structure often resolves identity conflict in performance,

turning beat patterns into forms of cultural contribution. This was The Crystal Jubilee. It was

rhythm as a means of unity. It reflects what Kosstrin (2020) describes as the dissolving of

cultural boundaries in performance through movement and sound: rhythmic hybridity. The

concert’s rhythm in this way represented unity in diversity. It explained how a shared pulse

connects people. The Crystal Jubilee was a reminder how effortless and beautiful shared energy

is through rhythm.

Sound also bridged time and intertwined past and present musical traditions. Every

musical choice was an expansion and new interpretation of an already existing composition. This

layering demonstrates how Monk (2014) states that a modern performance is a sonic fusion of

historical and modern context. The concert’s combination of digital and acoustic elements

demonstrated this interwoven spatio-temporal layering. Lucy (2014) says that hybrid musical

frameworks synthesize a culture but subjected to reinterpreting through the changes of the craft.

This explains how The Crystal Jubilee was able to synthesize nostalgia and newness in the

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orchestration. Kosstrin (2020) argues that with global performances, sound becomes an archive

in which the audio is both preservation and reinvention. The concert’s combination of traditional

rhythm and modern instruments illustrated that musical time is circular, not linear. The Crystal

Jubilee was able to convey history in motion, and with sound, relearn a timeless trajectory of

artistic growth through the rhythm.

The points of silence in The Crystal Jubilee had meaning of their own in addition to their

counter-play with sound. The pauses within pieces of music had meaning themselves; they were

filled with emotion and needed to be contemplated. Concert silence, in the view of Ha (2017), is

more of the punctuation-like moments that give shape to the listener's imagination than the

unoccupied time slots. It also filled the moments when the dancers moved to musicless tapes;

there, sound took the place of instrumental rhythm. Monk (2014) argues that silence in avant

garde pieces serves to displace narrative closure and prolong the embrace of tension. The Crystal

Jubilee seems to have used this to sharpen the focus of attention of the audience to emotions.

Schroeder (2018), borrowing Sontag, recounts that breath and body sounds, in the rhythmically

punctuated periods of silence, can also be the rhythms performers make. The transformative use

of sound by the dancers and the choreography, in this case, were used to fill the absence of sound

and create presence. The anticipation that was sculpted within the pauses was sculpted silence,

which exposed the meaning. It demonstrated that absence of melody could clinch the body to

emotion in movement and touch.

To complement the diverse compositions played during the concert, there was a

simultaneous background of the concert’s international ambience. This factor, along with the

diverse social contexts of the musical compositions, reflects the interconnectedness of most of

present-day society. Performance across borders, according to Kosstrin (2020), removes any

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distances that culture may have by interfacing the traditions of various sounds to achieve global

reverberation. In The Crystal Jubilee, rhythmic African percussion triumphs and fuses with the

classical music’s intricate lines, thus dissolving the ocean that separates the two countries. In her

essay, Graham (2018) describes this rhythmic assimilation and its resemblance to a forged

memory of a culture that once was, and its ability to survive as a conceptual memory. These

traditions, along with others, demonstrated the essence of this music and its ability to bring forth

assimilation into the one whole as a proof of interdependence, a point of view that is gaining

more acceptance these days. Ha (2017) aptly describes the case of increasing appreciation from

the part of multicultural the audiences able to “hear” the true essence of an accompanying

diverse hybrid interlacing of sounds. By merging numerous contrasting musical styles into one

coherent score, the concert fostered its listeners into the ability of transference by empathy with

sound. In this case, the music takes the form of intercontinental cooperation as an artistic

expression, which further reiterates the relevance of composite cultural borrowing, as this is

more than just adopting culture, as demonstrated through the intricate fusion of rhythm and

melody.

Without narrative text, the concert music captured and conveyed emotional detail with

moving qualities. Every single shift worked to direct the audience’s emotions. According to

Bower (2016), concerts in the 19TH century used tone in similar ways to shape audience

expectation and emotional flow, even then. The Crystal Jubilee, in the same spirit, moved from

dark to light tone and emotional with the shift in the echo to capture the magic of the moment.

Lucy (2014) has argued within the context of performance identity construction, tonal change

and variation as instruments to capture mood and situate the performance within the culture of

the day. The dancers’ changes in the intensity of movement, which governed the total body and

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sound, also governed the transitions of the tones. According to Graham (2018), the rhythm of the

tone is emotional speech, the language with which the people express their endurance and

survival. The music moved from minor to major, reflecting the inner tension that was resolved

when the people shared the moment of catharsis. The concert’s tonal creativity showed that

sound and atmosphere bring more meaning than melody. With every change in tone, new

chapters, whole stories of emotional change, were unlocked.

The music made the concert even more emotional because of its psychological effects.

Composers seemed to design the sound exclusively to provoke thoughts. According to Kwong

(2019), audience perception of an auditory design is the result of a subconscious association

between a texture and an emotion. The rhythm and melody of The Crystal Jubilee’s The Crystal

Jubilee was an example of this cognitive interlace, steering emotional recognition through

corresponding sense engagement. Affective synchronization, as defined by Schroeder (2018), is

the alignment of a collective feeling within a group layer by layer through the rhythm of a piece,

which results in empathic communion among the members. This type of synchronization was

present as audience reactions matched the energy exuded by the dancers. Performance music, as

argued by Ha (2017), organizes the focus of an audience and their emotional arousal by

influencing the expectation of the listener. The concert was a demonstration of psychological

rhythm control with its gradual build and release of sonic intensity. The Crystal Jubilee, through

careful musical design, invited the audience to emotionally participate through sound,

movement, and perception, transforming the act of listening into active engagement.

The visual sounds and costumes of the concert worked together to create rhythmic

visuals. The Monk 2014 avant garde explained a performance’s depth is achieved when visual

and sonic elements move together to create meaning. This unity was apparent when the color

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transitions reflected the changes in the music. Visualizations Kwong2019 argued the harmony

which was richly explained psychological of the disconnect of mental silence and sound. The

relation of light and sound in The Crystal Jubilee supported that theory. Kosstrin 2020 stated that

use of multisensory dialogue to communicate performance and art through cultural borders is

increasing. The concert’s use of visual and auditory rhythm was an example of that concept,

demonstrating harmony beyond sound. The unison of movement, tone and costume expanded the

performance and created a total artwork for the senses. The emotion is enhanced when the sound

turns to light and the light turns to sound.

Every aspect of rhythm in the concert; movement, identity, and even the movement of the

story, was tied into the design. There was even what looked like a unified, conscious rhythm felt

by both the dancers and the musicians. As stated in Graham (2018), rhythm within a

performance is a way of remembering things through a cycle of repetition. The changes in the

tempo each carried a weighty emotional or historical depth. As cited in Schroeder (2018), the

combination of different traditions into a single piece of artistic work is known as cultural

rhythm. This was clear as, within a single rhythm, a variety of different, global rhythms could be

heard. As put forth by Monk (2014), and in particular within the piece of work studied here, a

rhythm can be used as a social commentary, in the sense that the absence of it can suggest some

form of change or resistance. The changes in tempo also represented some form of emotional

state or symbolic motion. The resonance of The Crystal Jubilee and the transformation it was

communicating through rhythm alone was a visceral experience. The shifts in rhythm were both

structure and symbol, and each one of them was able to unify the cultural and emotional of the

performance.

