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  is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to
music,[1] used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or
performance setting.

Dance may also be regarded as a form of nonverbal communication between humans, and is also
performed by other animals (bee dance, patterns of behaviour such as a mating dance).
Gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are sports that incorporate dance, while
martial arts kata are often compared to dances. Motion in ordinarily inanimate objects may also
be described as dances (O




O

).

Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and
moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to virtuoso
techniques such as ballet. Dance can be participatory, social or performed for an audience. It can
also be ceremonial, competitive or erotic. Dance movements may be without significance in
themselves, such as in ballet or European folk dance, or have a gestural vocabulary/symbolic
system as in many Asian dances. Dance can embody or express ideas, emotions or tell a story.

Dancing has evolved many styles. Breakdancing and Krumping are related to the hip hop culture.
African dance is interpretive. Ballet, Ballroom, Waltz, and Tango are classical styles of dance
while Square and the Electric Slide are forms of step dances.

Every dance, no matter what style, has something in common. It not only involves flexibility and
body movement, but also physics. If the proper physics is not taken into consideration, injuries
may occur.

Choreography is the art of creating dances. The person who creates (i.e., choreographs) a dance
is known as the choreographer.





Dance does not often leave behind clearly identifiable physical artifacts that last over millennia,
such as stone tools, hunting implements or cave paintings. It is not possible to say when dance
became part of human culture. Dance has certainly been an important part of ceremony, rituals,
celebrations and entertainment since before the birth of the earliest human civilizations.
Archaeology delivers traces of dance from prehistoric times such as the 9,000 year old
Bhimbetka rock shelters paintings in India and Egyptian tomb paintings depicting dancing
figures from circa 3300 BC.

One of the earliest structured uses of dances may have been in the performance and in the telling
of myths. It was also sometimes used to show feelings for one of the opposite gender. It is also
linked to the origin of "love making." Before the production of written languages, dance was one
of the methods of passing these stories down from generation to generation.[1]

Another early use of dance may have been as a precursor to ecstatic trance states in healing
rituals. Dance is still used for this purpose by many cultures from the Brazilian rainforest to the
Kalahari Desert.[2]

Sri Lankan dances goes back to the mythological times of aboriginal yingyang twins and
"yakkas" (devils). According to a Sinhalese legend, Kandyan dances originate, 2500 years ago,
from a magic ritual that broke the spell on a bewitched king. Many contemporary dance forms
can be traced back to historical, traditional, ceremonial, and ethnic dances.

An early manuscript describing dance is the Natya Shastra on which is based on the @ 

interpretation of classical Indian dance (e.g. Bharathanatyam).

The ancient chronicle, the Sinhalese (Sri Lankans), the Mahavamsa states that when King Vijaya
landed in Sri Lanka in 543 BCE he heard sounds of music and dancing from a wedding
ceremony. Origins of the Dances of Sri Lanka are dated back to the aboriginal tribes. The
Classical dances of Sri Lanka (Kandyan Dances) feature a highly developed system of tala
(rhythm), provided by cymbals called thalampataa.

In European culture, one of the earliest records of dancing is by Homer, whose "Iliad"; describes
chorea ( 

). The early Greeks made the art of dancing into a system, expressive of all the
different passions. For example, the dance of the Furies, so represented, would create complete
terror among those who witnessed them. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, ranked dancing with
poetry, and said that certain dancers, with rhythm applied to gesture, could express manners,
passions, and actions. The most eminent Greek sculptors studied the attitude of the dancers for
their art of imitating the passions.

 

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By the 18th century ballet had migrated from the royal court to the Paris Opera, and the director
Lully 'preserved the ballet du cour's basic concept of a composite form, in which the dance was
an essential and important element.' During this century the ballet was to develop throughout
Europe, from a courtly arrangement of moving images used as part of a larger spectacle, to a
performance art in its own right, the ballet d'action. This new form swept away much of the
artificiality of the court dance and strove towards 'the concept that art should aspire to imitate
nature'. This ultimately resulted in costuming and choreography that was much more liberating
to the dancer, and conducive to a fuller use of the expressive capacity of the body. It also opened
the door to pointework, for this acceptance of more naturalistic costuming allowed the
development of the heel-less shoe, which led to the dancer being able to make more use of the
rise onto demi-pointe.
The era of Romanticism in the early 19th century, with ballets that focused more on the
emotions, the fantasy and the spiritual worlds, heralded the beginning of true pointe-work. Now,
on her toes, the deified ballerina (embodied in this period by the legendary ballerina Marie
Taglioni) seemed to magically skim the surface of the stage, an ethereal being never quite
touching the ground. It was during this period that the ascending star of the ballerina quite
eclipsed the presence of the poor male dancer, who was in many cases reduced to the status of a
moving statue, present only in order to lift the ballerina. This sad state was really only redressed
by the rise of the male ballet star Nijinsky, with the Ballets Russes, in the early 20th century.
Ballet as we know it had well and truly evolved by this time, with all the familiar conventions of
costume, choreographic form, plot, pomp, and circumstance firmly fixed in place.

