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Entry: Dance

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During the first part of the 20th century, the prevalent definition of dance was body movements in time and space, which could be applied to numerous forms of dance. However, this definition focused on the visual aspect of the dances and their components, not delving deeper into their social content or ....
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D
DANCE
During the first part of the 20th century, the
prevalent definition of dance was body move-
ments in time and space, which could be applied
to numerous forms of dance. However, this defini-
tion focused on the visual aspect of the dances and
their components, not delving deeper into their
social content or context. Dances do not exist in
isolation but are connected to the everyday life of
the community that creates them, serving its needs
on both secular and sacred levels.
Therefore, dances can be classified into two
main categories. The first category includes those
dances connected to a specific society or commu-
nity, which require wide participation and are
maintained through collective and impersonal
activities. These dances are usually perceived by
researchers as mainly social or ritualistic phenom-
ena. The second includes those dances that require
specialized education, training, and practice and
are intended to be presented as spectacles to
audiences. These dances, such as ballet or contem-
porary dance, adhere to certain aesthetics, and
their presentation is shaped by a system of norms
and conventions. They can also be understood as
high culture and exist within the context of social
class division.
In both cases, despite the possible similarities
and differences between the various dance forms
(e.g., origins, nations, and time period), dances
cannot be understood by all societies and all peo-
ple in the same way. They may be regarded as a
reflection of social change whether through the
development of new forms or the reinterpretation
of older ones. The significant social aspect of
dances and their function as indicators of histori-
cal and social parameters cannot be overlooked.
This entry discusses the dance community’s
breadth of attitude to language and practice by
analyzing procedures, practices, and problems,
giving examples of what dance is.
Defining Dance
Questions about dance have engaged and con-
tinue to engage the attention of artists, doctors,
educationists, researchers, and in general anyone
interested in the gathering of facts that might lead
to a reassessment of the knowledge of this cultural
product. It captures the interest of those con-
cerned with discovering the value of dance and the
place it occupies in human life and history. Many
people repudiate dance. Others simply admire
those who dance. Yet others know how to dance,
enjoy dancing, and are unmoved by questions
raised by this cultural phenomenon. There are
some people, however, who see a dance and seek
an explanation, interpret the role it plays in a
community, understand its development over the
years, assess its value and decipher its messages,
and define its relationship to humanity. One result
of this is that in the course of time a number of
recordings and studies have been created that now
form the basis of a corpus of data on dance.
At first, the majority of work on dance focused
on its history and representational practices but
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718 Dance
that started to change, and scholars engaged in
other forms of research on dance, such as ethnog-
raphy, phenomenology, and anthropology. Dance
has been interpreted as a social behavior, a means
to prevent drought, an invocation of fertility, ritu-
alistic catharsis, communication with ancestors,
therapy, resistance or propaganda, an artifact, and
a product for amusement and entertainment. The
meaning of dance within contemporary society is
not self-evident and is not necessarily what was
meant 50 years ago, or even at different places in
the world. The question of what is dance, after all,
remains legitimate.
The English term dance is too narrow, and it
does not always translate to other languages with
accuracy. Some societies lack a word that corre-
sponds to the concept of dance as ascribed by the
West. Therefore, exploring dances from unknown
cultures without the support of their cultural envi-
ronment may hinder in-depth analysis and inter-
pretation. Languages may lack an umbrella term
that includes the different aspects of dance. For
example, in South Africa’s Venda culture, the ini-
tiation rite of young boys includes rhythmic move-
ment of the body, which was performed by the
candidates seated in a circle, accompanied by the
sound of rattles. For locals, these movements do
not constitute dance but are treated as dance
when they are performed as a social function,
accompanied by the sound of drums and com-
bined with movement by other parts of the body.
In this example, the difference between dance and
nondance lies in the sound accompaniment (rattle
vs. drum) and the context (ritual vs. entertain-
ment). As another example, in Southern Nigeria,
the term dance is identified as synonymous with
the term music. In other cases, it is undistinguish-
able from the term play. The words iku (Edostate)
and egwu (Ιbostate), as concepts, include all these
three activities.