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The surround sound for The Crystal Jubilee revealed music to be the essential language

of feeling. Each composition organized sound progressions with sufficient depth. Bower (2016)

notes that used to be historical concert music, served moral and spiritual purposes to the

community by guiding them to reflect. The concert’s arrangement of sound incorporated this

legacy by conjuring unity through harmony. Graham (2018) identifies what she calls

performance music as an enactment of shared humanity, bonding the participants through

common rhythm. Musicians, according to Ha (2017), who play with musical empathy, break

cultural boundaries, for emotion, through tone and timing, is understood all over the world. The

concert’s music accomplished that by establishing a dialogue between pulse and perception.

Every vibration was intentional, creating a community of awareness between the one playing and

the one being played to. The sound was not mere accompaniment but the emotional structure of

the entire experience. The Crystal Jubilee, with all of its music, spelled out the fact that human

beings are beings with spirit, which music, rhythm, and melody can sustain.

Lighting, Technology, and Music Synchronization

The lighting in the three pieces, at some point, contrasted with darkness helping in

highlighting the dances and in creating a form of visibility. In the “Moon,” the blue light

represented the color of the sky which complemented its theme and the beam of light created the

images of the dancers on the screen. In the “Orbit” the lighting used help in creating visibility,

and the dancer's speed round the pole could not be seen without the aid of the light. In the

Ricochet, the light helped in showing the movement of the dancers. The color of the lighting also

enhanced the theme of suffering and agony that the piece tried to portray.

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The technical ability demonstrated in restraint and lucidity utilized in the Crystal Jubilee

concert in regard to lighting transcended the mere application of mechanics towards the creation

of emotive contours in space. Levin and Schweitzer (2017) when discussing the impact of

lighting in performance art discuss what they call spatial dramaturgy. In the case under

discussion the spatial organization of the performance guided the emotional investment and

cognitive shift of the audience towards a particular visual anchor. Tonally the concert seemed to

adhere to this principle. In terms of rhythm and dynamics the audience even perceived the

interplay of light and fog as lacework of sound. In the ‘Moon’ piece, for instance, the blue and

silver light used transcended the notion of color and became symbolic and charged in structural

resonance. Harris (2020) speaking of Aboriginal dance states that the light and shadow used

materializes the dance’s cosmological narrative, and life spirit cycles. In a similar manner

Milian (2019) reflects on a contemporary performance and suggests that the lighting fused with

sound and what he terms sonic visuality, in which visual elements are rhythmically organized.

A prominent element of the concert was the fusion of movement and light which affected

the perception of the space. Illumination formed focus clouds that guided the attention of the

audience to various tiers of the choreography. Levin and Schweiter (2017) call this phenomenon

“embodied cartography” which suggests that movement in concert with design “maps” the

performance space. In The Crystal Jubilee, shifting beams of light that splashed the stage

“seated” the dancers in their “planes” and “traced” their tracks in “space,” animating their

positions with real and virtual geometry. Primicias (2015) argues that in light of the spatial

improvisational choreography, the instructions for the orientation and timing of the dancers are

spatially embedded in the light. The performers’ leaping synchrony with the shifting tones

exhibited this interchange in real time, this internal continuum. Milian (2019) expands this idea,

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arguing that light is an intermedial medium which coordinates the sight and sound in the

structure of the performance. The concert’s light in space was able to achieve this about the

sound. It enabled the audience to perceive space in the concert as rhythm. Here the light took on

the roles of composer, cartographer, and architect, shaping the movement that was seen and felt.

The motifs concealed within the illuminations added much more meaning to the visual construct

of the concert. Each segment of illuminations had a meaning in addition to the key parts of the

choreography. Just as sacred music described by Ferdinand (2015) has each layer of harmony

depicting a different step in the ascent and descent of the spirit, the same is with light and its

elevation and depression movement.

The beams in Orbit, which rose and swirled, became light and symbolized elevation in

ascent to melody. Stagecraft in modern dance described by Abra (2017) translates a culture's

narratives into stories, not by telling, but by abstraction. The concert's use of color followed this

model and was emotion narrative. On the stage, contrary light and dark, as argued by Monk

(2014) represents the struggle and the resolution of the visual rhythm, which has psychological

significance. In the The Crystal Jubilee, the lighting design was able to convey the emotion of

gravity, freedom and suffering at the same time. The result was some poetic metaphors of motion

and light intertwined with movement and light.

Along with color, the change of tone became yet another line of character and mood. “In

cabaret, lighting is used to negotiate visibility, and to frame the performer’s body as partially

seen, partially hidden” (Sarah Low, 2018). In the same way, The Crystal Jubilee varied from

being lit to being largely strobe lit, emphasizing the dancers’ dualities of strength and

vulnerability. The more one thinks of performative light, the more one perceives culture as voice.

Shedding light becomes shedding culture (Williams 2015). This was seen in the varied sections

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of the concert with striking and muted colors. Light as voice, as argued by Levin and Schweitzer,

is performative, and thus, an expression of ideology. It determines and dictates who can be seen

and who must remain invisible. The concert exercised a form of vision politics by selective,

purposeful light use, shedding light to some sections while obscuring others. This turns light into

an instrument for the negotiation of identity and meaning.

Showcasing the emotional flow of The Crystal Jubilee required artistic lighting design.

The lighting used during the performance had illumination that worked with the music and the

movement in a way that became a complete synthesis of senses. Milian (2019) has termed this

type of light as “temporal composition” where the visual pulse of the performance governs the

emotion. During the concert, we noticed this when the lights brightened during certain pieces and

then diminished during others. In the study by Pittman, Waller, and Dark (2015) dance rhythm is

described as an activity that transcends mere movement, incorporating a surrounding rhythm that

harmonizes the energies of the space. The lighting's simultaneous synchronized interplay in such

a manner provided both and the active participation of the audience. Cross LaMothe (2015)

argues that light acts as a spiritual representation of the cycles of unfolding and folding, for the

light in which we danced was, for her, the light of revelation and the light of concealment. All

performers, including the dancers that performed The Crystal Jubilee, want to achieve complete

unity in the performance, or unison. Dancers with a spotlight become a heart and breath circuit

with the light, which guides them to emotional mastery. The elements were seamless, and it

seemed as though the audience was holding their breaths in synchrony with the performers

during the interval of “The Breath of Unity” as LaMothe would put it.

Themes and Symbolic Meanings

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The themes of the three pieces could be perceived clearly by the audience. The “Moon”

demonstrated the theme of gravity. The choreographer used the movements and light to outline

the theme. The free fall of dancers and the balancing of the ensemble on each other showed how

gravity works. The choice of lighting also helped in highlighting the above aspect. In the “Orbit,”

its perceived theme was around the world. The movement around the pole with the aid of the

rope showed that no matter where one goes, home is always the best. In the end, one remembers

that home is where one can relax comfortably. The “Ricochet” had a theme of suffering. Dittrich,

Troscianko, et at. (2016) says that the falling on the plastic plane, the dance moves and the

choice of music used by choreographers highlight the theme of agony and suffering.

