THE IMPORTANCE OF DANCE IS A FORM OF LANGUAGE
Dance is the rhythmic movement of the body, usually accompanied by music and carried out within a given place, meant to express an idea or emotion, to free energy, or simply to delight in movement itself. “Dance is a powerful impulse, but the art of dance is that impulse channeled by skillful performers into something that becomes intensely expressive and that may delight spectators who feel no wish to dance themselves” (Mackrell, n .d.). All human beings can glory in their ability to dance, with the development and practice of the ability adding more and more skill. With regard to this, it is important to remember that “The element of dance is empty space; its instrument is the human body. There is no need for words, colours, earth, stone or wood. Dance lives in the present tense. Its life is one of loss and renewal. It vanishes and reappears. The dancer, the only begetter of the dance, is mortal” (Bejart, 1996, p. 12). Bodily expression may appear with or without music in dance, but time and space are always present as elements to convey its message.
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The work of Lyudmila Pet’ko on dance as a universal language is relevant here: “Dance is a form of language,” she writes, “that transcends not only cultures but also species. We may not have the ability to comprehend the sounds that male birds make, but we can instinctively interpret their gestures as they compete for a mate by showing off their dance moves. Similarly, before our ancestors developed linguistic skills, they communicated with each other through body language. They expressed their anger, hope and love with movement. Today, we continue to do the same; dance is a part of us and has always been. Dancers are storytellers who share their stories with their bodies” (Pet'ko, 2014, p. 1). In her study, Pet’ko looks at five forms of dance: Latin dance, breakdancing, Tahitian dance, ballet, and flamenco. She remarks that dance does not just speak a single language known only by other dancers, but rather can tell any of us who we are and where we come from. And when a person explores dancing, she can be transported to another culture. In our cultures, dance is present at many of our lives’ most central events and activities: “Man danced for all occasions— at birth, initiation ceremonies for young maidens or young boys, sickness, marriage, death, planting, harvesting, hunting, at war, after a hunt, feasts, the celebrations of the village headman’s coronation, funeral ceremonies and the like” (Ivanovska, n .d., pp. 2, 3). The evidence in reports like these offers an excellent resource for research because it helps the researcher understand how dance permeates and embellishes different areas of society. The reports can also suggest the direction of a specific research project. Some of these foci are the themes and languages of dance, its typical occasions, and the underlying creative process. All can lead to an understanding of how dance benefits students. Students can benefit from arts education by learning to express their feelings through involvement in creative processes.
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Certain studies have focused on specialized aspects of dance education—for example Erika Cravath’s “Creative Dance Integration Lesson Plans.” In this she theorizes on the possibility of teaching the sciences by means of movement, and cites a student as saying “Usually I don’t understand science, but when you put movement into learning, I really understood all of it” (p. 1). It is my own belief that by incorporating movement into lesson plans, teachers can lead students to a better understanding of any educational material, for they are connecting their bodies and feelings to the subject matter via cognitive thought; it aids in the reception and processing of information, and later helps students put their thoughts and ideas into action.
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Another study completed around the use of Indigenous dance related it to the acquisition of mathematical aptitude. In “Maths as Storytelling” (included in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education, edited by Dr. Kaye Price), Dr. Chris Matthews “explores the connection between culture and mathematics, and the ways in which indigenous peoples have positioned themselves as mathematics learners. He employs the figure of a cloud as a culturally sensible pedagogical focal point to discuss how mathematics encompasses the identity of the indigenous students” (Delpit, 1998; Lewthwaite et al, 2015; Perso, 2012) in (Matthews, 2012, p. 1). This chapter reminded me of how the Indigenes know exactly how many seeds to plant in a one-kilometer plot of earth, how much guano must be provided for each seed and how often to water it in the course of their agricultural rounds. Without having ever received formal instruction in mathematics, they use the science in a precise, practical way to bring about desired results. Dance can weave into its performance aspects of a great many realities, as is shown in the work of Nadine George-Graves (Salomon 2013). Her study “Choreographing a New World” emphasizes political engagement. Through actions both onstage and off, she helped strengthen the transnational ties of black social movements from the New Negro Movement to the Black Power Movement (Das 2014, p. 2).
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Another study, Bush’s 2001 “Staging lo Andino: the Scissors Dance, Spectacle, and Indigenous Citizenship in the New Peru,” is dedicated to an investigation of the “historical ethnography of the Peruvian scissors dance, an acrobatic indigenous ritual dance historically associated with the stigma of indigeneity, poverty, and devil worship.” This is an important contribution to the understanding of one of Peru’s most representative Indigenous dances, which is practiced from early childhood and is a key feature in the ritual of the Uku Pacha, or the beings who live underground in what the conquistadors called Hell. Bush examines “the complex processes whereby anthropologists, cultural entrepreneurs, cosmopolitan artists, and indigenous performers themselves have staged the scissors dance as a symbolic resource in the construction of the emergent imaginary of a ‘New Peru’” (Bush, 2011, p. ii). This and many other indigenous dances are not mere spectacle, but rather profound communicators of cultural values and ethics—and as such can teach non-Indigenous people a great deal about Indigenous worldviews and ways. Their growing popularity in the wider world has also led to “the emergence of new forms of neoliberal governance circumscrib[ing] the articulation of cosmopolitan Indigenous subjectivities as scissors dancers have become highly visible participants in the remaking of Peruvian national identity within a performative economy of spectacle in a globalizing world” (p. ii).
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In the field of corporal expression, the language of the body can stimulate reflection and even change ways of thinking; oscillating between strength and debility, fallings and risings, joys and sorrows its end result is an expression of reality that motivates multiple interpretations in the mind of its viewer. This complex of action and meaning is explored by Shapiro in “Dance as activism: The power to envision, move and change” (2015). Here he discusses “two main themes relating to the role of dance as activism and the power of dance to envision, move and create change” (Shapiro, 2015, p. 3). The first theme looks at “practices of doing feminist pedagogy in relation to art, the body and social change,” while the second “explores ways in which dance as aesthetic activism is ‘haunted by meaning’” (p. 3). Shapiro notes that these themes intersect through a focus on dance and social justice, and on community engagement” (p. 3). This is a fascinating article dedicated to the understanding of dance as an activist movement, given that the body is social and activist from birth, struggles to go on living and works for improvements in its environment. Dance can model activist actions because its only medium, the body, is the prime mover of such actions, and one that can communicate via its movement’s ideals of a communal well-being.
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Another project that offers evidence on the ways dance can affect education is called “Basic Reading through Dance” (2003). In this, McMahon describes “the ways in which dance, with defined and specific movement activities, can impact early reading skills, with equally well- defined variables for those language arts skills. Moving letter shapes and sounds, creating name dances, and practicing flow from one shape to the next produced significant gains in consonant recognition, vowel recognition, and phoneme segmentation in the experimental group of first- graders in Chicago, as compared with a control group of first-graders who did not participate in the ten-week program” (Bradley, Bonbright, Dooling., 2013, p. 126). Dance can balance life because practicing it allows you to measure the steps of experience with the actions of dance through the analysis that moderates the understanding and the feeding of self- esteem.