History of Dance: A Long Standing Art Form in a Nutshell

With a title like this, where do I even start? Researching the history of where dance began and how we began communicating about it as a more sophisticated art form reaffirmed my personal beliefs that dance is and always has been an innate part of human beings. In my research, I also discussed dance's broad and large history with BYU Professor Graham Brown, a Dance Department Faculty member who teaches the classes Dance History and Reviewing Current Trends in Dance. Graham put it very simply, "There's really no beginning of dance. People have been doing it since the start of time. But it has evolved and become a more legitimate, respected, and sophisticated art form that we can now academically analyze and discuss."

Despite this broad span of history, let's still try to pinpoint where dance has rooted its origins. Anciently, dance forms were part of cultural traditions around the world. Egyptian priests and priestesses were accompanied by harps and pipes as they would dance in the ancient temples. Their movements were used to to tell the story of the gods or to represent cosmic patterns in the heavens. Grecian dances to deities became a central part to the beginnings of Greek theatre, which we have already studied thoroughly in our class. Religious dances in the Hindu/Indian culture date back to the 1st century BC but are still viewed today in the form of more modernized Bharata Nhatyam dance.

So we can see, as early as people began learning to form societies and civilizations, dance was included as part of the way they communicated and identified a spiritual sense of belonging. Several centuries later, ballet, the next level of sophisticating dance, was born in Italy (not France, the common misconception). But it did quickly migrate to the royal courts of France as King Louis XIV took a love for dance and began instituting ballet academies in his country.

Ballet was a reigning art form for centuries to follow as it taught discipline, skill, and precision. Finally, in the 20th century, approximately around the mid 1930's-1940's, modern dance evolved in America. This was one of the first times that people really started communicating about why they danced, and the needs that dance should fulfill. As America was suffering from the Great Depression and a world war, people had more emotional needs searching for an outlet. People began communicating a shift from the tutus and tiaras of ballet, to more grounded and realistic modern dance.

With the main dance genres now born, with many break-off genres throughout the years, people were able to start comparing and contrasting the different forms. Dancers and writers alike began reviewing and critiquing choreography - evaluating whether it fulfilled its purpose, what kind of response it elicited from viewers, and if it was an effective piece of art or not. From here, dance has exploded - reaching its fingers into all sorts of cross-genres, whether it be writing, technology, or science. Dance is everywhere, and as Graham stated, has been since the beginning of time.