In the Western world, dance developed a sense
of self and became the subject of study and theory
after the 17th century, when it evolved into a per-
sonal activity. Specialized mechanisms toward its
presentation were developed. As an artifact, dance
was regarded as a product of the utmost intellec-
tual effort, appraised according to aesthetic crite-
ria and the meanings it communicated. This
resulted in many diverse definitions of dance.
According to Jean George Noverre (1727–1810),
the creator of ballet d’action (ballet in which the
dance promotes the dramatic representation), bal-
let represents passions, manners, habits, ceremo-
nies, and customs from around the world. He
believed it exacts a perfection difficult to acquire
because it depends on the faithful imitation of
nature, projecting the psychological aspect he val-
ued in ballet onto foreign dances as well. Some
years later, music educator Émile Jaques Dalcroze
described dance as expressing emotion through
rhythmic bodily movements, considering it as an
artifact. Dalcroze disregarded the native meaning
of the movements, as he was not interested in
highlighting their social and historical aspects and
focused solely on the feelings evoked by dance. In
practice, Franziska Boas, Ruth Saint-Denis, Ted
Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Gertrude Kurath
(also called Tula) were inspired by exotic cultures
and incorporated elements of foreign dances in
their choreographies, each creating a new move-
ment vocabulary. The theorists Peggy van Praagh
and Peter Brinson pointed to the communicative
element of dance by saying that dance is a lan-
guage where the words are movements of the
body, not aware that this kinetic language cannot
be understood by all. Much like van Praagh and
Brinson, Alwin Nikolais describes dance as the art
of motion, where the motion is its own end, with-
out need to justify itself.
After the mid-19th century, significant interest
in the study of dance developed throughout
Europe, within the wider field of folklore, with the
primary aim to collect, salvage, and disseminate
the dances of rural societies. There were also
attempts to revive these dances, and a normative
context was created for their instruction and pre-
sentation. Within the context of evolutionism, the
prevalent philosophical approach of the time, the
input of theoretical discourse was exhausted in
searching for origins or comparing dances in
order to highlight similarities and differences, or
even standards.
The expansion of World Fairs, especially those
of Paris 1889 and Chicago (also known as World’s
Columbian Exposition 1893), as well as theater
and cabaret shows, international festivals and
dance competitions, brought dances to light as
products of various origins, many derived from
cultures that were until then unseen by Western
audiences. These foreign or exotic dances were
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719
Dance
appraised using the audiences’ criteria and values
based on their local experience, knowledge, and
aesthetic.
In regard to anthropology, Joann Keali’inohomoku,
student of the choreographer and dance ethnologist
Gertrude Kurath and the anthropologist Franz Boas
(the father of anthropologist, activist, dancer, chore-
ographer Franzisca Boas), was one of the first schol-
ars to present a working definition of dance from a
specifically anthropological, cross-cultural perspec-
tive. She defined dance as a transient mode of
expression performed by moving through space in
specific forms and styles, with selected rhythmic
movements, in a way that both performers and the
observing members of a group recognize it.
Keali’inohomoku based on her practical experi-
ence as dancer and using anthropology as her
theoretical content perceives dance as a process,
highlighting the two significant qualities of dance:
the ephemeral and the sociocommunicative. In
addition, she highlights that the description of
dance as movement accompanied by music, which
uses the human body in space and time, seems to
suggest universality. From an anthropological per-
spective, dance does not constitute an interna-
tional language on a communicative level. Instead,
for a dance to be understood, it must be seen
within the context of the society that creates it and
from a native viewpoint. Only then it may be com-
pared with other dances.