The annexation signified by The Moon's gravity 'beyond' the tangible portrayal enslaved

the spirit, particularly the tension between freedom and restraint. Balance in movement offered

an example of an existential metaphor. As Hatten (2017) states, musical and dance movements

metaphorically articulate an idea and influence the way spectators emotionalize the gesture. The

dancers’ slow descents and upward reaches reflected this semiotic process, translating physics

into emotion. Richards (2016) elucidates that condensation of thematic material in the

performance provides the audience a narrative framework within which they identify the

emergent emotional anchors of the recurrent motifs. This cycle of interdependence within the

choreography of The Moon emulated the cycle of gravity. Koter (2014) also notes that artistic

metaphor often connects the rational and transcendent realms and allows the phenomena of

nature to carry ethical values. With this in mind, the gravitational theme had by then morphed

into a consideration of surrender. The Moon, through choreographic motifs, fused the scientific

with the metaphysical reflecting upon the idea that beauty can be wrought in a disciplined

surrender through stricture.

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Powerful emotional themes of return and belonging in The Orbit struck a resonance with

human memory and place. The circular trajectory around the pole still metaphorically captured

the life and identity cycle. Stryker (2017) describes interactionism as the process of deriving

meaning from social engagement as opposed to solitary consideration. The meaning of orbit as a

homecoming is a reflection of that shared sense of meaning. Della Ventura (2015) asserts that

symbolic performance frameworks often contain emotional subtexts not articulated, which the

audience is free to extract from the layers of text in movement. The dancers’ spins became

symbolic of relentlessness and return. Justus, Gabriel and Pfaff (2018) argue that the

juxtaposition of major and minor tonalities creates an affective contrast that steers emotional

response through sound. This tonal contrast paralleled the dancers’ alternation between active

outward journey and inward reflection. Thematically, The Orbit reconceptualized movement as a

metaphor, transfiguring a literal moving circle into a figurative representation of emotional

anchoring. The choreography expressed that identity is not in the motion of movement but in the

metaphorical gravitational pull of belonging.

The pain that came through in Ricochet was not just physical, but psychological as well,

through which suffering was converted into art. The performers’ collisions and descents

embodied an internal fracture divorced from the psyche. Hatten (2017) argues that musical

gesture is a form of symbolic discourse that can express pain that has no words. The performers’

Kinetic Intensity matched this unspoken language. Richards (2016) claims that emotional aspects

of a theme achieve unity when repetition and alteration come together to form tension, which

then releases, akin to the cycles of human endurance. Ricochet structured chaos into form by

embodying this principle. Ascenso, Williamon, and Perkins (2017) state that the act of creative

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construction incorporated into a performance improves psychological health by the act of

meaning making through performance as a way of venting distress. The piece therefore achieved

healing through embodiment by amplifying suffering into empathy. The emotional aspects of

Ricochet demonstrated that art can transform exposure into strength by letting the audience see

the struggle as a form of renewal not despair.

Emotional tone was prevalent in every single performance, directing the listeners of the

pieces in different ways. Every single sound along with every image was an emotional semiotic.

Justus, Gabrial, and Pfaff’s (2018) research on affective response and mode and tonality suggests

that tonality and frame of reference posture the audience within emotion and the degree of

narrative strain. During the performance this was reflected in the minor tonality and the dim

luminosity that fostered a profoundly melancholic ambience. In van Dorr (2015) he suggests that

emotional involvement is authentic with focused listening and visuality, enabling participants to

disentangle the sophisticated meaning held within the fusional sense. This was nostalgically and

nostalgically felt within the participants who possessed the synchronized perception of moving

pictures and sound. Hatten (2017) builds on this by proposing that certain musical gestures

possess a form of emotional grammar with which a performance articulates its “psyche.” In The

Crystal Jubilee, gesture and sound created an emotional grammar the performance and the

thought of meaning was not only derived from the individual components of tone, light and

movement, but the ecosystem.

The symbolic themes in the performance also reflected mindfulness and presence, calling

upon the audience to respond emotionally rather than rationally. Van Dort (2015) points out that

music-based mindfulness creates awareness from within, whereby the listener understands time

and sound as an interplay of the temporal and the spiritual. This principle of mindful movement

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carried into The Moon as rhythm was movement meditation. Della Ventura (2015) associates the

symbolic themes of art with pathways to deeper layers of thought, of which feelings can be

captured and expressed in narrative form mostly absent. The performance’s gentle tempo

changes fostered introspection rather than action. Stryker (2017) observes that some symbols,

when devoid of context, enable the audience to Centre in and cultivate individual agency. In this

manner, The Crystal Jubilee turned the theater into a space for gentle meditation instead of

mindful observation. For the audience, the stillness in the motion of the choreography created a

psychological rhythm and time felt as lived experience rather than a phenomenon to be

measured. Thematic mindfulness demonstrated art’s unique capacity to integrate body, sound,

and soul, individually and collectively, in human awareness.

Another critical layer of theme was authenticity and how the performers did not have

theatrical exaggeration but rather emotional bodily honesty. Abolhasani, Oakes, and Oakes

(2017) define the concept of authenticity in music from a Heideggerian point of view as

expression and being aligned. The dancers' gestures without the artificial enhancement were a

reflection of this genuine embodiment. Richards (2016) notes that authentic performance often

falls short of technical perfection and gains the transparency of emotion, letting imperfection

become beauty. This was evident in the energy of Ricochet, raw and unfiltered. Ascenso,

Williamon, and Perkins (2017) associate art with the psychological concept of authenticity,

suggesting that empathy in both performer and audience comes from a liberated expression.

Authenticity in The Crystal Jubilee, therefore, connected artist and audience, bridging to a shared

truth grounded in vulnerability. Way showed artistic authenticity that did not cover emotions but

rather amplified them to, Illustrate, the sheer, the most honest form of the human condition.

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Across the concert, cohesiveness of themes was anchored by various forms of symbolic

repetition. Richards (2016) asserts that the anticipation of the audience’s response structures an

artist’s thematic narrative, thus, giving repetition narrative progression. These motifs enforced an

overarching integration across separate acts. Koter (2014) maintains that the use of art symbols

transcends the boundaries of the spiritual and the mundane by confrontational repetition of the

familiar images which lead to the spiritual. Della Ventura (2015) explains that symbols that

repeat often hide an evolving subtext, thus inviting an audience to seek out the narrative and

metaphor beneath the surface. The inclusion of rotational and descending acts of movement in

the choreography of The Crystal Jubilee lended liturgical weight to the concept of affiliation in

the use of such acts. The synthesis of self-formation to The Moon and Ricochet exhibited the

concealed repetition of gravitational imagery layered with shifting context. Thematic motifs

unifying separate performances in the work demonstrate how the form can equally bind disparate

emotional realms into cohesive rhythm of theme. The concert demonstrated how disparate

emotional worlds can be bound into cohesive thematic rhythm with the repetition of form.

