Performing Arts (Music, Dance, Drama)
What the domain tests
Performing Arts combines music, dance and drama. Questions test the elements and vocabulary of each art form, basic notation and rhythm, composition and improvisation, and the ability to describe, rehearse and evaluate a performance.
Core content
- Music: pitch, duration, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, structure. In 4/4 there are four crotchet beats per bar; a minim is worth two crotchets, a semibreve four, and a quaver half. A C major scale uses C D E F G A B C with semitones between E-F and B-C. Texture can be monophonic, homophonic or polyphonic.
- Dance: body, action, space, time and energy. Use locomotor actions (travel), non-locomotor actions (in place), levels, pathways, and canon or unison. A motif is a short movement phrase developed by repetition, inversion or enlargement.
- Drama: plot, character, conflict, dialogue, setting, theme, spectacle. Conventions include tableau, mime, improvisation, hot-seating and role play. Stage directions and blocking shape audience focus.
- When studying local dances such as setapa or tsutsube, name the community, occasion, costume and instrumentation rather than treating 'traditional dance' as one style.
Worked example
Build an eight-count dance motif on the theme 'drought'. Counts 1-4: a slow, low, curved reach with a strong sustained effort, showing thirst. Counts 5-8: three sharp, jerky steps backward with bound flow, showing fear. The motif uses contrast in energy and level. To develop it, repeat it in canon with two dancers entering four counts apart, then invert the reach upward. The theme is readable because the movement qualities, not the costume, carry the meaning.
Traps
Describing a dance only by costume and song; writing 'fast' without naming tempo, energy or duration; confusing crotchet and quaver values; making a drama scene with no conflict; and using a tableau as a moving scene.