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About colour

Colour psychology
On stage
Colour Wheel
Personal Colours

Colour Psychology

If used cleverly, colour can be one of the most important dancing props (along with the bra that is). As with all things it is very difficult to please all of the people all of the time.Each culture attaches its own interpretations to colour. Individuals also attach their own feelings, ideas and memories to colour.

From the scientific point of view, there is evidence to suggest that the lower frequency colour, red causes our hearts to beat faster in order to compensate for the low slow light wave that red gives out. Blue which has a shorter and higher light wave should in theory cause our heart beats to react slower. However, some tests show that it is in fact green that has a calming effect, Maybe this is because the human eyes are most sensative to green.

The way light enters the eyes varies from person to person. This light influences the pituitary gland which in turn controls the endocrine glands which have an influence on our moods.

Take time out, relax, close your eyes and remember a happy occasion. What colours do you see around you? What colours are people wearing? Do these colours make you feel happy? You can also do the same experiment thinking of a sad occasion and the colours associated with it, but please go back to your happy thought before closing the experiment. You should now have some idea of the emotions that certain colours stir up inside of you.

Utilizing your own colour associations can help you evoke emotion in your dance. Mix this with the status quo associations, be it western or eastern, depending on your audience, to create an ambience just with your colourful prescence of being. Add the same-mood music and dance style to amplify the emotional expression.

Colour can be used to add surprise to, strengthen or weaken your dance. Experiment with colours that conjure up opposite feelings to the music and dance e.g. wear bright red for a feminine, quiet and dainty dance when your audience is predominately western. The western culture intreprets red as danger.passion or love.

Hover your mouse over this sentence for Western colour interpretations

Hover your mouse over this sentence for Eastern colour interpretations

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On Stage

Choosing costume colours does depend on the stage choreography/background. The stage colour can be used to frame the dancer. Some examples being

The dancers wear bright costumes against a black background. Try avoiding dark costumes against dark backgrounds or the audience will tire of squinting at you.
The dancers wear dark costumes against a light background. The opposite to the above example. Also try avoiding light costumes against a light background.
For a tunnel or magic eye effect the dancers wear neutral costumes against a strong or bright background. Take care that the dancers do not disappear altogether and that the audience do not have to strain to see you. This is a tricky one. Just an aside, for computer users of a larger resolution than 600 x 800, this effect is used on this web site.

There are some general rules though.
The brighter colours attract more attention and will capture a larger audiences' attention. By combining bright colours together it will give a feeling of much action to your dance.

Neutral colours are best avoided while dancing as they will blend you into the background, unless of course that is what you want to convey to the audience. Or to create a special effect, see above examples.

When dancing on a large stage in a large room you can make a stronger impression with bright colours. In fact it is best advised to wear something obviously visible.

For dancing off stage I would definitely go for the brighter and stronger colours. You are after all the centre of attention at that given moment.

Note that the larger percent of traditional belly dance costumes are bright, light or black and strong.

The Colour Wheel

There are various different colour wheels. To name a few:

The additive computer/tv screen colour wheel which works using red, green and blue as its core or primary colours.
The subtractive printing press colour wheel which has cyan, magenta and yellow at its core.
The painter's colour wheel which has blue, red and yellow for its primary colours. This is the one that most of us learned at school. This is the one that is explained on the left.

The colours that are opposite each other are complementary to each other and in fact when mixed together produce nuetral brown shades. They neutralise each other when mixed. To the eye they contrast each other.

Wearing a little of one complementary colour can make its opposite stand out more. Blue eyed people can enhance their eyes by wearing orangey-brown eyeshadows.

Other neutral colours such as grey, olive, navy blue, camel and beige arise by mixing all the primary colours together in various degrees.

A monochromatic colour scheme is the use of just one colour, but changing its tint,shade,tone etc. (see explanation on the left) Wearing a monochromatic colour scheme gives the illusion of height.

Triad colour schemes use colours that are 120 degrees apart which can be located by drawing an equilateral triangle within the colourwheel.

Analogic colour schemes use a colour plus its neighbouring colours on the wheel. Observe the light from a lighted candle, with its yellow and orange related colours or the vast sea with its blue and sea-green shades.

Tetrad colour schemes use a colour and one of its neighbours on the wheel plus their complimentary (opposite) colours. The little colour used on this site is based on a tetrad scheme.

Personal Colours

Now lets get personal and keep it simple. Basically people fall into four different colour catagories. There is also a method which divides people into more catagories, but for simplicity's sake using the four catagories method.

Everyone can wear just about any colour as long as it is of the right undertone, saturation and value for them. Blue for instance can be warmed up to periwinkle blue or cooled down to ice blue.

Firstly you will need a piece of silver and a piece of gold material. In fact anything that is silver or gold will suffice.

Place one hand over the silver and the other over the gold. Which one looks better against your skin? If this is not obvious then ask several people to get the most objective result or much better go to a colour consultant for advise. Most people are in fact attracted by the colours that suit their type anyway, but it is possible that some people have been influenced by a parent and are attracted to the colour palettes of that parent.

If gold looks better against your skin then you fall into the warm colour groups. Your hair close to the roots, if not grey, has a reddish tone. The undertone of the skin is a golden/yellow colour. Many warm coloured people have broken veins that can make them look ruddy. This can be misleading. In this case try studying other areas of your body which are not normally exposed to the elements to find your skin undertone.

If silver looks better against your skin then you fall into the cold colour groups. Your hair close to the roots, if not grey, has a cold tone to it and very often the iris of the eye has a grey rim around it. Your skin tone is pinkish or blueish. It is easy for sallow skinned people to get misled into thinking that they have golden undertones to their skin, but sallowness is on the surface and not an undertone. Most black people fall into this catagory, but the culture often dictates that gold is preferable to silver. The darkest people of all look fantastic in silver. The majority of belly dance belts and jewellry from countries inhabited by darker skined people are unfortunately gold.

Each group can be further divided into groups of bright and strong or light and pastel.

Within your own group there are certain colours which are really you and some colours that are still good. Experiment by placing swatches of coloured material under your chin making sure that the light is good, natural and falls evenly around you. Now try to objectively observe if you look tired and lined or young and lifted, especially around the nose to mouth lines and under the eyes. If you find it difficult to be objective then it is a good idea to ask the opinion of someone within the same group as yourself. People from other groups will tend to choose the shades that they themselves fall into. The right colours lift up and brighten the face.

If you are absolutely crazy about a certain colour from another group wear it with a touch of colour from your own group around the face , for instance a scarf or other accessories.

Certain colours such as salmon and turqoise are universal colours and look good on all the colour groups which is handy for those bridesemaids dresses! Black and white are cold and bright colours and denim is a cold and pastel colour.