Myers’ (2008) synthesis of light, sound, and motion generated a multisensory

interpretation of emotional experience. As Phillips (2014) proposes, in a multimedia

composition, sound and image rhythm visually and aurally immersive storytelling engineering,

which transcends language. This idea was evident in the performances, where lighting and

choreography were just as effortless as the music. Visual and musical Kaemmer (2017) gestures

frames an emotional narrative motion as meaning of the visual, shifting, and abstract. Each

visual rhythm sang the phrases of the music, enhancing emotional coherence. Alongside Justus,

Gabriel, and Pfaff (2018), the changes in emotional response and Joseph performing the

variation of the tone during the dance spoke deeply attuned to the structure of the performance,

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asserting that audience empathy and affective resonance were consolidated through the change of

emotional response in the dance. Unified in The Crystal Jubilee, the decline of prose revealed the

essence of thematic depth, the multisensory coordination of these elements articulated in the

performance. Instead of existing as distinct art forms, light, sound, and motion transformed into a

single piece of art, showing the profound ability of the human mind to perceive harmony through

disassociated sensory impressions.

The concert themes similarly explored beauty as hard-won. Ascenso, Williamon, and

Perkins (2017) connect artistic creation to positive psychology and propose that expression, even

of hardship, determines resilience and self-awareness. This dimension of Ricochet was narrative.

Richards (2016) describes tension and release as compositional elements that reflect

psychological recovery. The dance rising after the fall, for example, animated this principle,

transforming movement into a metaphor for tenacity. Della Ventura (2015) argues that

frequently, encircled motifs symbolize renewal of the self, especially the process of sifting

through turmoil to find clarity. Within this framework, The Crystal Jubilee demonstrated

transformation not as a flight from suffering, but an embrace of its inevitability. The performers,

through artistic endurance, demonstrated the reconciliation of fragility and strength by motion

embodiment of healing. Thus, they taught that beauty’s deepest form is the one surfaced through

grace.

At the core of every thematic expression was the idea of the bond that existed between

the performer, the audience, and the emotional core of the narrative. Stryker (2017) mentions

that “symbolic interaction” is the meaningful social process that occurs around shared signs. This

idea could be absorbed from The Crystal Jubilee, where communal empathy guided

understanding. Hatten (2017) argues that gesture serves an expressive function as a bridge,

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 38

embodying feeling and making it accessible as a universal form. Each gesture, whether an

expansion, a contraction, or a rest, was speechless communication. Van Dort (2015) claims that

engagement in such music-centered activities in a group setting supports the performance of

shared mindfulness and the dissolution of self-other boundaries within synchrony of the pulse.

This transformed the concert from a mere visual performance to a profound communion. The

Crystal Jubilee showed that the deepest themes in art are not the insights of one individual, but

the epiphanies of many. In such moments, audience and performer, become one, shared the

deepest emotional rhythms, and rediscovered what it meant to be alive.

Audience Engagement and Emotional Resonance in Popular Music

Emotional connection can be seen in audience reception of The Crystal Jubilee. When the

audience rationally or emotionally connects with the performers, this is termed emotional

contagion. The effect is mostly passive, described as subconscious empathy. This phenomenon

manifests as synchronized sighs and, in moments of heighten theatre, silence. The audience is

always in a state of safety and this allows them to feel and even embrace the sad and the fearful

elements of a performance. The audience during The Crystal Jubilee seems to enjoy the

unpredictable choreography which is technically risky. Cavalcante describes resilient audiences

of this type, as able to recast the discomfort of a performance into revelation, changing their

discomfort from anxiety, to awe. Tension during The Crystal Jubilee was released as a collective

sigh, when the risky physical movement was resolved in a polished and gracious manner. The

emotional dissonance was a reminder that empathy can be built through physical expression,

even in the absence of a clear storyline. The concert reinforced an understanding of the human

condition as one of vulnerability, and in doing so embodied the emotions of the audience.

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 39

The emotional responses generated during the concert resulted from engagement in more

than just the visual elements of the performance. Caro and López (2014) explain that the

combination of distinct sensory modalities, the visual, the auditory, and the cognitive,

simultaneously activates and reinforces emotional states. This was accomplished through the

effective integration of the lighting, choreography, and sound. Ramos (2015) observed that

sensory rich performances stimulate the imagination and evoke emotional empathy through

narrative empathy. This was evidenced by the unison and harmony of the emotional responses

from the audience. Kjeldsen (2017) notes that emotional meaning is constructed through moral

or psychological meaning in aesthetic objects. Emotional meaning construction through evidence

of thought and stillness after each sequence was especially powerful. This illustrates the

transformative power of art through deliberate multisensory design, demonstrating that emotion

does not come from spectacle but from engaged synchronization of the mind and the various

senses.

The concert utilized music to shape the audience’s emotional trajectory. The use of

different tempi and tonalities enables the performer to set the emotional pace and keep the

audience’s attention. The audience’s anticipation is certainly captured during the buildup of the

music. Phillips (2014) suggests that mindful listening focusses attention on sound, turning

passive hearing into emotional awareness. The listeners demonstrated this perceptible change

when the music shifted in volume and texture. Garrido and Macritchie (2020) use the term

musical entrainment to describe the phenomenon of body synchronizing with the music, and the

audience’s body and rhythm alignment in the concert suggests the affective entrainment state as

described in the theory. This musical architecture, as demonstrated in the concert designed,

directed audience emotion and social cohesion. During The Crystal Jubilee, the concert

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 40

demonstrated the use of musical techniques to shape and alter perception, memory and empathy

in an audience, powerful enough to accompany movement.

The degree of distance and safety the audience felt influenced their emotional

engagement. Menninghaus et al. (2017) contend that the audience appreciates the intensity of

feelings experienced within art because such feelings are encountered in emotionally safe

environments. The managed risks presented in The Ricochet showcased such environments.

According to Izod (2016), in performances, audiences have the opportunity to project their latent

fears that they carry in their everyday lives onto the stage, and thus, confront their vulnerability

in a powerful way. This was evident in the audience’s visible gasps in moments of staged danger.

Kjeldsen (2017) argues that buffering real threats creates a paradox of emotional appreciation,

purposefully directing the audience’s attention to meaning through the unresolvable tension. In

this case, the performance aimed to cause distress to the audience, pacing the performance to

retrieve the audience’s emotional intensity from a place of visual distress. The audience

demonstrated a paradox of cathartic thrill fear and fascination, realizing that the experience of

emotion art can be mediatory and control in the hands of the performer.

The way spectators connect with dancers is influenced by the dancers’ authentic

expression of the trust. As Waddell (2020) elaborates, perceived sincerity evokes powerful

emotional responses because of the trust authenticity signifies. The dancers’ emotional openness

accompanied by a visible effort embodied this trust. As Cavalcante (2018) notes, authentic

performances reinforce emotionally resilient audience reception because, rather than a faux

display, the real feelings are being freely presented. This authenticity was unmistakable in

audience stillness and their intense concentration. Garrido and Macritchie (2020) explain shared

vulnerability in performances enhances emotional contagion, allowing performers and audience

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 41

members to align in feelings, supporting the observation of emotional reciprocity. As energy

shifting in the hall, audience and performers became one. As the concert demonstrated, the

empathy born of authenticity fosters emotional unity and connection in a manner that is honest.

The true achievement in a performance hinges on the presence of the performer, rather than

perfection, and this presence ignites the mutual recognition of the shared human experience.

