The Relation of Music and Dance in Heavy Metal. Developing a Method of Analysis for the Situating Description of Aesthetic-Performative Practices on the Basis of Qualitative-Empirical Investigations from Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Florian Heesch
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 454261397

As most popular music cultures, heavy metal is characterized by conventionalized, music-related forms of bodily movement that can be described as dance practices: comprising, for example, headbanging moshing, folkloristic dances and much more. Yet, how music and dance relate to each other as aesthetic-performative practices has only received rudimentary attention in aca-demia: Neither are there systematic investigations regarding the historicity and diversity of metal dance forms, nor concerning the dance’s relation to sound and other performative aspects (e.g. spatiality). In attending to this research gap, we want to develop a musicologically grounded yet interdisciplinarily applicable method of analysis that enables an understanding of bodily move-ments in their complexity and co-constitution with sounds as well as further performative ele-ments. The model is based on qualitative empirical data and aesthetic analyses of performative practices regarding the heterogeneous field of heavy metal as a whole. Thus, we aim for a re-conceptualization of dance in heavy metal which a) accounts for its variety and which b) is sensitive to connections between movements within heavy metal as well as between heavy metal’s movement repertoire and those of other musical genres. This conceptualization explicitly includes the dance’s historicity which we will study exemplarily with regard to its development in German-speaking areas since the 1980s. Unfolding the historic dimensions of the dance includes investigating the dynamics of establishment, dissemination and transformation of movement in reciprocal relation to the differentiation of metal sub-genres and stylistic developments as well as to changes in media technologies and scene discourses. Within this string of investigation, the focus on German-speaking regions does not preclude us from paying attention to processes of transcultural exchange, especially with Anglo-American regions. In order to study heavy metal dance as described above our project consults three different sets of sources: (1) participant observation complemented by audiovisual recordings, (2) representa-tions of the dance in auditory, audiovisual and discursive form, and (3) research interviews (guideline-based and oral history interviews). Our methodology combines analyses of aesthetic-performative phenomena with a modified situ-ational analysis (SA). We conceive of dance as practice that is performed in specific situations and which demands an accordingly situated and situating analysis. An appropriate and promising means to this end is a flexible application of SA in combination with approaches to music and performance analysis from the humanities and cultural studies, methods for the analysis of rock and metal music as well as approaches to the interpretation of music in combination with other media.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants