Concept
Dance
Overview
rhythmic movement of the body
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Dance is discussed.
Closely connected with the dance is _music_, the preparatory stage of which is constituted by the participation of the voice in the rhythm of the external movements of the body. These articulatory movements, which form a part of the mimicking activity of the face, supplement the dynamic rhythm of the dance with the melodic rise and fall of tones. The emotion which finds its outlet in the dance itself, then seeks a…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
What the ancients called Rhythmus, what we call Time or Measure, is the connecting principle of those two arts; Music consisting in a succession of a certain sort of sounds, and Dancing in a succession of a certain sort of steps, gestures, and motions, regulated according to time or measure, and thereby formed, into a sort of whole or system; which in the one art is called a song or tune, and in the other a dance…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
states what it is; names the idea
In speaking or singing we naturally move our bodies, and as we have more or less courage or self-control we become less or more violent and excited. Thus from the imitation of words in gestures the art of dancing arises. Now one man imitates in an orderly, another in a disorderly manner: and so the peaceful kinds of dance have been appropriately called Emmeleiai, or dances of order, as the warlike have been called…
Plato, Laws
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph
The current of mental energy that shows itself in these modes of bodily action, is not continuous, but falls into a succession of pulses. The measure of a dance is produced by the alternation of strong muscular contractions with weaker ones; and, save in measures of the simplest order such as are found among barbarians and children, this alternation is compounded with longer rises and falls in the degree of muscular…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
states what it is; names the idea
In the bas-reliefs upon the Egyptian monuments representing the work of a large number of men who are moving a stone, we find the sculptured figure of a man who is beating the time for the combined efforts. Whether all rhythm has come from the necessities of common action or whether it has a physiological basis sufficient to account for the effect which rhythmic action produces, in any case when a company of people…
John Dewey, Ethics
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Dance
Related ideas
- Folklore
- Hinduism
- Indonesia
- Bachelor of Arts
- Lucian
- Latin America
- Music
- Vishnu
- Mahabharata
- Social relation
- Brahma
- Aesthetics
- Opera
- Performance
- Plato
- Pakistan
- Grief
- Plutarch
- Narrative
- Rudolf Steiner
- Shiva
- Sikhs
- Talmud
- Aristotle
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Aesthetics.