In my interpretation, I perceived the emotions first. This explanation underscored the

phenomenon concerning the temporal relationship between cognitive interpretation and

emotional experience. Caro and López (2014) explain that an effective response often occurs

before rational analysis, guiding understanding through feeling first. Supported by the changing

rhythms of the up-beat music and the flashing lights of the concert, this emotional-first approach

was apparent. Kjeldsen (2017) opines that the spectators harnessed emotions to construct a

rhetorical meaning, and passion determines the lens through which an audience interprets a

performance. This was especially true of the audience’s near-ritualistic silence and apparent

attentiveness to the more reflective passages of the performance. Menninghaus and others (2017)

explain that one of the reasons a work of art yields a deep satisfaction is the result of a resolution

of the expressive and cognitive elements as part of a comprehensive synthesis. The concert in

question provoked the cognitive synthesis relative to the emotional intensity, or core, of the

work. The experience revealed that, in performance, emotion and cognition work in tandem, as

contrasted routes to understanding.

The audience's emotional experience relied heavily on mindfulness. As Van Dort (2015)

describes, mindfulness in art is the sort of focused attention that enables emotions to unfurl

without obstruction. The deliberately paced changes in The Crystal Jubilee encouraged

participants in the audience to adopt this mindfulness. As Garrido and Macritchie (2020) noted,

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 42

rhythmic changes and fluctuations are conducive to the shared calm of a community, which in

this case, and audience community. Synchronization within the community was evident as they

collectively and expressively relaxed around the transitions in the music. As Phillips (2014)

states, structured repetition triggers the sort of calming concentration that is almost meditative,

and the audience emotionally immersed in the performance as a result. The performance

deliberately guided the audience around cycles of tension and release. There was a certain

serenity within the tension as the audience felt rhythmic cycles. The performance illustrated the

fact that emotional power in art is not derived from excitement alone, but from mindfulness,

equilibrium, and collective presence.

There was an empathetic bond that linked performers and the audience for the duration of

the concert. Garrido and Macritchie (2020) define empathy as emotional synchronization where

audience members subconsciously attune to the emotional atmosphere of the performance. In the

case of this concert, audience members experienced tension in solidarity with the dancers, thus

exemplifying this concept. Enjoyment of sadness and fear is articulated in the closure of

discomfort when the beauty of painful emotions is captivated (Menninghaus et al., 2017). The

reactions that the audience showed in the performance of Ricochet were a manifestation of this

idea. One way in which audience members can empathize with a performance is through the

symbolically articulated emotions (Izod, 2016). In this case, the audience could “externalize”

emotions through the “observed” movements of the performers. The performance of Ricochet

showcased the unique ability of empathy to transform an audience from passive fixators into

active participants, thus demonstrating the performance of art as an empathic act.

One’s individual experiences and culture influences the perception of a concert. Kjeldsen

(2017) says every interpretation is contextualized and that a snapshot of “social and experiential”

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 43

dimensions is usually involved. The audience’s captured visible reactions also demonstrated this.

Cavalcante (2018) notes the audience’s resilience and willingness to reinterpret emotionally

charged material through a personal lens, where “the audience” literally “fits” the art to “be”

their identity. Their capacity to fit the narrative was impressive, especially in the context of

struggle and renewal. Waddell (2020) states that within a community, emotionally charged

performances foster genuine dialogue, and in this, emotional performances forge social ties. The

audience’s spontaneous applause and laughter was evident that this was not a response to social

pressure. The concert was a celebration of the potential of art to transcend homogeneity through

different meanings while tapping to a shared feeling. It illustrated how a performance is at its

zenith when it brings together a multitude of disparate personal stories, unifying them through a

shared feeling.

The way discomfort gives way to release is vital for affecting emotional change.

Menninghaus et al. (2017) suggest that one of the safest ways to experience difficult emotion is

through confronting it. This is what the intensity of Ricochet involved. Izod (2016) describes this

as psychological integration, the audience confronting their artistic inners through the art.

Integration was evident in the audience’s audible sighs that accompanied each descent.

Emotional narrative in performance inspires empathy through indirect, yet safe, examination of

one’s own fragility, as noted by Ramos (2015). This was the emotional narrative of struggle

depicted in the concert. Audiences witnessed discomfort expressed through pain and motion and

learned that endurance is strong. This performance illuminated the experience of art discomfort

is not a punishment, but a. Discomfort leads to insight through emotion and reflects emotional

growth.

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The audience’s perception of time and mood were shaped by the sound and visuals.

Phillips (2014) explains that tension and familiarity are created through repetition and variation

within music and that these elements guide anticipation. The concert’s rhythmic patterns shaped

emotional movement. Caro and López (2014) explained that modulation within the auditory

realm helps to maintain focus and sustain attention. The audience’s concentration illustrated this

principle in action. According to Van Dort (2015), rhythmic awareness and sound caring are

linked to mindfulness, and that structured sound helps emotional regulation. Each rise and fall in

tempo created audience breathing in sync with the dancers’ energy. The experience changed

linear time to emotional rhythm. The audience did not perceive the duration as a set of minutes

but as a felt experience, demonstrating that art mastery transforms rhythm, and turns presence

into a lived experience with the harmony of sound and perception.

During the concert, the collective feelings of the audience influenced the tone of the

space. As described by Garrido and Macritchie (2020), this is “communal resonance,” where

collective empathy is formed. The applause and laughter of the audience served as a testament to

this resonance. Waddell (2020) argues that emotional authenticity expressed by the audience

strengthens cohesion and the mutual bond of understanding. The audience’s emotional openness

demonstrated this theory in action. Kjeldsen (2017) states that people become rhetorical

communities in the audience when debate is absent and the emotional response is shared. This

was evident during the concert as the audience’s sentiments were aligned, creating a bond that

surpassed words. The audience’s collaboration on a shared meaning demonstrated that, at its

core, connection is the most important part of a performance. In that moment, the art was a

society, woven together in emotion and presence.

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 45

The emotional impact of The Crystal Jubilee went well beyond the performance.

Cavalcante (2018) explains that resilient reception refers to the emotional reception that overlaps

with the cognitive reception of thought and memory. The feeling of togetherness lasting well

after the concert seemed to reflect this phenomenon. Menninghaus et al. (2017) argue that

emotions triggered by art remain with an individual and influence the formation of their aesthetic

identity. This phenomenon is so pronounced that the audience members are able to recapture the

emotional state and the insights it provided long after they have left the performance space. Izod

(2016) refers to this phenomenon as psychological integration and explains that the emotions

evoked by the performance are permanently incorporated into the individual’s stream of

consciousness. The reflections that followed The Crystal Jubilee showed me that the influence of

art is far greater than the simple pleasure it provides. The emotional impact of the concert served

to remind me of the shared humanity that we all have, and demonstrated that art most certainly

lives on in all of the performers and audience members.

Artistic Significance and Broader Implications

Apart from a spectacular show, The Crystal Jubilee had an artistic importance that

involved philosophical contemplation. It provided an experience that integrated mass feeling,

gesture, and design. Art is a sociology of feeling and a form of performance, and with the

concert, the performers were able to create a shared bodily experience despite the differences of

the audience (Levin & Schweitzer, 2017). Phillips (2014) states that rhythm organizes creative

energy into a system of time, reframing how the audience relates to the integration of systems

and the overall form. The clarity of the choreography’s pacing illustrated this principle. Garrido

& Macritchie (2020) note that shared community artistic endeavors create an emotion of

belonging and deepen the social responsiveness of the participants through aesthetic engagement.

