Interpersonal physiological connection is thought to play a crucial role in group activities. A previous study with participants who had little musical experience has shown that the groups with higher heart rate synchronization were better able to perform simple drumming tasks in a coordinated manner. In the present study, we investigated whether heart-rate synchronization is associated with improvement in a complex harmonic performance of an orchestra. The subject of this study was an orchestra composed of several semi-professional and amateur musicians rehearsing a new original piece. The heart rates of sixteen musicians were simultaneously measured during a joint rehearsal. The results indicate that while the average heart rate of the musicians decreased, heart-rate synchronization among the musicians increased over the course of repeated group rehearsals. For a harmonic performance, the musicians may need to have a physiological connection to each other without their physiological arousal being too high.

Our body movements often reflect our inner states. Dance is one of the remarkable movements closely related to the emotional state. Previous studies suggest that the velocity of dance movements changes when dancers are instructed to express joyful or sad feelings through neutral gestures. However, whether a dancer’s emotions can emerge in dance movements remains unclear. We examined changes in dance movements when dancers’ emotions were naturally induced by music. In the experiment, semi-professional dancers were asked to perform the same choreography while listening to joyful or sad music or a metronome. The results revealed that joyful music increased the dancers’ heart rates, pelvic velocity, and range of motion compared to sad music and the metronome. This outcome suggests that naturally induced joyful emotions promote fast, bouncing dance movements. The dance performance could implicitly express the dancers’ inner states, which an audience might feel.

Dancers vividly express joy, grief, and other emotions through their body movements, which reflect the deliberate expression of certain emotions and also the unintentional emotions. Research has shown that the speed of performers' movements varies according to the emotions deliberately expressed. However, no study has examined the non-deliberate emotions. Therefore, this study examined dancers' unintentionally exposed emotions through their movements. Seventeen semi-professional dancers performed a neutral choreography to three music types—joy-inducing music, sadness-inducing music, and a metronome—and their performances were compared. Changes in the dancers' body movements were measured using a motion-capture system. Results showed that body movements were generally faster and more dynamic with emotion-inducing music compared to the metronome. While the speed of pelvic movements was more when they danced to joy-inducing music, arm movement was more apparent for sadness-inducing music. These findings help understand the unintentional emotion-expression dynamics in dance.