I believe that dance is an aesthetic expression of the body. Additionally, the body is aesthetically constituted to dance. Dance is human behavior which is purposeful and intentionally rhythmical involving body movement. Dancing has been performed in many cultures as a form of social interaction, spiritual performance, emotional expression and has often been used to express ideas or tell a story. Defining dance may be based on the social and cultural norms in which the definitions can range from functional movement like folk dance and techniques of virtuoso like ballet (Lihs 10).
Commonalities in the expressions
The expressions agree that dance affects the behavior of the performers in that movement is seen. They agree that dance is a work of art with specifiable characteristics and that dance possesses material identity that may be sensed only in human movement. Their supportive knowledge encompasses defining the dance form using various vocabularies and history plus culture. They regard dance as the incarnation in movement of ideas or effects in which every dance invites the audience to enter an imaginary world. Dance is said to be participatory and social in which it can be performed to an audience. It can be ceremonial, competitive and erotic. They agree that a dance has three dimensions in which it is visually apprehended, kinesthetically felt, and rhythmically ordered.
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"Dance Reflection".
My view and which expression relates to it concerning dance
Joan Acocella
“No, dance is not a representation of the manner we go about life, and to imagine that it appears to me to deny an excessive linkage to the way we live, or the approach we explain our lifestyles to ourselves, in the language of logic and morals. As everyone is aware, the mind can operate in operate different languages- dream, music, higher mathematics- and dance is one amongst those languages. The logic is not discursive but lyric. Just like music is, it is a force field, which is an orchestration of the lines of energy, lines of force; hence that is the only approach to start getting it. Dance isn’t a story; it is a song.”
To me dance is transient mode of expression in which it expresses the way we live. It is performed in a given form and style by the human body which is moving in space. It occurs for a purpose and is controlled by rhythm (Copeland and Cohen 541). When movement is the focus, a dance is viewed as a simultaneous system. A dance can be observed by the human eye, can be captured on a film or can be objectified by systems of graphic notation. This means that a meaning in a dance is found internally in the stylistic as well as structural manipulation of the elements of rhythm, space and dynamics in which the human body is in control (Dils 38-42).
I agree with Joan Acocella that every dance portrays the way we live since every culture has its forms and types of dances. The many cross cultural differences in dance styles and dance aesthetics occur due to the genetically physical variations and learned cultural styles. The African dance can be said to be interpretative. Dances are not a story but a song and are part of those networks of social stratification that organize the interconnected activities of members of a society.
- Copeland, Roger, and Marshall Cohen. What Is Dance?: : Readings in Theory and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Print.
- Dils, Ann. Moving History, Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2001. Print.
- Lihs, Harriet R. Appreciating Dance: A Guide to the World’s Liveliest Art. Hightstown, NJ: Princeton Book Co. Pub, 2009. Print.