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 46

The audience’s behavioral synchrony demonstrated this resonance. The concert’s worth was not

only in its ability to achieve beauty, but also in its capacity to foster cross-cultural understanding

through synchronized rhythm, reiterating the notion of art as a means of empathy and emotional

connection.

The artistic combination of music, light, and movement demonstrated how every

performance manifests as an art form of all senses. Each artistic element worked together as one

to construct an emotional landscape. According to Monk (2014), interdisciplinary performances

reshape input by narratives through the fusion of sight, sound, and motion. This was clearly

evidenced in the integration of light and rhythm. Milian (2019) proposes that through

intermediality, a user may participate in a work of art on several levels simultaneously,

enhancing involvement. This was evident in the spectators’ intermedial immersion. Phillips

(2014) claims that multi-layered works provide more synchronous expressive coherence and

emotional pacing. The outcome was one of profound immersion, as individual boundaries of art

melted away, forming a single, expressive dialect. The more poignant revelation of The Crystal

Jubilee was the understanding that a performance of profound emotion is not only seen and

heard, but felt as one unit through total consciousness unifying the body and the mind.

Identity was both an agent and an artifact of identity during the performance and in the

art created and the concert physical and emotional metamorphosis placed the evolution. Stryker

(2017) explains that in art one of the key aspects of selfhood and otherness is capturing meaning

through systems of symbolic interaction. The dancers’ unison and interdependence of

movements exemplified this. Levin and Schweitzer (2017) suggest that cultural identity is

expressed in performance through the interaction of individual and community. This set of

figurative movements illustrates self-collective duality of ascenso, williamon, and perkins (2017)

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 47

elucidate that well-being and self-realization active instrumental art and collaborative creation.

This theory explains the evidence of the collective in joy and trust that was especially among the

performers. The performers The Crystal Jubilee moved to demonstrate that identity in art is

multi-layered. Beyond basic interaction and expression, art evokes empathy and reveals the self

in the dancer as reciprocal and articulated, not self-contained.

The performance showed a philosophical depth anchored in balance and a spatial

metaphor. The choreography described the tension between effort and surrender. Koter (2014)

claims that in symbolic art, balance is often visually represented in the arrangement of a

composition, giving a moral or existential concept a tangible form. The movement patterns that

went up and down illustrated this balance. Della Ventura (2015) notes that concealed themes

within symbolic frameworks stimulate contemplation of hidden emotional truths. The cycles in

the choreography reinforced this quality of contemplation. Hatten (2017) argues that in music

and dance, a gesture conveys meaning by metaphorically structuring the body in a movement of

logical emotion. The performers’ gestures captured this translation between emotion and energy.

With its flow of tension and release, the concert achieved a fine balance of control and freedom,

demonstrating that art, like life, is the pursuit of equilibrium.

In The Crystal Jubilee, emotion became both an expressive medium and interpretive

framework. The choreography changed emotion into physical form. Menninghaus et al. (2017)

suggest that emotional pleasure in art occurs when negative emotions are distanced and safely

felt. The intense but safe atmosphere clarified this interpretation. Garrido and Macritchie (2020)

argue that shared emotion in performing strengthens empathy and social identity. The audience's

unified response showed this. Ascenso et al. (2017) argue that emotional creativity improves

wellbeing and transforms expression into healing. These findings help situate the concert's

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cathartic power. The Crystal Jubilee, through these emotional exchanges, went beyond personal

expression to become a shared reflection on emotion. This demonstrated that art's capacity is to

respond to the senses and unite the mind and spirit in a relationship of understanding and

renewal.

The performance also showed the potentials of art as an educational tool. It was a lesson

in perception, patience, and interconnection. As Kjeldsen (2017) suggests, a rhetorical

performance teaches by inspiring emotional connection, as opposed to purely logical arguments,

and allowing understanding to unfold “in” the experience. The visual rhythm of the concert

served this educational purpose. Pittman, Waller and Dark (2015) consider dance as a form of

experiential learning and translates curriculum to the body. The dancers’ spatial and kinetic

coordination exemplified this learning in the body. As Van Dort (2015) puts it, the practice of art

in a deliberate manner from a distance develops emotional intelligence as the focus of attention

becomes soft. The audience in this case was still and the silence was loud, and in this way they

demonstrated learning. The Crystal Jubilee showed that performance is also a way of knowing,

and in this case, the knowing is insight in which rhythm, silence and empathy are woven together

to form a knowing which does not require speaking to explain.

Cultural inclusivity emerged as one of the concert's most powerful statements. The work

integrated diverse choreographic influences and cultural aesthetics. Kosstrin (2020) emphasizes

that globalized dance reimagines artistic identity through cross-cultural synthesis, building

bridges between traditions. The fusion of movement styles illustrated this global perspective.

Levin and Schweitzer (2017) note that multicultural performance strengthens social

understanding by creating dialogue between varied identities. The audience's reception reflected

this harmony. Harris (2020) observes that intercultural performance produces hybrid languages

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 49

of expression, enabling artists to transcend cultural boundaries. The concert achieved precisely

that effect. With its diversity, The Crystal Jubilee underscored the beauty of coexistence and

shared humanity, treating culture as a bridge rather than a barrier, and celebrating it as a result of

artistic cooperation and deep respect.

The concert elucidated the psychological concept of flow using artistry that is immersive.

The dancers demonstrated focus and performance presence that was most effortless. Ascenso et.

al. (2017) describes flow as the total absorption in an activity that is caused by the perfect

balance of challenge and skill. This was very evident in the synchronized ensemble work. Van

Dort (2015) states that mindfulness increases flow by merging the attention of the mind to the

pulse of the work, causing a change in the feeling of time. The audience also seemed to be

fascinated with this focus. Garrido and Macritchie (2020) assert that the experience of shared

flow increases empathy by means of rhythmic synchrony. This was the case in the theater as

well. The performance induced a shared experience of awareness that was timeless and showed

how the perfection of art is achieved when attention is unified in shared rhythm, balance, and

emotion.

As opposed to more conventional storytelling, the narrative of the concert's program was

framed around the concert's architecture. The structure of the performance conveyed feeling via

pattern and repetition. Phillips (2014) states that in a composition, rhythm serves as a form of a

narrative that does not utilize words and guides the emotional scope by design in time. This was

the way that the concert's sequential flow was framed. Richards (2016) notes that repetition

creates coherence by allowing the listeners to appreciate the emotional stream devoid of a

formalized narrative. The framework of these motifs offered this cohesion. Monk (2014) points

out that rhythm, both of sound and of sight, represents the abstract methods of developing a

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 50

narrative in a performance. These were the means the concert employed to evoke resolution and

totality. The Crystal Jubilee, through the means of storytelling with rhythm, expressed that the

story can be the feeling, rather than the bond between events. This in turn allows the listeners to

feel the meaning instead of following a rigid narrative.

