The Dance

How did dancing begin?

I beleive that dancing began when a more speculative person observed another individual walking or moving. At some point in the person’s observations of the other’s walk, there occurred a particular movement which caught the attention of the more speculative observer. This attention-grabbing movement could have been anything from a slight gesture to extreme gesticulation, but it had to be so novel that the observer or observers attempted to mimic the movement they had observed.

As other people attempted this movement, their differentiations and interpretations created new novelties that others attempted to mimic. Before long it began to occur to those who tried to mimic this novel movement and to those who watched the attempts at mimicking and aping the movement that there were those who were better at recreating the movement than others. Soon both subjective and objective opinions began to emerge as to whom best copied the movement.

It quickly became evident to all that particular types of movers were better than others. Particular groups of movers and observers arose and began to openly identify and make firm declarations about what constituted best performed movement or dance and what particular interpretation of the dance movement was best. Those groups which felt unduly fringed by their own performances and interpretations of the dance began to create their own separate groups totally devoted to a specific way of performing the dance.