Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A History of Dancing From the Earliest Ages to Our Own Times
Rom the first formation of societies, says Jean Jacques Rousseau, Song and Dance, true children of Love and Leisure, became the amusement, or rather the occupation, of idle assemblies Of men and women.
Like Poetry and Music, to which it is closely allied, Dancing, properly so - called - the choregraphic art, that is to say - was probably unknown to the earliest ages of humanity. Savage man, wandering in forests, devouring the quivering ?esh of his spoils, can have known nothing of those rhythmic postures which reflect sweet and caressing sensations entirely alien to his moods. The nearest approach to such must have been the leaps and bounds, the incoherent gestures, by which he expressed the joys and furiae of his brutal life.
But when men began to form themselves into groups, this artless impulse became more ?exible it accepted rules and submitted to laws.
Dancing, a ?ower Of night, is said to have germinated under the skies Of the Pharaohs; tradition speaks of rounds, symbolic of sidereal motion, circling beneath the stars on the august soil of Egypt, mighty mother of the world. It manifested itself at first in sacred sciences, severe and hieratic; yet even then it babbled brokenly of joy and grief in the processions of Apis.
Later on, in the course of ages, it became interwoven with all the manifestations of popular life, re?ecting the passions Of man, and translating the most secret movements Of the soul into physical action. From the solemnity Of religious rites, from the fury of warfare, it passed to the gaiety Of pastoral sports, the dignity and grace Of polished society. It took on the splendour of social festivities, the caressing and voluptuous languors Of love, and even dolefully followed the funeral train.
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