Meddle Your Moves

Dance may be regarded as a form of nonverbal communication between humans, which is performed by animals too. Martial Arts, Gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are sports that incorporate dance. Motion in ordinarily inanimate objects may also be described as dance.

In Hindu mythology, dance is believed to have been conceived by Brahma. The best-known of Hindu deities-Shiva, Kali and Krishna-are typically represented dancing. Shiva's cosmic dance tandav, Kali's dance of creation and destruction and Krishna's dance Raslila-are popular motifs. In ancient India, dance was usually a functional activity dedicated to worship. Even in modern India, deities are invoked through religious folk dance forms from ancient times.

Dance therapy is the psycho therapeutic use of movement to support intellectual,emotional & motor functions of the body. As form of expressive therapy dance has been used therapeutically for thousands of years. It has been used as a healing ritual in the influence of fertility, birth, sickness, and death. The science came later to ensure that the observation is correct.

Fascinated with the strong link between music, movement and emotion was moved to see, a robust rugby player, wept while listening to a symphony. But this defence, it appeared, only worked against words not against music or movement. I was unable to suppress my tearful response to the final scene in a dance about dementia. Was it possible that music, movement and emotion were closely entwined in the neural network of our brains?

 The evolution of movement throughout the animal kingdom, the swarming of bees, the migrating flocks of swallows and the communication of whales as it moved though the oceans. Not only was group movement coordinated by sound but it was also governed by emotion and the drive to survive. To dance requires the same intertwining of the neural processes of perception, movement and emotion that a bird uses to migrate by the visual guidance of stars and the auditory calls of the flock.

Entrainment of rhythm is not new to us, it is what we experience when an audience is clapping randomly and eventually starts to clap in unison. We are not surprised when our body rhythms match themselves to day length and we suffer the penalty when we cross too many time zones. We know that soldiers have to break rhythm when crossing a bridge or the resonance set up in the bridge may destroy it. An acoustic system absorbs energy if it is forced or driven at a frequency that matches its own frequency of vibration, the opera singer hits top C and the wine glass shatters.

By exploring the neuron-scientific hypotheses of movement in the context of dance, the arts and the natural sciences can meet and support each other.