The concert setting meticulously crafted invited abstract thought and more profound

mental processing. Every image change facilitated internal dialogue. Izod (2016) describes

audience reaction as emotional projection, where something from the performer’s life, is

superimposed onto the audience’s life. This was apparent from the stillness of the hall.

Menninghaus et al. (2017) argue that the emotion of an art work encourages self-regulation, by

calming and ordering mental turbulence. The concert’s cyclic form reinforced this calmness. Van

Dort (2015) associates mindful listening with emotional safety, providing space for internal

affective expression within “hold” and gently “move” patterns. The audience’s calm focused

attention was an expression of this emotional safety. The performance provided a psychological

reflection that fostered self-acceptance and awareness, and insight through deep immersion

layered by intricate contemplative thought.

Engagement shaped the heart of The Crystal Jubilee. Each emotional moment

strengthened the bond of the performer and audience. Garrido and Macritchie (2020) claim that

audience participation transforms performance into a communal ritual, merging the acts of

watching and doing. The spontaneous applause throughout the performance illustrated this ritual

bond. Waddell (2020) highlights that community is strengthened through authentic expression by

fostering trust within the members. The dancers’ visible genuineness moved the audience to a

state of shared sympathy. Stryker (2017) claims that meaning is socially constructed through

interaction among people. The concert was an illustration of this interactional meaning

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 51

construction. It was this participation that transformed the art into a social act by bringing people

together into a single moment of shared expression.

The Crystal Jubilee displayed how art can still unite mind, feeling, and spirit. It was both

a concert and a concerted reflection about the oneness of humankind. As Levin and Schweitzer

(2017) point out, “performance is a living philosophy” when the “spirit and body meet” and give

voice to the whole of themselves. This was demonstrated over an entire production.

Menninghaus et al. (2017) state that the “engagement” of an audience with “art” narrows the

“gaze” of the “eye” to the depth and layer of “human” complexity. The concert’s emotional

range was proof. As Van Dort (2015) has argued, an active thinking, attentive self transforms

artistic endeavors into coalesced acts of meditation, deepening compassion and presence. The

Crystal Jubilee suggested that the as the artwork synthesized light, sound, and motion, the

audience remembered the most important thing about themselves: how to breathe and dance

together, and that there is a deeper magic to the world that is meant to unite each of us together.

Personal Connection and Interpretation through Popular Music

The best memories of this performance were how the dancer fell from high and hard on

the floor without getting injured. The performances of the three pieces were enjoyable, and the

staging was satisfactory. The moves and the shrieking sound effects used in the “Orbit” and the

“Moon” communicated that even what is learned in educational institutions such as physics is

applicable not only in class but also in the field of performing arts. These include the law of

motion and the principles of light and gravity. The “Ricochet” communicated how people suffer

in the course of making a living. The excitement was centralized on how the companies in the

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three pieces were bouncing on each other, how they pulled one another with the ropes, falling

down on the floor, sliding on the floor and hanging from the hooks from above the floor.

The strength shown by performers in The Crystal Jubilee made one think about the

balance in human ability that exists between risk and grace. The performers' artistic fall and

recovery gestures represented mastery and resilience. In Ascenso, Williamon, and Perkins

(2017), performers “gain psychological well-being by moving through mindfulness into risk and

vulnerability, empowerment and strength.” This insight serves the meticulously controlled,

cautionarily remixed, descents that synthesized risk and elegance. Stryker (2017) further

discusses that meaning in performance arises from the juxtaposition of the bodily doing and the

seeing, where listeners and speakers possess different values. The audience reaction of gasping

and later laughing created a community that understood bodily courage. “Emotion resonance is

the way in which performance synchronizes sensory and affective response for empathy to

reflect the intention of the performers” (Justus, Gabriel, and Pfaff, 2018). Watching the dancers,

I saw that fall symbolized endurance, not defeat. The ability to appreciate human fragility was

transformed into an aesthetic strength that reminded me of the recovery.

The concert also changed how I perceived in what manner art and science could be

viewed as languages. I had never before seen dances that incorporated such principles as gravity

and motion and that turned laws of physics into a metaphor. Koter (2014) explains that

inconstant art often binds together physical and super physical systems and permits the audience

to feel knowledge instead of think it. When I saw the dancers’ arcs of descent, I saw and felt the

poetry of motion encompassed in a very Newtonian way. Della Ventura (2015) proposes that in

art, the audience is invited to construct the meaning of a hidden order which integrates scientific

order into a human feeling. The performance confirmed that observation as feeling and form

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 53

became one. Richards (2016) comments that rhythm in such a case is an aesthetic representation

of a natural law and serves as an echo of balance and cyclic recurrence. In the dancers’ circular

paths, I saw how movement converts law into an experience of the senses, and I learned that art

and science are not opposites, but two props of the same truth.

A new recollection focused on the emotional tangibility of the suffering in Ricochet. It

was deeply relatable, even if abstract, in how it characterized endurance. Hatten (2017) contends

that the musical and gestural elements of structure convey emotional meaning that surpasses the

bounds of language, enabling the audience to feel emotion as movement. In achieving

entendement while watching the ensemble descend and ascend, the rhythm of exhaustion as

understood became universal. Ascenso et al. (2017) associate such expressiveness with

wellbeing and creativity, arguing that the transformation of pain into something empathetic

results in a type of positive wellbeing. The performers, through physical repetition, externalized

struggle until it became cathartically transformative. Justus et al. (2018) argue that tonal

dissonance creates psychological tension, and as such begins to structure emotional orientation.

The thickening sounds of Ricochet increased this irritation. I was unable to disentangle myself

from the correlative emotional architecture of the choreography to the degree that I could

apprehend that suffering which is given artistic shape is transformed into a type of collective

resilience. The performance made apparent that endurance is not silence, and is instead

something that is polished through movement to be fully expressed.

The combination of sound and the movement of dancers during The Moon caused plenty

of musing on perception and reality. The projection effects created paradoxes of suspended

gravity. As Milian (2019) notes, within intermedial modernism, perception becomes an active

participant, and these dancers appeared to float. The fusion of cognition and expectation was

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 54

unlike anything I had ever experienced. As Richards (2016) notes, repetition of sonic motifs

anchors participant cognition and allows for spatial distortion. The sound provided the dancers

with a new reality. The combination of time, gravity, and rhythm allowed the dancers to seem as

if they were flying. As Van Dort (2015) notes, sound and imagery used as structural guides

evoke immersion beyond observation. I do not view myself as the spectator any longer. The

dance performance becomes and exercise in mindfulness. It exposes the function of art in

society. It seems in this case, destabilizing certainty is the answer. Emerging through the art of

wonder, rather than comprehension, is understanding.

The concert shifted my perspective on collaboration as the core essence of any

performance. Every movement on stage was anchored on the trust of the dancers, the composers,

and the designers. Levin and Schweitzer (2017) say that collaboration in performance creates

temporary interdependent communities, and the individual authorship of any work collapses.

This unity of the dancers, as demonstrated in their performance, was their collective authorship.

