About
Just as with the visual arts, dance is movement that can take place in the physicalization of steps strung together, or it can also take place in the conceptual elements. Dance can be planned or spontaneous. It can be rhythmic movement complemented by music or it can be performed with the absence of sound.
Dance is an event that takes place in the effort to communicate, display, perform, or react to experiences around us. Rather than forming a language of movement, dance is a form of communication. It is a platform for discovering and sharing experiences and feelings larger or more abstract than those satisfied with words. A language implies that there is a means of translation or the ability to swap out one definition for another. Dance is not innately interchangeable with other art forms nor even with different forms within itself. Therefore, dance has the power of communication with others, oneself, or a higher power in the effort to reflect, express, experience, or transcend by means of expression. This power of communication is only second to the power that people give it. This power leads to the structures around dance and the decisions of who gets to perform or experience dance to be misconstrued. This exclusivity leads to the definition of dance being shortened by the restrictive boundaries limiting the definition of what a dancer is and influencing the cryptic definition of what dance is. Thankfully, as itself, dance is a category that describes a range of human actions and expressions. Only history and humanity have built dance up to be an entity deserving of an apropo definition that frankly leads to exclusivity and deification for something not alive.
I believe dance does not have to be constrained by a definition, but can expand into an experience felt when dancing. It is not defined solely by technical steps, or even social dance styles. Dance is a response to the need to physicalize ideas and emotions, while also being a vehicle that can pose a question entirely on its own. This need displays itself in the physicality of what one might call human gestures such as walking or jumping, but can also manifests in more complex movement of the body attributed to the codified techniques and genres of dance. Dance presents itself in natural, human movement and more technical. The intentions behind the use of the movement separates it from the mundane and categorizes it as a unique art form in and of itself.