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dance

Rhythmic movement of the body, usually performed in time to music. Its primary purpose may be religious, magical, martial, social, or artistic - the last two being characteristic of nontraditional societies. The pre-Christian era had a strong tradition of ritual dance, and ancient Greek dance still exerts an influence on dance movement today. Although Western folk and social dances have a long history, the Eastern dance tradition long predates the Western. The European classical tradition dates from the 15th century in Italy, the first printed dance text from 16th-century France, and the first dance school in Paris from the 17th century. The 18th century saw the development of European classical ballet as we know it today, and the 19th century saw the rise of Romantic ballet. In the 20th century modern dance firmly established itself as a separate dance idiom, not based on classical ballet, and many divergent styles and ideas have grown from a willingness to explore a variety of techniques and amalgamate different traditions.

Eastern history

The oldest surviving dance forms are probably those of the East. Hindus believe the world was created by Shiva, a dancing god, and religious themes permeate their dances. The first Indian book on dancing, the Natya Sastra, existed a thousand years before its European counterpart. The bugaku dances of Japan, with orchestral accompaniment, date from the 7th century and are still performed at court. When the Peking (Beijing) Opera dancers first astonished Western audiences during the 1950s, they were representatives of a tradition stretching back to 740, the year in which Emperor Ming Huang established the Pear Garden Academy.

Western history

The first comparable European institution, L'Académie Royale de Danse, was founded by Louis XIV 1661. In the European tradition social dances have always tended to rise upwards through the social scale; for example, the medieval court dances derived from peasant country dances. One form of dance tends to typify a whole period, thus the galliard represents the 16th century, the minuet the 18th, the waltz the 19th, and the quickstep represents ballroom dancing in the first half of the 20th century. The nine dances of the modern world championships in ballroom dancing are the standard four (waltz, foxtrot, tango, and quickstep), the Latin-American styles (samba, rumba, cha-cha-cha, and paso doble), and the Viennese waltz. A British development since the 1930s, which has spread to some extent abroad, is ‘formation’ dancing in which each team (usually eight couples) performs a series of ballroom steps in strict coordination.

Popular dance

Popular dance crazes have included the Charleston in the 1920s, jitterbug in the 1930s and 1940s, jive in the 1950s, the twist in the 1960s, disco and jazz dancing in the 1970s, and break dancing in the 1980s. In general, since the 1960s, popular dance in the West has moved away from any prescribed sequence of movements and physical contact between participants, the dancers performing as individuals with no distinction between the male and the female role. Dances requiring skilled athletic performance, such as the hustle and the New Yorker, have been developed.

Classical dance

In classical dance, the second half of the 20th century has seen a great cross-fertilization from dances of other cultures. Troupes visited the West, not only from the USSR and Eastern Europe, but from such places as Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, and Senegal. In the 1970s jazz dance, pioneered in the USA by Matt Mattox, became popular; it includes elements of ballet, modern, tap, Indian classical, Latin American, and Afro-American dance. Freestyle dance is loosely based on ballet with elements of jazz, ethnic, and modern dance.

Afro-American tradition in dance Ailey, Alvin Alston, Richard dance (Hindu worship) Davies, Siobhan Susan

Fagan, Garth Flatley, Michael Ryan folk dance independent dance modern dance