Stryker (2017) also adds that identity formation within groups is driven by shared symbolic

action, and as such, unity is the outcome of interaction. The dancers’ synchronized movements

served as tangible representations of unity. Ascenso et al. (2017) suggest that such

interdependent creation increases emotional resilience, as reliance on others fosters a sense of

psychological safety. I watched the dancers perform, and I could sense the trust that bound every

single leap and every single fall in the performance. This concert demonstrated aesthetic social

unity, and it demonstrated that artistic creation fulfills the heightened desire for a bond.

As your witness, I became ever more conscious of my own physical feeling of the

performance. I found myself in time with the stage, and every rhythmic cue seemed to control

my breath. “Somatic empathy”, as Van Dort (2015) defines it, is the mindfulness connection of

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deep attunement between the performer and the audience that is achieved through the pulse.

With the former, the line between observing and engaging begin to vanish. “Musical gesture”, as

Hatten (2017) said, “captive the ‘motor’ imagination of him or her and trigger an internal replica

of the performance.” Every single fold of her body, I anticipated before it even happened. Justus

et al (2018), and Justus in particular, supports the assertion that emotional ‘echoing’

synchronizes physical states of two or more individuals, giving rise to ‘physiological rhythm.’

Rather than merely watching or even listening as an audience, I was in sympathy with what the

performer was feeling. It became clear to me that one does not watch a performance, but instead

physically engage with it. It is not a watching experience, but rather a feeling experience, and is

an unsaid exchange of communication between bodies that are apart in distance in space and

time.

Analysis of the concert reflected the transcending nature of art concerning the human

experience. Balance, loss, and renewal are a few emotions that cycle within a person. As Stryker

(2017) explains, within a culture, meaning is constructed actively and dynamically around shared

symbols, which the concert imagery of falling and recovering certainly embodies. Della Ventura

(2015) explains that the structures of symbols offer an emotionally charged experience omitted

from literal language and invites metaphorical contemplation. In the case of the concert, the

ethereal and still choreographed stillness of the dancers purposefully done to imitate a

mechanical motion made me realize the patterns of striving and release within myself Richards

(2016) speaks about deep structures of experience that thematic rhythm in performance mirrors.

In this case, “psychology breathing” which is the rhythm of sustained effort followed by rest,

was apparent within the dancers’ repeating arcs and still pauses. The personal reason behind the

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 56

performance was made clear through abstraction; the life is in fact a choreography made of

repetition, tension and release.

I pondered on how visual design directed sentiments as well. Levin and Schweitzer

(2017) claim that visual dramaturgy builds a narrative through guided perception for which

lighting serves as a substitute for verbal storytelling. Words might have conveyed the changes in

feeling less potently than the light shifts. Milian (2019) adds that intermedial design integrates

different sensory modes in which list is rendered a part of the score. This made feeling shifts

easier to achieve. Monk (2014) argues that light in a more metaphorical sense serves as a

historical and psychological symbol of change and revelation. The concert portrayed light in a

way that suggested the flow of emotional growth. The concert also suggested to me that, for

some, understanding is more a question of sensation than of elucidation; cli that light can in

some cases also suggest awakening, in this case in the Context of the aesthetic response.

Along with affirmation about community through shared experience what struck me most

with the performance was. The reactions of the audience laughter, gasps, and applause made the

performance even more rhythmic. Stryker (2017) social interaction is a symbolic process of

reinforcing a collective identity. The audience’s synchronized response is a wonderful example

of that principle. Ascenso et al. (2017) and many other scholars link engagement with art to

wellbeing and social cohesion, noting that shared emotion strengthens social ties. The concert

blurred the boundaries between the audience and the performers, which led to a state of

participatory empathy. Van Dort (2015) describes this as collective mindfulness as the attention

of many people is synchronized across a single point. In this case, harmony turned out to be a

universal bond of human experience. The performance we have just witnessed teaches that what

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 57

truly matters is not the art that is passively consumed, but rather, the art that is actively

participated in through physical and emotional connection.

Considering the performers’ delicate execution was an eye opening moment for me as I

pondered about the level of training required to master such fine details. Hatten (2017) states that

gesture in performance depends on some level of embodied knowledge. Each of the graceful

falls was a case of controlled mastery. Richards (2016) says that in a composition the rhythmic

structure has physical training parallels, in structure, and during which the same principles of

control and time are required. Understanding that connection was a reminder of the vital role that

repetition plays in achieving mastery. Ascenso et al (2017) put forth the view that professional

artists sustain motivation for the performance of a task because of the purpose driven exertion

and not from the perfectionism. The dancers’ commitment was a core tenet of this philosophy. It

was through meaningful presence and not from flawless execution which this philosophy was

embodied. This philosophy changed how I understood skill. It was not a simple technical

accomplishment but an emotion that was intentional and captured in motion.

The reflections sparked by the concert were rooted in the themes of self-examination,

vulnerability, and courage. To see the dancers risk the potential of falling and embrace gravity

and uncertainty carried with it all the trappings of the risk that comes with growing as a human.

Ascenso et al. (2017) argues that performing something in the absence of certainty helps build

the quality of resilience and teaches a certain form of adaptability as a result of conditioned fear.

The metaphor of the creative and personal acts of life becomes framed around the dancers’

willingness to fall. Stryker (2017) links symbolic performance to identity construction and

suggests that self-understanding becomes reinforced through sustained acts of doing. The

performers through their embodied vulnerability paradoxically performed renewal. Hatten (2017)

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 58

suggests that expressive gesture is a form of communication of deeper inward truth; in each leap,

there was articulation of trust in process over outcome. To me, observing this was the greatest

lesson in learning that to embrace art does not mean about achieving perfection but rather about

absolute and total honesty, the willingness to fall, rise, and remain open to fluid transformation.

The most lasting lesson from The Crystal Jubilee was that meaning in art comes from

relations. Every interaction, between dancers, light, sound, and viewer, formed a dialect of

feeling. Hatten (2017) describes this interaction as a musical gesture’s communicative function,

synthesizing dissimilar elements into an expressive totality. Stryker (2017) describes social

meaning as arising from an interactional process rather than a static form. This living dialogue

was exemplified in every performance moment. Van Dort (2015) argues that art fosters

intersubjective awareness in which constituents reflect across boundaries of individual

consciousness. That intersubjective awareness was how I understood the concert: meaning

emerged from recognition rather than dissection. The Crystal Jubilee affirmed that nothing in art

matters more than connection, between motion and stillness, performer and audience, the self

and the world, and most important, a world out there waiting to be engaged with.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the entire performances throughout this concert were real and exciting.

The company skillfully showed their expertise as well as the choreographers. Their movements

on the stage and their coordination portrayed proper rehearsal and their technical proficiency.

The music and dance moves and their ability to engage audience brought life into the auditorium.

The appropriateness of the costumes and the syncing of light brought out the themes, mood, and

composition of the performances. Hagen and Bryant, (2013) says that the music choice to help

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 59

in highlight the mood and brings rhythm into the dances. The dancers are champions and

pioneers of the best dance moves because of their theatrical and spectacular dancing expertise

and their ability to thrill the audience. They clearly tested the impossible things that human

beings can do through art. Indeed, dance and other forms of art should be respected and given its

space in the society. People should start embracing it as a way of promoting talents.

CONCERT DANCE PERFORMANCE REVIEW 60

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An Analytical Review of the Crystal Jubilee Dance Concert

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