Terminology
The vocabulary researchers use to classify dances,
in absentia and outside the local society, can cause
tension or disagreement when applied intercultur-
ally and within a wider context. For instance, the
term exotic dance, which was used by European
researchers at the beginning of the 20th century to
describe the dances they first saw during exhibi-
tions, was promptly replaced with the term folk
dance, which had already been used by folklorists
to describe European rural dances. American
anthropologists also considered the term exotic
ethnocentric and inadequate for cultures such as
the Maori, Indians, Inuit Eskimos, or others—
dances which they termed ethnic. In addition,
researchers studying dance in rural European
communities, up until the mid-20th century, did
not hesitate when defining and characterizing
their subject of focus. In most cases, the terms folk
dance, danse populaire, or volkstanz were consid-
ered appropriate.
The term folk dance is related to the older term
folklore, which was established in England around
1847 to describe what today is called oral tradi-
tion. In Germany, where folk culture was studied
as early as at the end of the 18th century, the term
volkskunde was used, which was wider than the
English folklore but very similar to Greek lao-
graphia (folklore studies). The term folklore resur-
faced when German folklorist Hans Moser showed
that in many cases, traditions that were considered
ancient dated only back a few generations. He
suggested the term folklorismus to describe tradi-
tions, rituals, music, and dance (namely, elements
of folk culture) that have a symbolic character and
can be commercially exploited. Similarly, German
musicologists studying the songs and music tradi-
tions of the 19th and 20th centuries understood
the essential importance of urban interest in ele-
ments of rural life. In the 1950s, Walter Wiora
spoke about the first and second existence of song.
The same model was used by musicologist Felix
Hoerburger, who studied European folk dances.
Hoerburger distinguished two basic categories:
Those that are transmitted orally from generation
to generation, and those that originate from the
first category but are performed by non-native
dancers and for different causes. Traditional cul-
ture revival, a phenomenon that characterized
specific historical periods in certain countries, was
also taken into consideration.
There is a great need for a common vocabulary
within dance studies. Hoerburger argues that the
development of shared tools and shared method-
ology is essential for the collection and processing
of dances in order for the material to be used
effectively for research. However, the dualism folk
dance/paraphrased folk dance of Ljubica and
Danica Janković, as well as the terms regional
dance and urban dance used by Roderyk Lange,
the first and second existence of Walter Wiore and
Felix Hoerburger, or even the subtler participatory
dance/performative dance of Andriy Nahashewsky,
are the classification categories connected to field-
work. This fieldwork seeks an authentic tradition
in the villages, following the trail of ancestral ori-
gin. It searches for clean, authentic dances, in
contrast to those that are characterized by changes
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720 Dance
in content, form, and function. Dance presenta-
tions in city theaters, instead of the town square,
contributed toward the separation of dance from
its context, which was also later enhanced with
the creation of numerous dance groups.
Related Activities
Dance, music, and song are intertwined social
activities and phenomena through which social
relationships are expressed collectively, alongside
cultural symbolism, transformations, and conflicts.
Studying dance, music, and song in their social con-
text provides the opportunity to observe certain
norms. For instance, in egalitarian societies, dance
practices are often related to rituals, aiming to
obtain food or appease spirits, and all members
have equal places in the dance. On the other hand,
in hierarchically structured societies, the leader
confirms his power through formal dances.
Often, while dancing, performers create loud
movements: hitting their bodies with their hands,
using different sized bells or rattles attached to
their bodies, even special shoes that they wear
while performing specific movements with their
feet. All of these comprise the notion of a musi-
cally self-accompanied dancing body. Further-
more, dancers’ clothing not only covers the body
but also adorns the wearer and denotes identity,
gender, age, social status, employment, and more.
The garment and accessories also change the
image of the dance, influencing the type and qual-
ity of movement and requiring certain handling to
match the dance. Capes, fans, and other accesso-
ries are essential components of the dance and
also require specific handling.
The basic dance accompaniment can be instru-
mental music, singing, or a combination of both.
In some societies, where song is descriptive and
symbolic, requiring the audience’s comprehension,
it holds a dominant role within the dance practice.
Songs are sung by the dancers or by skilled profes-
sionals, men or women, by one person, by couples,
or collectively.
