DANCE

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DANCE

• Chapter 10
• The Humanities through the Arts
• F. David Martin and Lee A. Jacobus

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Dance is rhythmic

• Dance moving bodies shaping space- shares
  common ground with kinetic sculpture.
• In abstract dance the center of interest is upon
  visual patterns, and there is common ground with
  abstract painting.
• Dance has common ground with drama, music.

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Subject Matter of Dance

• At its most basic level the subject matter of
  dance is abstract motion.
• The medium of the dance is the human body whose
  movements produce sympathetic movements in the
  audience.

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Subject Matter of Dance

• Our instinctive ability to identify with other
  human bodies is so strong that the perception of
  feelings exhibited by the dancer often evokes
  something of those feelings in ourselves.
• The choreographer, creator of the dance,
  interprets those feelings.

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Subject Matter of Dance

• If we participate, we may understand those
  feelings and ourselves with greater insight.
• State of mind are a further dimension that may be
  the subject matter of dance.
• Feelings, of pleasure and pain are relatively
  transient, but state of mind involve attitudes,
  tendencies that engender certain feelings.

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Form

• The subject matter of dance can be moving visual
  patterns, feelings, states of mind, narrative, or
  various combinations of these.
• The form of the dance its details and structure
  gives us insight into the subject matter.

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Dance and Ritual

• Since the only requirement for dance is a body in
  motion and since all cultures have this basic
  requirement,
• Dance probably precedes all other arts.
• In this sense dance comes first.

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Dance and Ritual

• And when it comes first, it is usually connected
  to a ritual that demands careful execution of
  movements in precise ways to achieve a precise
  goal.
• A favorite shape for the dance is that of the
  spiral nautilus, so often seen in shells, plants,
  and insects

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INDIAN DANCE

• Some of the most complex and exquisite dances
  performed in the world originated in India.
• Like ballet dancers, Indian dancers follow set
  movements, with complex finger and hand
  movements, all have significance.
• There are 28 hand gestures called mudras and the
  can be combined to produce 800 distinctive
  meanings.

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THE ZUNI RAIN DANCE

• The pattern of the dance is not circular but a
  modified spiral.
• The properly costumed dancers form a line, led by
  a priest who spreads cornmeal on the ground
  symbolizing his wish for fertility of the ground.
• The gestures of the dancers, like the gestures in
  most rituals, have definite meanings and
  functions.

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SOCIAL DANCE

• Social dance is not theatrical or artistic, as
  are ballet and modern dance.
• Folk and court dances are done simply for the
  pleasure of the dance.
• Social dance is not dominated by religious or
  practical purposes
• Although it may serve as meeting people or
  working off excess energy.

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COUNTRY AND FOLK DANCE

• Country dance is a species of folk dance that has
  traces of ancient origins
• Because country people tended to perform dances
  in specific relationship to special periods in
  the agricultural year,
• Such as planting and harvesting.
• Folk dances are the dances of the people whether
  ethnic or regional in origin they are often very
  carefully preserved.

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THE COURT DANCE

• The court dances of the Middle Ages and
  Renaissance developed into more stylized and less
  openly energetic modes than the folk dance
• For the court dance was performed by a different
  sort of person and served a different purpose.
• Participating in court dances signified high
  social status.

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BALLET

• The origins of ballet usually are traced to the
  early 17th century when dancers performed
  interludes between scenes of an opera.
• Today there is a vocabulary of movements that all
  ballet dancers must learn
• Since these movements constitute the fundamental
  elements of every ballet.

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BALLET

• They are as important as the keys and scales in
  music,
• The vocabulary of tones constantly employed in
  most musical composition shows a number of the
  more important ballet positions.

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SWAN LAKE

• One of the most popular ballets of all times is
  Tchaikovskys Swan Lake composed from 1871 to
  1877 and first performed in 1894 and 1895
  (complete).

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MODERN DANCE

• The origins of modern dance are usually traced to
  the American dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St.
  Denis.
• They rebelled against the stylization of ballet,
  with ballerinas dancing on their toes and
  executing the same basic movements in every
  performance.
• Duncan insisted on natural movement, often
  dancing in bare feet that showed her body and
  legs in motion.

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MODERN DANCE

• The developers of modern dance who followed
  Duncan built on her legacy.
• In her insistence on freedom with respect to
  clothes and conventions, she infused energy into
  the dance that no one had ever seen before.
• Her movements tended to be ongoing and rarely can
  to a complete rest.

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ALVIN AILEYS REVELATIONS

• One of the classics of modern dance is Alvin
  Aileys Revelations, based largely on African
  American spirituals and experience.
• Some of the success of Revelations stems from
  Aileys choice of the deeply felt music of the
  spirituals to which the dancers movements are
  closely attuned.

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ALVIN AILEYS REVELATIONS

• Music, unless it is program music, is not,
  strictly speaking a pretext for a dance, but
  there is a perceptible connection between,
• the rhythmic characteristics of a given music and
  a dance composed in such a way as to take
  advantage of those characteristics.

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