World Dance: Description and How it Fits into Societies, What Role it Plays and What it Means
Perhaps dance might not seem, on its surface, to be the easiest thing to describe to a visitor from another planet, who has come to earth to learn about our world's culture partly by studying dance. Earth is, by and large, an intensely verbal society and to overemphasize dance might seem to belie this fact. But dance is also universal, unlike language-therefore the visitor may have chosen wisely in his or her subject choice. In fact, using dance to describe this world's society can be quite powerful, because dance as individual, collective, and performance-based movement is a way to transcend some of the linguistic and cultural barriers that exist between people-and would exist between an individual from an alien world and earthlingsIn words, perhaps the best definition of dance is any form of movement where the movement is more important than the meaning of the movement. Yes, of course, dances can mean a variety of things. But to take this visitor to a ballet of "Swan Lake," for example, would illustrate that it is not the story of the young woman who has been transformed into a swan that is of primary importance when analyzing the movement-wer
But is this the only way people dance on earth, the visitor might ask? Not at all, one would respond-and then take the visitor to a dance club, and watch individuals exhibit the most cutting-edge kinesthetic steps, filled with the life and energy of the street and innovation. As in the ballet, however, the movement to music is all-important. The movement and pulse of rhythm creates meaning and gives significance to the motions of the dancers, as well as expresses the emotions in the minds of the dancer-however, the participant's dancing movements in this 'club' context are spontaneous, and immediately innovative rather than trained. Are these examples what make dance, then, the visitor would say? Not quite-next, this alien would be taken to a wedding or another social occasion. There the alien would see people of all ages, some very technically unaccomplished, but all engaging in the social rite of dancing. Again, movement is important-but the motions are less about proficiency or fun and spontaneity than what they say about an individual's participation in a culture and in a family. When the bride at a wedding dances with her father, it does
Some common words found in the essay are:
Martha Graham, Swan Lake, , Ailey Dance, creates meaning, dance earth, meaning music,
Approximate Word count = 780
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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