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Dance is one of the most powerful artistic mediums to either engage in or witness. It never fails to elicit strong visceral level reactions, in some exuberance and freedom in others intimidation. From our earliest infancy our bodies reflexively express our emotions and instinctively respond to music. We are all masters of the ‘toddler dance’ and then somewhere along the way far too many of us let it get adulted out of us transforming potential dance opportunities into the stuff of nightmares rather than of dreams.
And what do we mean by ‘dance’? There are certainly a great many approaches, dialects, styles, sub-styles, technicalities, and potential definitions. If we strip it all down to the barest core essence, however, dance is the deliberate emotionally expressive movement of the body to music. All physical movement is emotionally expressive, that’s why we call it ‘body language’, but a key element of what makes dance so impactful is the conscious intention behind it coupled with the emotional power of music.
Dance can be done without music, though this is more the exception than the rule, but even in those instances there is still a cadence, phrasing, and underlying rhythmic pacing which is tied to the intentional expressiveness. Those underlying rhythms can even be improvised in the moment but…