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The Law of Entropy and Dance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Judith A. Gray
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Extract

Have you ever wondered what distinguishes dance movement from random motion of the human body? To what degree is ordered or organized motion necessary for communication through dance? The Second Law of Thermodynamics deals with order and disorder, probabilities and tendencies, in physical systems. Can analogies drawn from this physical principle contribute something to our understanding of the nature and meaning of dance?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Entropy or the Law of Increasing Disorder, applies to physical systems in which a number of different configurations are possible. The law states that spontaneous changes in such a system will tend away from an ordered configuration towards the more probable one of greater disorder. An example of this is the distribution of oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air in a room. Normally these molecules are distributed evenly throughout the room with about 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen molecules in every region of the room. Since there is an enormously large number of ways in which all of the air molecules can be distributed in this uniform way, such a configuration is very probable. It is also possible, though much less probable, that all the oxygen molecules would congregate in one corner of the room, with the nitrogens elsewhere.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 1-2 , 1981 , pp. 47 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1981

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References

NOTES

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6. Twyla Tharp, Open Seminar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 8, 1980.

7. V.L. Parsegian, p. 186.

8. V.L. Parsegian, p. 42.

9. V.L. Parsegian, p. 44.

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11. Ibid.

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20. Siegel, Marcia B., At the Vanishing Point: A Critic Looks at Dance, New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972, p. 8 Google Scholar.

21. Marcia B. Siegel, p. 10.