danceWithin the context of many cultures, dance, a form of body language,
is a metaphor of sexual relations. Among the Lugbara tribe of Uganda, it
is possible to find courtship dances among the younger people. The dance
performances of the Temiar, a tribe located on the Malayan peninsula,
provide an opportunity for young people to flirt with each other, whereas
the African Azande beer dance functions to channel the forces of sex into
socially harmless patterns. Among the Melpa of the highlands of Papua,
New Guinea, the tribe’s morli dances are boisterous affairs that manifest
high sexual tensions along with sexually explicit performances. These
types of societies manifest non-verbal, sexual messages, operating to
release underlying social tensions and aggressive feelings. These dances
also synthesize body, thought, and feelings as they convey their non-
verbal messages. Moreover, dance is a way of arranging and categorizing
human experience; intends some purpose while revealing movements,
something aesthetic, a process, or a means of conceptualization.
Dance possesses the ability to transform a person from an inferior social
status to a higher one. This is especially evident in initiation rites among
some religions. Within the context of some indigenous religions, male and
female adolescents dance their initiations. For instance, the Venda of
southern Africa require young girls to dance in a circle, creating an
enclosed space symbolizing a womb. A young woman becomes a womb
in which a fetus, which is symbolized by the bass drum, is nourished by
the strenuous dancing that signifies sexual intercourse, with the semen
represented by the ashes of the fire. Among the Samburu of northern
Kenya, boys dance into adulthood by means of its circumcision dance.
In some contexts, dance is associated with violence, which tends to
make it frequently marginal and anomalous. The Swahili of east Africa
have a dance called beningoma that is a caricature of a military parade,
promoting masculine display and competition between rival dance groups
which sometimes overflows into outbreaks of violence. The energy and
violence associated with dance stands in contrast to everyday life, trans-
porting participants out of their structured environment and into a time-
less realm. By means of the ecstatic nature of dance, the dancers literally
stand outside of normal society and its social interaction.
Some religious groups, such as the Puritans of the Christian tradition,
prohibit dancing because they think that it represents the Devil’s handi-
work. Islam also forbids dancing, with the exception of the Sufi move-
ment and their whirling dances that transport dancers into ecstatic trance
states during which they can commune with God.
Further reading: Adams and Apostolus-Cappadona (1990); Hanna (1987);
Spencer (1985)