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Since the Ballets Russes began revolutionising ballet in the early 20th century, there have been
continued attempts to break the mold of classical ballet. Currently the artistic scope of ballet
technique (and its accompanying music, jumper, and multimedia) is more all-encompassing than
ever. The boundaries that classify a work of classical ballet are constantly being stretched,
muddied and blurred until perhaps all that remains today are traces of technique idioms such as
'turn-out'.

It was during the explosion of new thinking and exploration in the early 20th century that dance
artists began to appreciate the qualities of the individual, the necessities of ritual and religion, the
primitive, the expressive and the emotional. In this atmosphere modern dance began an
explosion of growth. There was suddenly a new freedom in what was considered acceptable,
what was considered art, and what people wanted to create. All kinds of other things were
suddenly valued as much as, or beyond, the costumes and tricks of the ballet.

Most of the early 20th century modern choreographers and dancers saw ballet in the most
negative light. Isadora Duncan thought it most ugly, nothing more than meaningless gymnastics.
Martha Graham saw it as European and Imperialistic, having nothing to do with the modern
American people. Merce Cunningham, while using some of the foundations of the ballet
technique in his teaching, approached choreography and performance from a totally radical
standpoint compared to the traditional balletic format.

The 20th century was indeed a period of breaking away from everything that ballet stood for. It
was a time of unprecedented creative growth, for dancers and choreographers. It was also a time
of shock, surprise and broadening of minds for the public, in terms of their definitions of what
dance was. It was a revolution in the truest sense.

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After the explosion of modern dance in the early 20th century, the 1960s saw the growth of
postmodernism. Postmodernism veered towards simplicity, the beauty of small things, the beauty
of untrained body, and unsophisticated movement. The famous 'No' manifesto rejecting all
costumes, stories and outer trappings in favour of raw and unpolished movement was perhaps the
extreme of this wave of thinking. Unfortunately lack of costumes, stories and outer trappings do
not make a good dance show, and it was not long before sets, décor and shock value re-entered
the vocabulary of modern choreographers.

By the 1980s dance had come full circle and modern dance (or, by this time, 'contemporary
dance') was clearly still a highly technical and political vehicle for many practitioners. Existing
alongside classical ballet, the two art-forms were by now living peacefully next door to one
another with little of the rivalry and antipathy of previous eras. In a cleverly designed comment
on this ongoing rivalry the brilliant collaboration of Twyla Tharp (one of the 20th Century's
cutting edge Dance avant-gardist/contemporary) and Ballet dance was ultimately achieved. The
present time sees us still in the very competitive artistic atmosphere where choreographers
compete to produce the most shocking work, however, there are still glimpses of beauty to be
had, and much incredible dancing in an age where dance technique has progressed further in
expertise, strength and flexibility than ever before in history.

Exciting development of contemporary dance also found in the east in countries such as Hong
Kong, Singapore and Japan.

At the same time, mass culture experienced expansion of street dance. In 1974, famous group
Jackson 5 performed on television a dance called º
O (choreographed by postmodern[3] artist
Michael Jackson). This event, and later Soul Train performances by black dancers ignited street
culture revolution, which later formed break dancing rocks dance. For the emergence of 20th
century modern dance see also: Mary Wigman, Gret Palucca, Harald Kreutzberg, Yvonne
Georgi, and Isadora Duncan.

Hip-hop dance started when Clive Campbell, aka Kool DJ Herc and the father of hip-hop, came
to New York from Jamaica in 1967. Toting the seeds of reggae from his homeland, he is credited
with being the first DJ to use two turntables and identical copies of the same record to create his
jams. But it was his extension of the breaks in these songs²the musical section where the
percussive beats were most aggressive²that allowed him to create and name a culture of break
boys and break girls who laid it down when the breaks came up. Briefly termed b-boys and b-
girls, these dancers founded breakdancing, which is now a cornerstone of hip-hop dance.[4]