Audience Gaze and Felt Social Connection With Individual Performers During Live Dance

In everyday social interactions, our looking behavior reflects our relationships with others, but the role that social perception plays for engagement with the performing arts is understudied. We commissioned the durational, community-focused, 16-h dance performance How Shall We Begin Again?, comprising a continuous relay of individual improvised performances by 50 people over 2 consecutive days. During the performance, we recorded eye movements and mobile EEG from 88 audience members who entered and exited the performance space freely. Audience members reported on their experience of individual performers immediately after leaving the performance space. Gaze toward people in the scene showed a significant indirect association with felt social connection through self-reported focus on individual performers; the overall gaze-connection association, however, was not statistically significant. Individual differences in mind wandering, dance experience, and empathy were associated with gaze and engagement measures, but not with felt social connection. Finally, EEG alpha power decreased and EEG delta/gamma power increased when dance was accompanied by music. Together, these data suggest that engagement with dance depends not only on what is being performed (dance/choreography/music) but also on who is performing, highlighting that dance is an inherently embodied art form that can foster social connections between people.