Dance is a form of art and human activity in which bodily movements are organized for expressive, aesthetic, social, or ceremonial purposes. Movements may be improvised or deliberately composed, performed individually or collectively, and accompanied by music, sound, or silence. Dance encompasses theatrical works presented to audiences as well as practices undertaken primarily for participants themselves. Its forms and meanings depend on the cultural settings in which it is created and experienced. (en.wikipedia.org)
Movement and composition
Dance can be described through interacting elements: body, space, time, dynamics, and relationships. The body supplies actions such as stepping, turning, jumping, bending, and gesturing. Space includes direction, level, pathway, shape, and the extent of movement. Time concerns duration, tempo, and rhythm, while dynamics describes qualities such as strong or light, sudden or sustained, and free or restrained. Relationships include those among performers and between performers, objects, and environments. These categories provide a vocabulary for analyzing movement without prescribing a single technique or style. (curriculum.gov.bc.ca)
Choreography is the selection, development, and arrangement of movement into a dance. Compositional devices include repetition, contrast, variation, and the return of a movement theme. A sequence may be organized around measured beats, bodily rhythms such as breathing, or changes in movement quality. These choices connect individual actions into larger structures and allow the same movement material to acquire different effects through changes in timing or arrangement. (pressbooks.pub)
Music and dance often develop together, but neither necessarily depends on the other. Dancers can follow, interpret, or depart from musical phrasing; some forms also produce their own audible rhythms through bodily action. In tap dance, footwork functions as percussion, making the performer both a dancer and a producer of sound. (en.wikipedia.org)
Functions and settings
A useful distinction separates theatrical dance, intended primarily for spectators, from participatory dance, undertaken principally for shared activity or personal expression. Theatrical dance may convey a narrative, interpret music, or present movement without a story. Costumes, scenery, and mime can contribute to its meaning. Participatory forms include folk dance, social dance, and partner dancing, in which interaction among participants is central. These categories describe purposes rather than absolute boundaries between genres. (en.wikipedia.org)
Dance also operates within ritual, religious observance, and communal celebrations. Its significance may involve more than the movements themselves: the occasion, participants, associated music, and methods of transmission can all matter. Flamenco, for example, combines singing, dancing, and instrumental performance and appears in festivals, ceremonies, and private celebrations. It is associated particularly with Andalusia and with communities including the Gitano, or Roma, whose participation has been important to its development. (ich.unesco.org)
Historical development and traditions
Dance history includes distinct but interconnected developments in court entertainment, community practice, and professional performance. European ballet developed from court spectacles into theatrical productions. Museum collections document its progression from seventeenth-century royal court dancing to Romantic, classical, and contemporary forms. In the Baroque court, dance could be integrated with drama, elaborate costumes, stage machinery, and music to create displays of political and cultural authority. (vam.ac.uk)
The twentieth century brought new approaches to concert performance. Modern dance developed alternative movement vocabularies and expressive practices; Martha Graham was one of its major pioneers and established a company and school. Other developments connected stage performance with research into community traditions. Katherine Dunham’s Caribbean fieldwork in the 1930s informed her choreography and helped introduce African and Caribbean movement into modern American dance. (loc.gov)
Several widely circulated forms emerged through cultural exchange. Tap developed in the United States through interaction between British and West African musical and stepping traditions, later developing close connections with jazz. Tango arose among urban communities in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, bringing together contributions from European immigrants, descendants of enslaved Africans, and locally established populations. Its tradition encompasses music, dance, and poetry, rather than movement alone. (loc.gov)
Transmission, education, and research
Dance knowledge is frequently transmitted through demonstration, observation, imitation, and repeated practice. Learning can take place within families and community groups as well as schools and professional institutions. Flamenco illustrates the importance of overlapping transmission networks: families, social groups, and dedicated clubs all participate in maintaining and disseminating its practices. (loc.gov)
Formal dance education includes performance, composition, and analysis. Research in anthropology and ethnography examines movement alongside its social circumstances. Dunham’s fieldwork combined observation with filming and movement analysis. Her surviving recordings also reveal documentary limitations: many are silent fragments focused on particular body parts rather than complete performances with their musical accompaniment. (curriculum.gov.bc.ca)
Documentation and cultural heritage
Because a performance unfolds through time, preserving dance requires complementary records. Dance notation encodes movement symbolically. Labanotation, introduced by Rudolf Laban in 1928, uses a vertical staff and symbols representing aspects such as body part, direction, level, and duration. Scores, films, photographs, and written descriptions provide different kinds of evidence for studying and reconstructing dances. (findingaids.loc.gov)
Dance is also recognized as intangible cultural heritage. UNESCO inscribed tango on its Representative List in 2009 and flamenco in 2010. These inscriptions concern living traditions maintained by communities, including their associated knowledge, music, occasions, and transmission practices—not simply fixed sequences of steps. (ich.unesco.org)