In most cultures, there are three basic types of
ritual that include dance: (1) rites of passage,
which define the passing from one age to another;
(2) traditional rituals, which take place regularly
and illustrate, among others, the change of sea-
sons; and (3) rituals related to specific events, such
as epidemics, droughts, floods, earthquakes, or
joyful events. Therefore, some dances aim to bring
people together, while others facilitate the expres-
sion of anger or foster hostility during war. Still
others can initiate therapy or portray affiliation.
World Dance in a Changing World
The complexity of the term world dance, broadly
speaking, was adopted to characterize the dances
of various world cultures. After the second half of
the 20th century in the Western world, there was
a keen interest in multicultural education. Multi-
cultural education was originally presented with
various definitions such as exotic dance, non-
Western dance, and dance from around the world.
Employed by the record stores and media, this
controversial category amalgamates the dances of
diverse sources. It is evident that the term world
highlights a new, complex geography of power in
which old ways of sovereignty are overridden
by modernist localization procedures at local,
regional, interregional, national, and international
levels. At the same time, the boundaries between
the local, the regional, the national, and the inter-
national become all the more unclear. In almost all
modern countries, collective identities enter a
period of intense upheavals. Traditional, modern,
and postmodern identities coexist within a com-
plex and fluid cultural environment. Relocation
due to population movements leads to cultural
hybridizations and the formation of multiple iden-
tities. In any case, these processes bring forth new
understandings of the world, where the boundar-
ies blur between inside and out, here and there,
continuity and discontinuity, presence and absence,
and thought of as simply as the world village.
The term world dance was created as an equiv-
alent of world music, suggesting the universality
of all dances, origins, historical periods, and cul-
tures. It was created from the viewpoint of the
music industry, show business, and the media and
aims to encompass the dances of the whole world.
However, as the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl
suggests, it traditionally refers to a group of musi-
cal styles based largely on a variety of confluences
of Western African, and secondarily South Asian,
Middle Eastern, and Latin American styles widely
distributed and heard all over the world. The
term, therefore, includes a wide range of diverse
dances grouped together under one label for the
purpose of marketing within the global market.
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721
Dance
The dance cultures of the world are countless,
as are the elements that comprise them. Due to the
complexity of the subject, the recording dances
and the analysis and interpretation of their con-
tent is a laborious task. It requires knowledge of
the dances’ cultural context. It is natural for audi-
ences to be impressed, for example, by the sensual
movements of the shapely topless samba dancers
in the Rio Carnival, or the fast movement of the
hula dancers in Hawaii as they welcome tourists
wearing the well-known lei, or by the jiggle of the
body and waist of the Moroccan woman belly
dancing during her daughter’s wedding. For the
unsuspecting audience, these three forms of dance
seem sensual, exotic, and different from their own.
Although these examples may seem to highlight
shared practices, such as dancing in place or use of
the pelvis, John Blacking argues that no culture
can be studied through isolated movements.
Two more cases focusing on arm movements
highlight the diversity of dance. In India,
Bharatanatyam is a major genre of classical dance
performed exclusively by female temple dancers.
The dancer performing the sacred theatrical dance
of Bharatanatyam moves her hands with con-
trolled movements and communicates a story to
the audience. Her movements comprise a complex
language of gestures known as mudras or hastas.
In the case of lakalaka (a dance from Tonga), the
focus is on the forearm, hands, palms, and fingers,
with movements controlled by the joints at the
shoulders and wrists as focal points. The quality
of this dance is judged by flexibility, grace, or
vigor, and slow or quick movements, elements that
establish the concept of femininity versus mascu-
linity. Narrative descriptive movements, on the
one hand, and functionality on the other, both
bestow an aesthetic quality, but hold different
content and meaning for each culture.
When discussing the dances of the world,
homogeneity is not possible, nor is the inclusion of
all relevant material. One researcher cannot pres-
ent all forms of dance, from all areas of the world.
