The "Delsarte System" And The Enlightenment That The System Had On Dance Education

During the first half of the 19th century, the famous French musical theorist and educator Francois Delsarte (1811-1871) established the"Delsarte System"by observing and analyzing the movement and psychological activity of human. Then, he became the first one that scientifically and systematically studied the expression of human movement.In order to foster dramatic-performers'and speakers'expressive force of human body, Delsarte set up the expressive system which has a great influence on dance at the very beginning of the 20th century and provides the original suggestions for modern dance during that time. As a result, he is regarded as the pioneer of modern dance. Based on correspondence and trinity, the Delsarte's expressive system studies and analyzes the"quality"and"form"of human movement. In addition, Delsarte established the"organism-expression"theory consisting of dynamic mechanism, limbs mechanism and joint mechanism, and also the"movement-expression"theory which includes the types and laws of the movement. Based on the organization of the Delsarte's system and discussion of its origin and development, this paper mainly analyzes this system from a perspective of dance education. It states the Delsarte's system's enlightenment on the transformation of dance education and on the new ways of dance training. It also reveals that the dance organism science which is established upon the influence of the Delsarte expressive system provides some insights on the transformation of dance teaching method.