What is Dance? Sport? Art?

I've gotten kind of caught up in the spectacle and controversy around Olympic breaking. I haven't actually watched it but I'm fascinated with the public's reaction. They took a African American folk dance and turned it into an international sporting competition and discovered not everyone across our planet has a shared idea of what the dance is. Whats hilarious to me is my non dance friends are encountering this for the first time. As a dancer in many folk signs there's something very familiar about the whole thing. I guess I'm generally of the opinion competition is bad for vernacular dance.

I'll take it as given that dancers are athletes. Certainly top dancers physical prowess is deserving of Olympic level attention. But when dance is treated as a sport it necessary means introducing scoring and rules. For vernacular dances these were never part of the tradition. From what I've seen scoring naturally restricts creativity. With dancers avoiding moves or alternative techniques that might not score well. And tends to lead to a community at odds over aesthetic gate keeping.

This isn't always the case. West Coast has grown in popularity and creativity specifically because of a national competitive structure. But of course Westies are the butt of every other dances joke precisely for obsessing over the national point system.

When I talk about the differences between art and sport peoples first inclination is to think of dance as art. But again for vernacular dances this doesn't feel right either. Again I take it for granted dancers are artists. Dance is without a doubt a powerful means of self expression that creates a lasting performance of artistic value. But again I think treating dance as art misses something very fundamental to what dance is.

I think more people are waking up to the fact that you can not separate a folk dance from the community around it. Art even if its produced in a community can be moved and displayed elsewhere and it is still art. But a social dance can't be removed from the dancers. The majority of the matter that forms it is the connection between dancers and the connection the dancers share with the music. If these are broken the Artistry is lost. And great dances come from a collective spirit that often is shared by a community that perfects them. You can not ignore the soul of the dance and expect the body of the thing to stay alive.

So fumbling for words I think the best thing to fit dance isn't sport or art dance is ritual. I started to explain this to a non-dancer I met through LARPing. He joked I was making it sound like dancers were using obscure traditions to summon Elder Gods to slaughter their enemies. But the punchline of course is as obscure as it might be Blues dancing's earliest traditions come from New Orleans voodoo celebrations that some people did believe would appeal to ancestral spirituals to aid them against a hostile world. Seriously modern Jukin movements still resemble these tribal 'wing dances”.

And the other earliest tradition Blues is linked to is the African Spiritual field hollers. Again clearly these where community rituals that where religious in nature. And we can see this influence in modern dance. Its from these early songs that we get the complicated chords that distinguishes blues from European music [put a pin in this its important later]. It's also where we get the tradition of call and response and the start of the rhythmic “rules” that allows Blues music to be both improvisational and synchronized. Clearly these rules are still important to dance today.

But the obvious question is so what? So many dances have their roots in religious ritual, does that mean that the derivatives of these dances still need to be treated as ritual to be understood. Clearly the attitudes of our now far more secular society have changed this. I don't think so. But to understand ritual in a more secular culture lets take a step back from our religious descriptions for a moment and look at dance/ritual from a sociological and psychological perspective.

First lets look at it from a sociological point of view. Rituals are inherently social in nature and vernacular dances are no exception. A dance by its nature synchronizes the movements of two or more people. Advanced dancers will actually synchronize their breathing and from this there is a synchronization of human circulatory system. Studies have shown that synchronized chanting is enough to naturally cause an increase in group trust and identity. That means it can literally create identity groups. How much more can synchronizing fundamental biological rhythms accomplish. Is it any wonder dancers find themselves talking about dance “communities” more often than dance “styles”. It is a recognized that a new dance “aesthetic” is often enough to create a new “culture”.

As someone who like to travel and dance. I have found it striking that I have been able to quickly find a sense belonging in communities all over the country and the world (Korea, Greece, Scotland, Sweden,Finland). Let us be clear that there are aesthetic variations in dance from one community to the next. There are certainly cultural differences between say Korean and Finish dance communities. But I have observed taking part in the ritual of dance can greatly accelerate the acceptance and the feeling of acceptance. And of course the beauty of a musical body based “Vernacular” is that this can overcome language barriers.

But an even more profound social bonding in dance happens at the one on one level. As I stated in my introduction, connection between lead and fallow is ultimately the matter that makes a dance. You can see the power of dance as a bonding ritual by looking at the many dancers who struggle with social proficiency who become proficient in the world of dance. The saturation of neuro-divergence or simple social awkwardness in nearly every dance community is remarkable. Especially for people who struggle with intimacy (in its many forms) the ritual of dance can provide a powerful shortcut.

All of this it seems to me comes from the ritualistic purpose handed down from the early roots of our dance histories.

Now lets look at dance from a medical point of view. Vernacular Dances tended to arise from communities that suffered from great collective trauma. With blues this is obvious. Blues music and dance came to about to express and heal the many collective traumas of our racist past. I'm just learning Tango but already I know it arouse from a harsh colonial history of South America.

I'm probably going to need to write another post on the feminist roots of swing dance. But let me give you the cliff notes. Americas first dance crazes correlate pretty well with the advent of women suffrage. In most American Cities in the early 1900's it was effectively illegal for women to dance (or wear pants) in public. Swing dance came about as a reinterpretation of African American dances specifically as a reaction to this traumatic sexism (sorry I'm making a lot of claims here again cliff notes).

I think in all these cases the dance ritual was effectively a communal therapy session. Indeed today people (like Austins own Katrina Repka) are studying dance as a method of therapy. While just about any enjoyable activity can be “therapeutic” lets consider the many ways dance seem especially designed for the task.

The mental process of keeping rhythm very naturally forces people to be more in the moment. Advanced dance requires controlled over you're breathing and awareness of your body to the point in creates a virtually meditative state. And modern science have proven many times over the power of meditative states to rewire the brain in constructive ways. On top of that be learning to control their bodies dancers become more attuned to physical injuries. Dancing trains the body to move in ways that are more healthy for it.

And then there is a music. Music by its very nature helps both express and regulate emotion. When someone makes the transition from listener to dancer they go from empathetic listener to participant in the emotional movement. Remember how I told you to stick a pin in the complex “chords” found in American music. Those chords were first found in field “Hollers” and they were designed for a group to loudly imitate human crying. Modern science has shown that when these chords resonate in you're body mental and physical pain relief is common. Basically everyone needs a good cry sometimes. And the old Blues rituals trick you into doing just that. Tango music has a lot of cry sounds to. And fusion? For a dance style that is supposed to be new and not set to any one form of music its striking that the Austin fusion DJ guide specifically says fusion music should have and anksty feeling mood.

But again if you really want to know if dance is a therapeutic ritual today the best place to look is the people who make up the dance community. I have lost track of how many people I've met became dancers after suffering from:

1 Anxiety

2 Multiple forms of Trauma

3 Sever loneliness

The ritual of dance has an powerful ability to heal built into by design.

So what does all of this really mean. Well it means Vernacular Dance connects us to a community greater than our selves. It means these old forms of dance have inherent properties that heal the participants. I think these aspects alone elevate these dances above “Sport” or “Art” into something that even our secular society could understand as a spiritual dimension. Dance serves two of the major purposes of religion. It doesn't give your life purpose and meaning and wont save you from mortality but connection and healing are pretty big.

This is why I think the best way to understand these folk dances to get the most out of them is to understand them as communal rituals. These powerful rites that communities can use to help ground themselves and heal their members. I hope that this understanding will help our communities get the most out of our inheritance.