American Dance Study Guide
Lesson 1 Study Guide
1.1 Dancing: Chapter 1: The Power of Dance:
This chapter takes a broad look at the relationship between human movement, framed as dance, and important identities such as religion, ethnicity, gender, and social status. While not specifically focused on issues of identity in America, this chapter will provide an important foundation in understanding the broader scope of how dance can be seen as a representation of cultural values, which will underlie the remainder of our coursework.
1.1.1 Before starting this chapter it might be useful for you to write out your definition of dance. Let’s pretend for a moment that aliens landed on earth looking for intelligent life. Obviously they ended up at your apartment and asked you all sorts of questions. One of which is: “What is dance?” What would you say?
On a macro-level, dance provides a medium through which people are able to represent and express particular emotions or experiences. It also provides opportunities for people to engage in a collective activity, creating social connectivity.
Starting before we are even born, we experience life through moving our bodies. From small movements like breathing and blinking to big movements like running and jumping, every human being has the impulse to move.
1.1.2 “The impulse to move is the…raw material that cultures shape into evocative sequences of physical activity that we call dance.” List three of the six examples
a.courting and courtly dances
b.wedding dances and funeral dances
c.dances that arouse, amuse, or uplift onlookers
1.1.3 “Dance Anthropology views dance in its…social and cultural contexts.”
1.1.4 “Encoded in the form (the shapes and colors of the bodies, costumes, and props, the sound and rhythm of the music, etc.),technique (the methods by which dancers and musicians learn the dance), and structure (how the components of the dance are organized into a larger whole) of every dance are meanings and
1.1 Dancing: Chapter 1: The Power of Dance:
This chapter takes a broad look at the relationship between human movement, framed as dance, and important identities such as religion, ethnicity, gender, and social status. While not specifically focused on issues of identity in America, this chapter will provide an important foundation in understanding the broader scope of how dance can be seen as a representation of cultural values, which will underlie the remainder of our coursework.
1.1.1 Before starting this chapter it might be useful for you to write out your definition of dance. Let’s pretend for a moment that aliens landed on earth looking for intelligent life. Obviously they ended up at your apartment and asked you all sorts of questions. One of which is: “What is dance?” What would you say?
On a macro-level, dance provides a medium through which people are able to represent and express particular emotions or experiences. It also provides opportunities for people to engage in a collective activity, creating social connectivity.
Starting before we are even born, we experience life through moving our bodies. From small movements like breathing and blinking to big movements like running and jumping, every human being has the impulse to move.
1.1.2 “The impulse to move is the…raw material that cultures shape into evocative sequences of physical activity that we call dance.” List three of the six examples
a.courting and courtly dances
b.wedding dances and funeral dances
c.dances that arouse, amuse, or uplift onlookers
1.1.3 “Dance Anthropology views dance in its…social and cultural contexts.”
1.1.4 “Encoded in the form (the shapes and colors of the bodies, costumes, and props, the sound and rhythm of the music, etc.),technique (the methods by which dancers and musicians learn the dance), and structure (how the components of the dance are organized into a larger whole) of every dance are meanings and