Dancing. a form of exercise or amusement in which one or more persons make a series of more or less graceful movements with measured steps in accord with music. In its earliest forms among simple races it is a mode of outward expression for strong emotions of joy and sorrow, love and rage, and even for the most solemn and impassioned religious feelings; in more civilised strata of human society it becomes a mere frivolous amusement with no high signification whatever. Dancing corresponds to a universal primitive instinct in man.
It is still practised by the South Sea Islanders, the forest Indians of Brazil, the Zulus, the negroes of Central Africa, and the native Australians, exactly as it was in the earlier stages of every civilised modern race. Many of the rude courting dances of modern savages, like the native Australian corro-boree, are themselves refinements of more ancient dances, in the survivals of which we can guess at their original grossness and obscenity. Ferocious war-dances were constantly practised by savage warriors, as the North American Indian braves, who worked themselves up into frantic mechanical intoxication capable of carrying them irresistibly on to victory. The Zulu war-dance is still a noble exercise for warriors, like the Pyrrhic dance of the ancient Spartans; and the dancing and spinning dervishes in the East, who work themselves into spasms of physical excitement, are still highly esteemed for devoutness and piety. Into savage dancing, moreover, the idea of magic always enters. Thus the Mandan Indians dance buffalo to bring game when supplies of food are low, the rain-doctors of Central Africa dance mystic dances to bring down rain, and the wives of Gold Coast negroes dance a battle-dance to give their absent husbands courage in the battle. Everywhere in ancient religions is dancing one of the chief acts of worship. Religious processions went with song and dance to the Egyptian temples; the Cretan chorus, moving in measured pace, sang hymns to the Greek god, Apollo; and one of the Muses (Terpsichore), themselves daughters of Zeus, was the especial patroness of the art. The Phrygian Corybantes danced in honour of Rhea to drum and cymbal; at Rome, during the yearly festival of Mars, the Salian priests sang and danced, beating their shields; among the ancient Jews, Miriam danced to a song of triumph—itself an act of worship, and David danced in procession before the Ark of God. A survival of religious dancing is still seen even within the pale of Christendom, where during the Corpus Christi Octave a ballet is danced every evening before the high altar of Seville Cathedral, by boys from twelve to seventeen years of age, in plumed hats and the dress of pages of Philip III.'s time.
Dancing and imitative acting in the lower stages of civilisation are identical, and in the sacred dances of ancient Greece we may trace the whole dramatic art of the modern world. Aristotle ranked dancing with poetry, and Pindar applies the name of the dancer even to Apollo. The dancing-master in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme asserts that the destinies of the nations depend on the science of dancing; and Lucian, in a well-known dialogue, proves that the art is superior to tragedy, and coeval with the world itself. Sir John Davies, in his long poem, the Orchestra, illustrates the origin and importance of dancing, tracing in it all the motions of nature:
For what are breath, speech, echoes, music, winds,
But dancings of the ayre in sundry kinds.
The Spartans practised dancing as a gymnastic exercise, and made it compulsory upon all children from the age of five. Cicero says, 'No one dances sober unless he chances to be mad;' and indeed sedate Romans in general considered it disgraceful for a free citizen to dance, except in connection with religious ceremonies, but willingly enough witnessed the performances of professional dancers, like the Almé of modern Egypt, and the Bayaderes or Nautch girls of India. The early Christians practised choral dances, which came into discredit with the love-feasts or Agape. St Augustine says, 'it is better to dig than to dance,' and many of the Fathers condemned the practice as vigorously as our Puritan ancestors, who saw deadly sin in 'promiscuous dancing.' St Chrysostom says dancing came first from the devil, and Father Mariana tells us the famous saraband worked more mischief than the plague. The fandango was hotly condemned by the clergy, but when danced before the Sacred College, who wished to see it before finally prohibiting it, so charmed the grave judges that they gave it their unanimous approval. Many of the medieval dances were solemn and stately in character, like the dances basses, which were danced to psalm-tunes at the court of Charles IX. of France; while it was not uncommon to see the princes of the church themselves treading a measure, and it is said the whole august Council of Trent danced at a ball given in 1562 to King Philip II. of Spain. The more lively galliarde and volta were introduced into France from Italy by Catharine de' Medici, but it was not till the reign of Louis XIV., himself an enthusiastic dancer and performer in the court ballets until cured by some verses about Nero in Racine's Britannicus, that dancing reached its height in France. A Royal Academy of Dancing was founded in 1662, at the head of which was the famous Beauchamps, from whom the king took a dancing lesson every day for twenty years. Later great dancing-masters in France were Pécour, Marcel, and Noverre. Among dances that successively were paramount in society in France were the graceful minuet, the favourite for a century; the quadrille or contre-danse, often connected erroneously with the English country-dance; the Écossaise, first introduced in 1760; the galop, a death-blow to the 'poetry of motion,' introduced from Germany; the cotillon, fashionable under Charles X.; the polka, first danced at the Odéon in 1840 by a dancing-master from Prague; the polka tremblante, or schottisch, also of Bohemian origin, first brought out in Paris in 1844; the lancers, introduced by Laborde in 1836; and the waltz, originally Bavarian, and which, now considerably modified from its original form, promises to maintain its supremacy. The French provide the world with fashions, and society everywhere in Europe has followed their lead. The people, however, have preserved their own old national dances, and these are still danced in every corner of Europe, stamped everywhere with as distinct an impress of nationality as the grave Basque mutchiko, or the cachucha, the fandango and bolero of southern Spain. Characteristic again of particular races or merely of classes of people are such forms of the dance as the Scotch reel, Highland-fling and strathspey, the Irish jig, nigger break-downs, sailors' hornpipes, step-dances, the can-can, morris-dances, and the like. Skirt-dancing became popular about 1891; and between that date and 1898 the American dancer Loie Fuller, by means of voluminous draperies deftly managed and skilfully illumined, revealed new possibilities in the art.
See BALLET, WALTZ, STRATHSPEY, &c.; German books by Czerwinski, Voss, Angerstein, Zorn, and Freising; Desrat, Dictionnaire de la Danse (1896); Soria, Histoire de la Danse (1897); E. Scott, Dancing as an Art (1893), and Dancing in all Ages (1899); Mrs Grove, Dancing (Badminton Library, 1896); Gaston Vuillier, The History of Dancing (trans. 1897).