dance

Two quotes from the book 'Dance', copyright 1998, by Dr. Andrée Grau:


- Dance is a series of movements performed in patterns and set to an accompaniment. Every human society practices dance, which may be performed solo, in couples, or in groups. People around the world use dance to express themselves, pass on their histories, and exercise their bodies. In this way, dance can be a celebration of the emotional, mental, and physical human self. It can also be a preparation for battle or an unspoken protest. Dance is often used to mark major life changes or to commemorate an important event in a nation's history. In the earliest societies, dance helped humans survive - it was a way for communities to learn cooperation in working and hunting together - and, like today, dance was probably used to communicate and express feelings that are difficult to convey in any other way.


- For Martha Graham (1894-1991), there was nothing more wonderful than the human body. She saw dance as a celebration of the miracle of the body's beauty, and she called dancers 'athletes of God.' Like athletes, her dancers were expected to move in a disciplined way and to carry out a daily regime of exercises based on her principles of contraction, release, and spiral. Graham's dances were designed to reveal a person's inner landscape - what she called the 'cave of the heart.'