Language of the
ance D STORY BY CATHY NEWMAN PHOTOS BY BRIAN LANKER
From the first kick of a baby’s foot to the last “Anniversary Waltz,” we dance—to internal rhythms and external sounds. Before the written word, humans spoke the language of dance. It’s as ancient as the 3,400-year-old image of a man with a lute, dancing on a clay plaque discovered in northern Israel.We dance, not just with our bodies, but from the heart.
ance is bodies sounding off," says Judith Lynne Hanna, an anthropologist at the University of Maryland. We pour out love and hate, joy and sorrow; appeal to the spirits, gods, and nature; flirt, seduce, court; celebrate birth, death, and everything in between. We even presume to reorder the world, as if, in the Shaker song, by "turning, turning we come round right." Dance is so profane, some religions ban it; so sacred, others claim it.
“Dance is so profane,
some religions ban it; so
sacred. others claim it.”
Dance in America can hardly contain itself. We dance—from Florida to Alaska, from horizon to horizon and sea to sea, in the ballrooms of big cities and whistle-stop bars, in Great Plains Grange halls, underground kivas, church basements, barrio nightclubs, and high school auditoriums. We do the beguine, polka, waltz, fox-trot, tarantella, jitterbug, samba, salsa, rumba, mambo, tango, bomba, cha-cha, merengue, mazurka, conga, cakewalk, Charleston, two-step, jerk, swim, Watusi, twist, frug, monkey, electric slide, Harlem shake, shim sham shimmy, cabbage patch, fandango, garba, gourd dance, corn dance, hora, hopak—as if our lives depended on it. Some believed just that: A medieval superstition averred that dancing in front of Saint Vitus's statue ensured a year of good health.
Language A leap known as a grand jete is repeatedly rehearsed against the grand landscape of New York inside The Ailey School. The ability of a ballet dancer to seemingly hold his position in midair is known as ballon. Dancers live in a world that tries to defy gravity. A jeté means the dancer jumps from one foot to the other, with his working leg brushed into the air — looking as if it has been thrown, which is what the French verb literally means.
We dance out of anguish, to attain solace, and, sometimes, in an attempt to heal. "I remember a couple," says Lester Hillier, owner of a dance studio in Davenport, Iowa. The husband was a retired farmer. His wife, a housewife, wore flat shoes and a floral housedress. "One of their sons had been killed," Hillier recalls. "He'd been in a love triangle and was shot in a club. The devastated parents had a dance lesson booked the day after it happened. They insisted on coming anyway." They practiced the steps they'd learned—the rumba, the fox-trot, the exuberant movements of swing. As the hour drifted to a close, the couple asked for one last dance. They wanted a waltz. And when it ended, she rested her head on his chest; he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. Then they stood still, clinging to one another. "If we just sat at home, what would we do?" he said quietly.
tween here and there, between the time you start and the time you stop. "It is," says Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, "as close to God as you are going to get without words."
Dance, like the rhythm of a beating heart, is life. It is, also, the space between heartbeats. It is, said choreographer Alwin Nikolais, what happens be-
One of the earliest structured uses of dances may have been in the performance and in the telling of myths. It was also sometimes used to show
To dance is human. To dance is divine. Dance does not often leave behind clearly identifiable physical artifacts that last over millennia, such as stone tools, hunting implements or cave paintings. It is not possible to say when dance became part of human culture. Dance has certainly been an important part of ceremony, rituals, celebrations and entertainment since before the birth of the earliest human civilizations. Archaeology delivers traces of dance from prehistoric times such as the 9,000 year old Bhimbetka rock shelters paintings in India and Egyptian tomb paintings depicting dancing figures from circa 3300 BC.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Marvin Lange and Dorothy Gerczak (above) express their mutual admiration for a shared dance at the American Serb Memorial Hall.
