We explain what dance is, how it is classified and the elements that make it up. Also, what are its characteristics and importance.
Dance or dance is an artistic form that is expressed through body movements . It is generally performed to the sound of music but it can also follow its own rhythm. It can be carried out for religious, expressive or entertainment reasons.
Although there are many types of dances and many occasions to perform them, a body language is usually identified in them that serves to express various emotional or cultural contents . For this, the movement and position of the body in space must be perceived, as well as the cadence and fluidity of the movements of the performer.
Those who practice the dance are known as dancers or dancers , depending on the specific context of their dance.
Dance has been around since the emergence of the first cultures .
Anthropologists estimate that their social function was initially associated with ritual actions .
This would be the case of the famous dance to attract the rain of certain North American aboriginal peoples.
Healing dances that shamans perform around the sick have also been observed in primitive tribes that still survive.
Dance is one of the human activities par excellence . While other animals perform certain movements for communicative or reproductive purposes, they do not have the cultural function of human dance.
The first to understand dance as an art form were the Greeks of antiquity , who have dedicated one of his muses: Terpsichore . Dance in Ancient Greece was linked to the cult of Dionysus, and was part of theatrical practices , along with music and poetry .
Like all arts , dance evolved over time along with human society . In some cases it accompanied acts of ritual significance (weddings, celebrations, religious rites), as is the case to this day.
It was also developed as a show and entertainment , thus becoming one of the so-called performing arts. In both cases it is usually accompanied by music, although on occasions it managed to become independent from it, as in tap dance or tap dance .
There is an enormous diversity of dances and dances, each one with its determined and specific cultural context, so we could roughly group them into the following categories:
Dance is made up of various interrelated elements that are followed and interpreted by the audience as an expressive language . Their use, moreover, is not always uniform, and in a dance one may predominate over the other.
This is the name given to the art of creating dances, that is, of joining various movements to generate a new language . It is equivalent to composition in music, since it is about creating new pieces that can then be performed by one or more dancers.
The people in charge of this type of composition and the training and direction of the dancers who perform it, are known as choreographers.
The stage attitude is the expressive content that the dancers embody during the dance and that they transmit to the public, and it is made up of several elements:
Dance is a form of human creation , as are music, letters or painting . In it the human body is taken as an instrument and to demonstrate, as in sport , the beautiful forms that underlie it or the harmonic movements that it can execute.
In addition, in many human societies, dance has a social function linked to the expression of the joy of living , courtship and desire. For this reason, it also fulfills an important daily function, although it does not take place in the same terms as on stage.
Ballet is called classical dance or academic dance, a form of dance that approximates the human body from the absolute control of its movements . It is linked to the "cultured" or elitist tradition of art and culture. It uses a staging, classical music and themes or stories central to the West and the world.
Contemporary dance is one of the modern forms of artistic dance , and it arises as a reaction to the classical rigidity of the Ballet. It uses body shapes that developed in the 20th and 21st centuries .
Formerly it was known as Modern Dance , although that term is in disuse. One of its main criticisms and virtues is that it suggests an air of "anything goes" in its forms , which can be borrowed from disciplines such as yoga, tribal dance or any other form of dance.
Dance can also figure among human sports, as in the case of rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating or synchronized swimming. In them, music is used to coordinate a group of athletes who move in a synchronized and / or showy way.
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