We Dance, Therefore We Are

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon.”
Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

Not everyone can do it (well), but everyone probably does it at some point; for there may not be a more joyous activity than moving to the beat of meaningful music—even if it’s in the privacy of your own home, alone. But why, exactly, do we dance?

Science Of Salsa

By primate standards, humans are born very early, at around nine months, and for us to arrive at the same developmental stage as say, our chimpanzee cousins, gestation would need to continue for well over double that time. Acclaimed anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of Mothers and Others, believes the helpless state in which babies enter the world, evolutionarily, meant the need to attract the attention of a caregiver in order to secure protection. They primarily did this through ‘mirroring’ movement.

“More abundant in the human brain than any other mammalian brain, mirror neurons fire when a person notices movement,” writes philosopher and dancer Kimerer LaMothe, author of Why We Dance: A Philosophy of Bodily Becoming, for Aeon. “… In this way, humans can learn to recreate the movements of others—not only humans, but also trees and giraffes, predators and prey, fire, rivers, and the sun.”

These mirror neurons, argues neuroscientist VS Ramachandran in his tome The Tell-Tale Brain, represent “the evolutionary key to our attainment of full-fledged culture” meaning humans may “adopt each other’s point of view and empathize with one another”.

In his book, I of the Vortex, neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás notes that physical movement is essential for brain-building. Movements engraved within our grey matter force it to engage with both the physicality and the inspired emotional response which combine to create cranial ‘avenues’ through which future such energies may navigate.

“The neural processes underlying that which we call creativity have nothing to do with rationality,” writes Llinás. “That is to say, if we look at how the brain generates creativity, we will see that it is not a rational process at all; creativity is not born out of reasoning.”

However, the reason for our intrinsic urge to jive (admittedly, with massively varying levels of flair) to a rhythmic beat is trickier to rationalise. Humans are far from the only species who feel the need to groove—birds-of-paradise, cockatoos, monkeys and sea lions, for instance, are all known to perform ritualised movements that are very difficult to differentiate from what we would term ‘dancing’. And it’s not always as straightforward as straight-up imitation.

In the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin theorised that “the perception, if not enjoyment, of musical cadences and of rhythm is probably common to all animals and no doubt depends on the common physiological nature of their nervous systems.”

One hundred and fifty years later, his argument still holds water. It may well be that certain creature’s connection to rhythm is as reflexive as taking breath. Some primates have even been seen drumming on logs, and other studies have found chimpanzees to be able to follow the rhythm of a human’s tapping finger. 

But no other creature can devise as complex—or comical—dancing routines as us, as noted by BBC Earth writer Melissa Hogenboom: “There may not be a single catch-all explanation for animals dancing. Instead, the reasons why animals dance may be as diverse as the dances we humans have devised.”

There is some science behind dancing that could not be clearer, however: few other forms of exercise reap such double barrel health benefits for both the body, and the brain.

Music For Medicine, High Five!

Dancing is an obvious cardiovascular workout that exercises the heart and the lungs while strengthening muscles and bones as well as bettering coordination and increasing flexibility.

“People think, ‘I’m not exercising, I’m dancing,’” exercise physiologist Fabio Comana of the National Academy of Sports Medicine tells HuffPost. “It’s just as good as a cardio class.”

It also offers a mental health boost and fends off cognitive decline associated with ageing. The New England Journal of Medicine reports regular dancing to be associated with as much as a 76 percent reduction in dementia risk—findings backed up by numerous similar studies around the world.

Among the most promising—and fascinating—of practices is 5Rhythms, an almost spiritual take on the age-old artform of dance. Created by the late US dancer, director, yogi and author, Gabrielle Roth, 5Rhythms is billed as a ‘dance and movement meditation practice’. The ‘five rhythms’ are considered five ‘states of being’, comprising:

• Flowing: being fluid in our body to create a ‘pipeline to our inner truth’
• Staccato: concerns the power of masculine energy, the ‘warrior rhythm’, that promotes connection with the world and the ‘gateway to the heart
• Chaos: the rhythm of letting go, of freeing our bodies to the mercy of the beat. Chaos is ‘the gateway to the big mind’
• Lyrical: serves to ease us out of Chaos, an ‘emotional and spiritual dancing rebirth’ that teaches us to break from self-destructive behaviours
• Stillness: moving in slow-motion, this is the vehicle to the final destination of the dance, inspired by Tai Chi, and culminating in a sitting meditation

Participants may interpret each ‘rhythm’ as they please, in order to experience healing through “a new sense of freedom and possibility”, creatively expressing everything from aggressiveness to vulnerability.

“I’ve seen dancers take off their shirts and dance hungrily at their images in the studios’ mirrors,” notes Henry Alford in his book, And Then We Danced: A Voyage into the Groove. “… I tend to bust out a vaulting or helix-style move… Or I go all slo-mo…”

The author reveals a conversation with a fellow 5Rhythms participant, a university academic, who brings a new problem “to dance” to class each week, while another is prone to lying on the floor, sobbing, while “trying to dance through something”.

The entire 5Rhythms routine, known as a ‘wave’, typically takes around an hour to dance, and has become an international phenomenon, with classes here in Auckland, Wellington and Palmerston North (5rhythms.co.nz). Any music may be used, and, says Wellington-based teacher Alex Rodriguez, it is this “that provides the journey people respond to” in order to “follow their own dance through the wave”.

Fellow teacher Sacha Paddy says that she “fell in love with the freedom” 5Rhthms dancing, and its potential “to guide me through my life”.

As noted by Kimerer LaMothe, “to dance is human”, and, from the perspective of bodily becoming, “humans can’t not dance”.

Groovin’ Around the Globe

• Dancing precedes written language, forming part of ancient oral story telling
• The oldest known proof of dance comes courtesy of 9,000-year-old cave paintings in India
• The earliest choreographed dance was likely created by the Ancient Egyptians for both entertainment and religious rituals
• Dancing was an important part of Ancient Greek and Roman celebrations
• Some classical and early Christian civilisations considered dancing a sin
• Much modern dance can trace its roots to the Renaissance
• La Volta—Italian for ‘the turn’—was established in the late 16th century and seen as scandalous as it involved close bodily contact between participants, rather than the traditional ‘arm’s length’ gap
• In the early 1800s the Waltz arrived in high-society Britain (from Austria), the intimate, almost cheek-to-cheek public embrace outraging many

• A group of working-class women dancing a quadrille kicked their legs in the air in an 1820s Parisian club and the cancan was born
• Fusing New World, African and classical European dancing first to the rhythms of harps and violins, and later to the accordion, the tango arose from the slums of Argentina towards the end of the 19th century
• Inspired by the rise of jazz in the Roaring Twenties, women found a way to dance without a partner—it was called the Charleston
• Based on African-American dance, the jitterbug made its way to Europe thanks to USA soldiers during the second world war
• Thanks to a TV performance by Chubby Checker, the twist became a worldwide sensation and the signature move the of the Swinging Sixties