Evolution Of Dance Research Articles

Beth Dean: Aspects of the Work of an Australian “Ethnic Dancer”

ABSTRACT Australian dancer Beth Dean was classically trained but belonged to the “ethnic dance” tradition in which performers interpreted the dances of “primitive” others for the concert stage; her career reflected the trends in dance scholarship and practice of her era. This article compares her textual and performative works with other writers and practitioners in Australia and the rest of the world. It identifies Dean’s belief in an evolution of dance from primitive to classical, her positioning of classical ballet at the pinnacle of an imaginary hierarchy of dance, and her affirmation of universalist notions about dance.

The uneasy, unexplored, and under-examined existence of Ballet in American higher education

ABSTRACT Ballet programs were established in universities in the United States as early as the late-1940s, but are generally omitted from the story of dance in American higher education. This essay partially addresses this absence in the literature, speculates about the reasons for ballet’s limited legacy in the story of dance in American higher education, and describes how the lack of import given to ballet resulted in the formation of CORPS de Ballet International, an academic organization whose mission specifically aims to support ballet in higher education. A relatively young academic discipline, little has been written about dance’s disciplinary formation and evolution. The existing literature focuses almost exclusively on a handful of early programs, organizations, and pioneering educators, emphasizing modern dance and its roots in academe. Since modern dance educators were the voices involved in the early curricular development and evolution of dance as an academic discipline, including the formation of the accrediting body National Association of the School of Dance (NASD), it is logical that modern dance would figure prominently in any discussion of dance in higher education. However, this article addresses how ingrained practices and philosophies have unintentionally perpetuated certain ideologies that result in the homogenization of American dance curricula.

PRE-STAGE, STAGE, AND OFF-STAGE DANCE FORMS IN FESTIVE CULTURE

The article examines the origin and evolution of dance as a means of communication. The authors explain the close interconnection between the dance and festive culture, possessed by all nations throughout the entire human history. The article also provides examples of the use of pre-stage, stage and off-stage dance forms in modern festive culture.

Review: Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common by Harmony Bench (2020)

Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common takes the reader on a journey through a collection of digital dance works that cumulatively reveal a rich, and ongoing, interplay between dance and digital media. Available for purchase as a book and as an open-access download, Perpetual Motion details an historical evolution of dance's engagement within shared digital media experiences, focusing on the period from 1996 to 2016. As a reader, I quickly found within these pages a personal connectivity and, in these isolating times, a renewed membership into the global, online corporeal community. With myriad works (re)discovered in each chapter, Perpetual Motion shows us the global impact dance and digital media have had upon each other through shared social relationships and interactions, both on- and off-screen.

Coupled whole-body rhythmic entrainment between two chimpanzees

Dance is an icon of human expression. Despite astounding diversity around the world’s cultures and dazzling abundance of reminiscent animal systems, the evolution of dance in the human clade remains obscure. Dance requires individuals to interactively synchronize their whole-body tempo to their partner’s, with near-perfect precision. This capacity is motorically-heavy, engaging multiple neural circuitries, but also dependent on an acute socio-emotional bond between partners. Hitherto, these factors helped explain why no dance forms were present amongst nonhuman primates. Critically, evidence for conjoined full-body rhythmic entrainment in great apes that could help reconstruct possible proto-stages of human dance is still lacking. Here, we report an endogenously-effected case of ritualized dance-like behaviour between two captive chimpanzees – synchronized bipedalism. We submitted video recordings to rigorous time-series analysis and circular statistics. We found that individual step tempo was within the genus’ range of “solo” bipedalism. Between-individual analyses, however, revealed that synchronisation between individuals was non-random, predictable, phase concordant, maintained with instantaneous centi-second precision and jointly regulated, with individuals also taking turns as “pace-makers”. No function was apparent besides the behaviour’s putative positive social affiliation. Our analyses show a first case of spontaneous whole-body entrainment between two ape peers, thus providing tentative empirical evidence for phylogenies of human dance. Human proto-dance, we argue, may have been rooted in mechanisms of social cohesion among small groups that might have granted stress-releasing benefits via gait-synchrony and mutual-touch. An external sound/musical beat may have been initially uninvolved. We discuss dance evolution as driven by ecologically-, socially- and/or culturally-imposed “captivity”.