Furthermore, significant difficulties arise within
the literature. Since 1960, dance literature has
been increasing steadily, with the addition of eth-
nographic studies. The diversity of the material
collected, and the approach and methodologies
used, do not encourage a homogenous approach.
There have indeed been works that claimed to
discuss dance on a global level, such as Dancing,
edited by Lilly Grove, which was published in
1895 in the Badminton Library Series and became
especially popular in England at the end of the
19th century. However, the panorama of dances
presented in the book are fractions of already
published material, which the editor corrects,
based on the model of evolutionism, and catego-
rizes geographically. She includes a section on bal-
let and the public formal dances, which she
considers an art form of the highest perfection.
A classic example of such publications is the
1933 work of Curt Sachs, World History of the
Dance. Structured similarly to Grove’s Dancing, it
is simplified and influenced by the School of
Berlin and the theory of diffusionism. His work is
mainly based on the visual aspect of dance, as he
compares motifs, shapes in space, and rhythms.
Furthermore, using the methodology of George
Frazer, Sachs categorizes world dances according
to external morphological characteristics or based
on their function, without attempting a connec-
tion with their cultural context. Like most
researchers of his time, he had little to no experi-
ence of field research and often based his assump-
tions on observations by others, an approach that
became known as armchair ethnography.
With the exception of travel guides, portfolios,
and encyclopedia entries edited by Kurath (which
offer a visual panorama through numerous photo-
graphs), the single, relatively recent work that sys-
tematically studies dance at a global level is the
work of Alan Lomax and Irmgard Bartenieff.
Lomax and Bartenieff regard dance as a measure-
ment of culture. They study its origin and context.
Based on an evolutionist model, they isolate move-
ment on film to compare and study dance and
everyday movements. The ethnographic examples
they had collected were indeed interesting; how-
ever, the publication was heavily criticized for its
theoretical and methodological choices, especially
by American anthropologists. Despite criticism,
Lomax’s study was appreciated for articulating
criteria such as the position of the body and the
three-dimensionality of the movement, elements
that originate from Rudolph Laban’s theory, ini-
tially used in the field of non-Western dance.
Even when, for purposes of simplicity, scholars
define dance as a series of movements accompa-
nied by sound, which pleases people, in describing
the structure of different dances, or analyzing
their function to understand the meaning and
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722 Dance
importance they carry, they must also know the
culture that created them. Through dance people
socialize, express feelings, contest each other, pro-
test, engage politically, and even learn to collabo-
rate and communicate among themselves or with
the audience.
Dance is a type of performance that expresses
and generates specific emotional experiences and
new categories of thought for its producers as well
as for its recipients. As such, connections can be
developed between dance and politics. For exam-
ple, many different regimes (democratic or totali-
tarian) use, encourage, or repress dancing as a
means of propaganda or as an instrument of politi-
cal control deflecting or shaping public opinion,
awakening and rallying people’s national con-
sciousness. Thus, dance can be used to shape politi-
cal ideology, for example, stressing ethnic or
national identity by raising issues of unity and dif-
ference and by dividing or uniting different groups.
Furthermore, much of what we consider dance
(classical, modern, ethnic, social, or other) has
explicitly political themes. Dancers and choreogra-
phers express political agendas in their work (e.g.,
gender issues, feminist rights, and minority rights).
In a discussion of the political role of dance, Judith
Lynn Hanna suggested that dance has unique
power both to reinforce and to change the existing
sociopolitical structures through the mastery of the
body as a symbol and instrument of power. In more
general terms, according to Victor Turner, dance as
part of festivals (often associated with huge events)
embodies elements of carnival, verging between
order and chaos, and therefore may express consid-
erable power to mobilize the sentiment and action
of masses of people. In this context, dance becomes
an important political tool, for both the oppressors
and the oppressed. As Pavolous Kavorous notes, a
public cultural event, as simple as a religious or
social dance feast, may be transformed into a pub-
lic political event and arena of power or confronta-
tion by different sociopolitical groups. These are all
important areas for investigation as well as funda-
mental issues in anthropology.
