By Christina Lavers
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
“To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.” ~ Hopi Indian saying
There is not one culture on Earth that does not have a long tradition of dance. This suggests that dancing, the act of moving in time to music, is central to the experience of being human. It is such a key form of cultural expression that it has been called the “universal language”. Every culture in the world has a customary style of dance that communicates aspects of the group’s identity, creativity, rituals, history and meaning. In fact, it has even been suggested that a person could learn as much, if not more, about another culture through participating in their dance as they could reading an anthropological paper.
A recent study led by researcher Bronwyn Tarr from Oxford University produced further evidence that demonstrates that dancing plays a role in supporting and strengthening social cohesion. Tarr, a dancer and experimental psychologist, postulated that dance, being essentially cooperative in nature, could have played a role in our evolution by encouraging social bonds and other pro-social behaviour between community members.