Nymph, Scarab, Butterfly: Figures of the Dancer in Mérimée, Flaubert and Proust

Abstract This article examines dance episodes from three works of French fiction written between 1860 and 1920: the roussalka dance from Mérimée’s Lokis, Salomé’s performance in Flaubert’s Hérodias, and the description of an unnamed ballet dancer in Proust’s Le Côté de Guermantes. The texts, in contrasting ways, explore networks of power and desire, as well as the relationship between the aesthetic sphere and the world of social conventions and interactions, thus reflecting the thematic significance of dance in the literary culture of the period. It would be hard to justify constructing a grand narrative that maps the history of dance on to that of its literary representations on the basis of three texts; nevertheless, in the interplay of narrative and metaphor and the portrayal of the dancer’s multiple personae, we can find traces of some major shifts in the evolution of dance from the romantic ballet of the mid-nineteenth century to the coming of modernism at the start of the twentieth.

The evolution of professional contemporary dance in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso is renowned within international dance circles for its vibrant dance scene. It is the origin of several accomplished and widely touring performing artists as well as a growing number of upcoming dancer-choreographers who want to engage in a professional artistic career. Yet, the existence of the profession of an artist, let alone of a professional choreographer, is not a commonly recognized social fact in this country. Against this background we trace the historical evolution of the dancing profession in Burkina Faso. Focusing on Ouagadougou, we analyse how the contemporary dance field has developed in this specific location as a transnationally connected social space that forms part of a global art world. We analyse its multiple institutional linkages with other spaces highlighting the concrete actors who have contributed to the establishment of dance ‘as an art and a profession’ (Sanou 2008, Afrique Danse Contemporaine. Pantin: Centre National de la Danse, 43) in this country. Thereby we underline the ambivalent role of the state, which remains an indispensable interlocutor not only in the process of recognizing artists’ official status and providing access to public infrastructure but also in establishing schools, which have become important institutions mediating the relations of the art world of contemporary choreography with its social environment.

The First Steps to the Professionalization of Romanian Ballet

Abstract The aim of this article is that of giving several details on the evolution of dance in Romania. The necessity of addressing this topic is given to the fact that there are many people who conceive sterile discourses in order to come forth with theories on the history of national dance. Frequently ignored or regarded as an easy genre that is strictly related to entertainment, dance is deeply rooted in our DNA, and minimizing the importance of the choreographic art deprives humanity of its existential roots.

Rhythmic displays of female gibbons offer insight into the origin of dance.

Dance is a universal art form practiced by all human societies and has many functions including sexual attraction, social cohesion, and the therapeutic release of energy. Dance also has been reported in a small number of non-human primate species, in particular apes. However, its function has not been systematically evaluated. We observed 357 intentional, rhythmic, and nonverbal dance displays performed by four adult female cao vit gibbons (Nomascus nasutus) residing in four polygynous groups during 3000 h of observation in Bangliang, Guangxi, China. Females used dance to solicit copulations, as well as to promote a social bond with the group’s lone adult male. In addition, this display appears to represent a form of non-aggressive competition among adult females living in the same group. We found that a female who had a weaker social relationship with the breeding male increased her social and sexual access to the male by an increase in dancing frequency. Given that gibbons dance in various behavioral contexts, and appears to serve several important social and sexual functions, a greater understanding of this form of gestural communication offers an instructive model for examining the origin and evolution of dance in humans and other apes.

The evolution of dance

Evidence from multiple sources reveals a surprising link between imitation and dance. As in the classical correspondence problem central to imitation research, dance requires mapping across sensory modalities and the integration of visual and auditory inputs with motor outputs. Recent research in comparative psychology supports this association, in that entrainment to a musical beat is almost exclusively observed in animals capable of vocal or motor imitation. Dance has representational properties that rely on the dancers' ability to imitate particular people, animals or events, as well as the audience's ability to recognize these correspondences. Imitation also plays a central role in learning to dance and the acquisition of the long sequences of choreographed movements are dependent on social learning. These and other lines of evidence suggest that dancing may only be possible for humans because its performance exploits existing neural circuitry employed in imitation.