[Tango-L] NYT: Dance, Dance, Revolution? (2 of 2)

[Carol Shepherd]

...

To the secular opponents of public dancing, it is always a noxious
source of disorder and, in New York’s 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 doesn’t 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; it’s
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.

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Carol Ruth Shepherd
Arborlaw PLC
Ann Arbor MI USA
734 668 4646 v  734 786 1241 f
http://arborlaw.com

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