Like all subdisciplines, the anthropology of
dance has followed main theoretical currents in its
parent discipline. Dance was thus analyzed
through structuralism, symbolic anthropology,
semiotics, semasiology (the meaning of human
movements as action signs), and linguistic theory,
generating studies of the deep structures of dance
and dance as nonverbal communication. Taking
these theoretical approaches as points of depar-
ture, some of the first dance anthropologists
worked out their own elaborate models and clas-
sificatory schemes for movement analysis.
In the 1980s, a new generation of dance
anthropologists joined the growing interdisciplin-
ary area of dance and movement studies. Engag-
ing with feminist and gender critiques, notions of
the body, identity politics, and literary and cul-
tural studies, scholars of dance and movement
studies became more visible in the academic
world, in part because there was an increase in
their number. Dance historians have moved toward
ethnography and social and cultural theory rede-
fining their field as critical dance studies. Dance
anthropologists have added Western stage dance
and culture, as well as European folk dance, to
their previous focus on non-Western dance and
movement.
The anthropology of dance has been developed
in the context of critical anthropology. Scholars
have adopted a critical approach to the explora-
tion of the history of dance in combination with
terms such as primitivism, exoticism, orientalism,
and Americanism and concepts such as art, aes-
thetics, symbolism, and creation. Dance anthro-
pology addresses issues such as cultural change
and alienation and the globalization of culture or
multiculturalism. Significantly, the field may also
promote understanding and tolerance toward
diversity and support the development of policies
for the recognition of indigenous culture within
global cultural heritage.
Dance travels where people travel. A dance
develops, meets, and coexists with other dances.
Interactions with other dances influence and
transform, resulting in hybrid forms, which, in
turn, are introduced into the world.
Irene Loutzaki
See also Aesthetics; Anthropology and Ethnomusicology;
Ballet; Dance Events; Ethnochoreology
Further Readings
Buckland, T. J. (Ed.). (1999). Dance in the field. Theory,
methods and issues in dance ethnography. Great
Britain, UK: Macmillan Press.
Copyright © 2019 SAGE Publications. Not for sale, reproduction, or distribution.
723
Dance Events
Buckland, T. J. (Ed.). (2006). Dancing from past to
present. Nation, culture, identities. Madison, WI: The
University of Wisconsin Press.
Cowan, J. K. (1990). Dance and the body politic in
Northern Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Giurchescu, A., & L. Torp. (1991). Theory and methods
in dance research: A European approach to the
holistic study of dance. Yearbook for Traditional
Music, 23, 1–10.
Gore, G., & Grau, A. (Eds.). (2005). Anthropologie de la
danse. Genèse et construction d’ une discipline [The
Anthropology of the dance: Genesis and construction
of a discipline]. Paris, France: Centre National de la
Danse.
Hahn, T. (2007). Sensational knowledge: Embodying
culture through Japanese dance. Middletown,CT:
Wesleyan University Press.
Kavouras, P. (1992). Dance at olymbos, karpathos.
Cultural change and political confrontation.
Ethnographica, 8, 47–50.
Kealiinohomoku, J. W. (1970). An anthropologist looks
at ballet as a form of ethnic dance. In M. von Juyl
(Ed.), Impulse, 1969-1970 (pp. 24–33). San Francisco,
CA: Impulse.
Keali’inohomoku, J. W. (1976). Theory and methods for
an anthropological study of dance (PhD dissertation).
Indiana University, Bloomington (published online
2008)
Kaeppler, A. L., & Dunin, E. I. (Eds.). (2007). Dance
Structures. Perspectives on the Analysis of Human
Movement. Budapest, Hungary: Akedémiai Kiadó.
Reed, A. S. (1998). The politics and poetics of dance.
Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, 503–532.
