Prof. Runelo Piñero

Understanding Dance

History of DanceTrance Dance

( Bali, Indonesia )

Line Dance( Greeks and

Romans )

Dionysian Dance

( Greeks )

Prof. Runelo Piñero

The universal knowledge of the dance is a movement using the body as the significance. To comprehend a dance, one must gain background and understanding from simple to complex movement interpreting how and why the use of a body part and the whole body to a particular order hence, dance becomes a physical activity executed in a musical pattern and an accompaniment.

Prof. Runelo Piñero

Prof. Runelo Piñero

Beginnings and historical accounts

of DanceFrom the notes of Western civilization started among the Greeks and the Romans, as found in various archaeological and historical facts. The analysis of great philosophers of ancient times pointed out the significance of dance into the live of the people during this period. Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) left an elaborate literature of dance theory and criticism. They unanimously agreed in recognizing the powers of dance (bot positive and negative) in Greek society.

Prof. Runelo Piñero

Prof. Runelo Piñero

From among the Greeks, dancing was associated with Dionysian merrymaking, as evidence on vase paintings and stone carvings as presented by scientist of the time. Dionysus, the nature god, is identified with the wine. According to Greek mythological past, the infant Zeus, (first among Olympian gods) owed his very life in the cult dancing rites of Dionysus after he was hidden from his father trying to kill him. His cries were supposedly drowned by the clashing shields and wild dancing of the devotees.

Prof. Runelo Piñero

Prof. Runelo Piñero

The early Christians included in their teachings a love-hate relationship to the body, as they could not accommodate the dancing body to their worship. Christianized body dancing disapproved the example performed by Salome to the Golden Calf which for them was done wrongly at the wrong time and the wrong purpose.

Prof. Runelo Piñero

In the late 1685, a track against Mixt or Promiscuous

Dancing, the New England Puritan divine Increase Mather

permitted that “sober and grave Dancing of Men with Women, or

of Women with Women was allowed “in due reason, and with moderation”. But as for

lewd dancing of any kind , and especailly “Gynecandrical

dancing”, Mather had no doubt that this was literally the

creation of the Devil.Prof. Runelo Piñero

There was no record of the exact date and place, but it might have been in twelfth-century-Provence- home of troubadours and the birthplace of country love- that Western-style couple dancing began. A man and a woman might break from formation of a line or circle dance or from the stately procession of a court entertainment, to execute few steps in unison with perhaps a brief touching of the hands to help coordinate their movements, before rejoining the formation, to be followed by another couple and then another.

Prof. Runelo Piñero

This public dancing in couples were not only extraordinary in the Judeo-Christian tradition; it was something that would have been discouraged in many parts of the world as a violation of public decorum. Inevitably, there were successful attempts throughout Western Europe to ban couple dancing. From the renaissance onwards, dance in Judeo-Christian societies typically expressed secular rather than religious concerns. This is not to say that West’s long history of ambivalence about dancing body left no mark on the aesthetic of Western dance.

Prof. Runelo Piñero

Prof. Runelo Piñero

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