World Dance Cultures: From Ritual to Spectacle

World Dance Cultures, investigates the numerous and essential roles that dance plays in cultures throughout the globe. A wide variety of dance forms and their respective cultures are examined in terms of how history, politics, economics, societal values, belief systems, and other cultural components have impacted the development of their style and technique, and in turn, how the dance not only reflects the culture, but influences its inevitable development.

World Dance Cultures is designed to be a valuable introductory teaching tool for the student, as well as for the instructor. A syllabus can be easily crafted by following its regionally organized chapters and thematic sub-chapters, which delve into various topics such aspurification, ancestor worship,  and funeral rites. Through text, maps, photographs, and drawings, the material is presented in an accessible way that allows the student to acquire a comprehensive view of the dance - past and present - and the cultures from which it grew.

Each chapter has an introduction highlighting the material within, and concludes with a summary and list of key points, discussion questions, and suggestions for further readings and online resources. Other features within the chapters include ’case studies’ in which scholars, historians and practitioners juxtapose past attitudes toward the culture with those of the present. As well as foregrounding the history of a form within the culture, each sub-chapter addresses current trends and issues, further contextualizing and identifying new directions in the dance form.

Themes running throughout these chapters include:

• The use of dance in sacred worship, healing, and purification rituals in order to keep societies in a balanced state. Dance and music as the universal gateway to spiritual trance.

• The importance of dance in fertility rituals and festivals honoring and appeasing women in patriarchal societies.

• The evolution of dances from a state of marginalization to commercialization, or from sacred to secular.

• How the hegemonic effects of religion, colonialism, slavery, politics, war, and class structure have impacted the dances of these diverse cultures, and how the dances have subsequently migrated, developed, and undergone change.

Key objectives include:

• Identifying thethe organizing system of beliefs and values that shapes the dance of each culture

• Distinguishing how outside forces, including urbanization, have had debilitating effects upon various forms of dance, rendering them vulnerable and fragile

• Learning how dance can be a repository of a culture’s mythology, in both literate and non-literate societies

• Recognizing the vital purpose of dance in certain societies as being an act of necessity, not entertainment

• Cultivating a student’s awareness of how syncretic influences affect dance, resulting in the evolution and hybridization of new contemporary forms practiced today