Then we recorded our interpretation of the characters, their roles, and the frozen action for each group’s tableau. According to Ribeiro and Fonseca (2011), the arrangement of body-context in improvisational dance takes place by means of compositional procedures. Borrowing from their work, we identified the following compositional procedures as relevant to interpreting tableau staging: repetition, contrast, symmetry, asymmetry, balance, simultaneity, disruptions, tension, and relaxing. We examined each scene to determine the overall composition of the tableau and the denotative role of each element on the stage.
Figure 1: Data analysis process.
Social distance. According to Rodriguez and Dimitriova, (2011), “six values can be assigned to social distance based on how the human subjects’ bodies are represented in the frame: intimate, close personal, far personal, close social, far social, public” (p. 8). We viewed each tableau and developed operational definitions for Rodriguez and Dimitriova’s terminology for the social distance between characters. We were not concerned about measuring distance; rather, we