Turner, V. (Ed.). (1982). Celebration, studies in festivity
and ritual. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
DANCE EVENTS
Music and dance performance events activate,
energize, and embody the significant beliefs, val-
ues, and ideals of culture groups. The music–
dance interrelationship is vital; music and dance
maintain a shared pulse that notably unifies and
strengthens events. The dance event concept is
used by dance researchers, cultural anthropolo-
gists, dance critics, historians, musicologists, and
others. It provides an analytical framework for
studying dance activities in relation to social,
economic, political, cultural, religious, historical,
and geographical contexts as well as the com-
munal, artistic, or transformative values embod-
ied in particular dance practices. The dance
event concept enables both participants and
observers to see beyond the sensory immediacy
of dancing and begin answering basic journalis-
tic questions about a dance occurrence (e.g.,
who, what, when, where, how, and why). This
entry begins with a definition and discussion of
the dance event as an entity and concept and
then introduces analytical categories useful for
investigation and study.
A dance event can be defined as any event or
human gathering in which dancing must occur in
order for the event to be deemed effective. For
instance, some rock music concertgoers may
decide to dance in their seats or on the sidelines;
however, a rock concert is not a dance event. This
is because dancing is not required for it to be suc-
cessful. A rock concert’s efficacy depends not on
dancing, but on the crowd’s appreciation of its
music, which may or may not be expressed
through dancing. In contrast, dancing is the core
component of a dance event, essential to its suc-
cess. If no dancing occurs at a disco party, social
ball, powwow, or ballet performance, it will not
be considered effective and may not even be rec-
ognized as a dance event.
It is easy when viewing dance to become
enthralled with its immediate visual, kinetic, and
aural elements. In fact, a central purpose of
dance is to astound, overwhelm, challenge, dis-
orient, defamiliarize, destabilize, or otherwise
transform a performer’s or observer’s state of
being. The dance event concept enables a
researcher to step back, disengage, and apply an
analytical framework to identify individual com-
ponents of the event, discern how they come
together to facilitate the dance activity, and see
the dance activity in its broader context. The
resulting holistic view is of great value; it reveals
the layered complexity, variations, and particu-
larities within a single occurrence. Those data
can then be used to compare dance events across
historical periods and geographical distances and
between culture groups. This approach highlights
the importance of dance as a human universal
that warrants cross-cultural comparison. The
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▪ Abstract Since the mid-1980s, there has been an explosion of dance studies as scholars from a variety of disciplines have turned their attention to dance. Anthropologists have played a critical role in this new dance scholarship, contributing comparative analyses, critiquing colonial and ethnocentric categories, and situating studies of dance and movement within broader frameworks of embodiment and the politics of culture. This review highlights ethnographic and historical studies that foreground dance and other structured movement systems in the making of colonial cultures; the constitution of gender, ethnic and national identities; the formation of discourses of exoticization; and the production of social bodies. Several works that employ innovative approaches to the study of dance and movement are explored in detail.
Article
This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, including Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico, India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. The essays find a balance between past and present and examine how dance and bodily practices are core identity and cultural creators. Reaching beyond the typically Eurocentric view of dance, Dancing from Past to Present opens a world of debate over the role dance plays in forming and expressing cultural identities around the world.
Genèse et construction d' une discipline
  • G Gore
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Gore, G., & Grau, A. (Eds.). (2005). Anthropologie de la danse. Genèse et construction d' une discipline [The Anthropology of the dance: Genesis and construction of a discipline].
Sensational knowledge: Embodying culture through Japanese dance
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Hahn, T. (2007). Sensational knowledge: Embodying culture through Japanese dance. Middletown,CT: Wesleyan University Press.
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Kavouras, P. (1992). Dance at olymbos, karpathos. Cultural change and political confrontation. Ethnographica, 8, 47-50.
An anthropologist looks at ballet as a form of ethnic dance
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Kealiinohomoku, J. W. (1970). An anthropologist looks at ballet as a form of ethnic dance. In M. von Juyl (Ed.), Impulse, 1969-1970 (pp. 24-33). San Francisco, CA: Impulse.
Theory and methods for an anthropological study of dance
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Keali'inohomoku, J. W. (1976). Theory and methods for an anthropological study of dance (PhD dissertation).