Movement is innate to all human beings. Whether fully able or physically disabled, one moves. Walking to the store, blinking one’s eyes, reaching for a loved one’s hand; these are all movements. Movement is the foundation of dance which is an art form that encompasses many different styles and is in every culture here on earth. It is recreational, sacred, emotional. Dance is many different things to different people. Dance is using the body to express something or nothing. It is usually seen as entertainment, to be performed in venues such as theatres, concert halls and even someone’s back garden. Dance is an art form that links us all despite our differences.
Dance is a form of expression that has been around for ages. In the Old Testament, it is recorded that King David danced out of his clothes in celebration and praise to God.
Dance is also seen as an healing art. Throughout the ages and cultures, dance has been used in rituals as a sacred form to bring about emotional and even physical healing. Examples such as dances in Haitian voodoo used dancing to the beating of drums as a means for spiritual enlightenment. Dance was and still is fundamental to Far Eastern cultures in their spiritual and religious lives. They were trained to learn specific gestures, movements that correlated with stories that were apart of their culture. The western world also saw dance as instrumental in living; the Greeks saw all art as a way to please their gods. After the Middle Ages, dance was banned by the Roman Catholic Church and was no longer seen as a religious experience. The relationship between body and spirit seemed to no longer be recognized. The ones who initially saw dance as a means of healing, ones like witch doctors and shamans, recognized the relationship of mind-body-spirit. Now in modern times, dance is used in a psychotherapeutic setting as Dance Movement Therapy.
