... To the secular opponents of public dancing, it is always a noxious source of disorder and, in New Yorks case, noise. But hardly anyone talks about what is lost when the music stops and the traditional venues close. Facing what he saw as an epidemic of melancholy, or what we would now call depression, the 17th-century English writer Robert Burton placed much of the blame on the Calvinist hostility to dancing, singing, masking, mumming and stage plays. In fact, in some cultures, ecstatic dance has been routinely employed as a cure for emotional disorders. Banning dancing may not cause depression, but it removes an ancient cure for it.
The need for public, celebratory dance seems to be hardwired into us. Rock art from around the world depicts stick figures dancing in lines and circles at least as far back as 10,000 years ago. According to some anthropologists, dance helped bond prehistoric people together in the large groups that were necessary for collective defense against marauding predators, both animals and human. While language also serves to forge community, it doesnt come close to possessing the emotional urgency of dance. Without dance, we risk loneliness and anomie. Dancing to music is not only mood-lifting and community-building; its also a uniquely human capability. No other animals, not even chimpanzees, can keep together in time to music. Yes, we can live without it, as most of us do most of the time, but why not reclaim our distinctively human heritage as creatures who can generate our own communal pleasures out of music and dance? This is why New Yorkers as well as all Americans faced with anti-dance restrictions should stand up and take action; and the best way to do so is by high stepping into the streets. Barbara Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Corporation. -- Carol Ruth Shepherd Arborlaw PLC Ann Arbor MI USA 734 668 4646 v 734 786 1241 f http://arborlaw.com intellectual assets • internet • infringement • incorporation _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