feelings for one of the opposite gender. It is also linked to the origin of “love making.” Before the production of written languages, dance was one of the methods of passing these stories down from generation to generation.[1] Another early use of dance may have been as a precursor to ecstatic trance states in healing rituals. Dance is still used for this purpose by many cultures from the Brazilian rainforest to the Kalahari Desert.[2] Sri Lankan dances goes back to the mythological times of aboriginal yingyang twins and “yakkas” (devils). According to a Sinhalese legend, Kandyan dances originate, 2500 years ago, from a magic ritual that broke the spell on a bewitched king. Many contemporary dance forms can be traced back to historical, traditional, ceremonial, and ethnic dances. An early manuscript describing dance is the Natya Shastra on which is based on the modern interpretation of classical Indian dance (e.g. Bharathanatyam). The ancient chronicle, the Sinhalese (Sri Lankans), the Mahavamsa states that when King Vijaya landed in Sri Lanka in 543 BCE he heard sounds of music and dancing from a wedding ceremony. Origins of the Dances of Sri Lanka are dated back to the aboriginal tribes. The Classical dances of Sri Lanka (Kandyan Dances) feature a highly developed system of tala (rhythm), provided by cymbals called thalampataa. In European culture, one of the earliest records of dancing is by Homer, whose “Iliad”; describes chorea (khoreia). The early Greeks made the art of dancing into a system, expressive of all the different passions. For example, the dance of the Furies, so represented, would create complete terror among those who witnessed them. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, ranked dancing with poetry, and said that certain dancers, with rhythm applied to gesture, could express manners, passions, and actions. The most eminent Greek sculptors studied the attitude of the dancers for their art of imitating the passions. Since the Ballets Russes began revolutionising ballet in the early 20th century, there have been continued attempts to break the mold of classical
Lacey Persell finds support and comfort on the shoulders of her boyfriend, Tanner Dawson, at the Hope High School dance in Kansas. Raices Grupo Folklorico of Sacramento, California, performs Viva Jalisco!
“ dance is human, to To
dance is
divine.”
most negative light. Isadora Duncan thought it most ugly, nothing more than meaningless gymnastics. Martha Graham saw it as European and Imperialistic, having nothing to do with the modern American people. Merce Cunningham, while using some of the foundations of the ballet technique in his teaching, approached choreography and performance from a totally radical standpoint compared to the traditional balletic format. The 20th century was indeed a period of breaking away from everything that ballet stood for. It was a time of unprecedented creative growth, for dancers and choreographers. It was also a time of shock, surprise and broadening of minds for the public, in terms of their definitions of what dance was. It was a revolution in the truest sense
Raices Grupo Folklorico of Sacramento, California, performs Viva Jalisco!
ballet. Currently the artistic scope of ballet technique (and its accompanying music, jumper, and multimedia) is more all-encompassing than ever. The boundaries that classify a work of classical ballet are constantly being stretched, muddied and blurred until perhaps all that remains today are traces of technique idioms such as ‘turn-out’. It was during the explosion of new thinking and exploration in the early 20th century that dance artists began to appreciate the qualities of the individual, the necessities of ritual and religion, the primitive, the expressive and the emotional. In this atmosphere modern dance began an explosion of growth. There was suddenly a new freedom in what was considered acceptable, what was considered art, and what people wanted to create. All kinds of other things were suddenly valued as much as, or beyond, the costumes and tricks of the ballet. Most of the early 20th century modern choreographers and dancers saw ballet in the
“dance, we
not just
with our
bodies, but with our hearts.”
Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to virtuoso techniques such as ballet. Dance can be participatory, social or performed for an audience. It can also be ceremonial, competitive or erotic. Dance movements may be without significance in themselves, such as in ballet or European folk dance, or have a gestural vocabulary/symbolic system as in many Asian dances. Dance can embody or express ideas, emotions or tell a story. Many early forms of music and dance were created and performed together. This paired development has continued through the ages with dance/music forms such as: jig, waltz, tango, disco, salsa, electronica and hip-hop. Some musical genres also have a parallel dance form such as baroque music and baroque dance whereas others developed separately: classical music and classical ballet. Although dance is often accompanied by music, it can also be presented independently or provide its own accompaniment (tap dance). Dance presented with music may or may not be performed in time to the music
Ballroom dancing is often referred to as DanceSport and has been officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee. But the push by many groups to have it recognized as a medal event has been an uphill — and so far unsuccessful — campaign. Worldwide ballroom dancing competitions are becoming ever more popular and have made their way into millions of American living rooms on such popular television shows as Dancing with the Stars.
depending on the style of dance. Dance performed without music is said to be danced to its own rhythm[citation needed]. Ballroom dancing is an art although it may incorporates many fitness components using an artistic state of mind. After the explosion of modern dance in the early 20th century, the 1960s saw the growth of postmodernism. Postmodernism veered towards simplicity, the beauty of small things, the beauty of untrained body, and unsophisticated movement. The famous ‘No’ manifesto rejecting all costumes, stories and outer trappings in favour of raw and unpolished movement was perhaps the extreme of this wave of thinking. Unfortunately lack of costumes, stories and outer trappings do not make a good dance show, and it was not long before sets, décor and shock value re-entered the vocabulary of modern choreographers. By the 1980s dance had come full circle and modern dance (or, by this time, ‘contemporary dance’) was clearly still a highly technical and political vehicle for many practitioners.