FUN
'Dance is a form of physical activity, which is sustain-able because it is "fun.'
Patricia T. Alpert, Home Health Care Management & Practice.
 (Jitterbugging in Harlem 1939, Museum of the City of New York, anonymous)
Considering my 'fun' requirement records for any work I undertake, It might be hard to believe I didn't write that quote, but I, of course, entirety agree with it. I am nonetheless aware that some folk hate dancing and do not have the coordination or motor skills it requires, nor the wild spirit. But who said you needed to dance well to enjoy it? My sister and I- I know, she is in my every tale- sing down the road at the top of our lungs, getting all sorts of looks from strangers - intentionally badly. Not dance in this case, but a similar example that might explain the value enjoyment of any practice or activity has for me.Â
 You choose a well-known song, and you hit the last note of a sentence a semitone up or down- the results are hysterically funny and horrifically awful. My favourite horror street song performance is to 'Love is in the air, with a Gypsy Flamenco air for added terribleness. Mostly makes people smile and us roar with laughter.
 Back to dance.
 When it comes to why I chose dance as a tangential project, I think I decided it intuitively- ha!
 I have had experience in both dance and theatre, and when you perform you learn that everything you do affects your partner(s), the entire group of people you are on stage with, but also, it affects the audience. They, in turn, affect you and your performance.Â
 Since my previous project was focused on collective equilibrium- balance- trust, and connection, this felt like something I should pursue, especially in the light of the current limitations on our movement due to lockdown pandemics.
 The first thing I noticed was the 2 metres marks on the floor in supermarkets, then the way we move when we are confronted with the 'other' in a public space. We then start moving like boxers in a ring, measuring each other up, trying to anticipate the movement of the other, to avoid contact. You slow down; you watch, you 'listen' intently. And you have to trust that the other person will move 'with you', or respond. It's a negotiation of space suspended between tension, and trust.Â
 We are forced to acknowledge the 'other' like we never have before, as well as the extent to which we are in fact connected, in immediacy as well as long-distance both. So questions of density arose, and of how many people are allowed in proximity, on how we can and have started moving with greater discipline, towards a common objective (in dance, the choreography)- in this case, the survival of the species. So I wondered what would this new form of movement be under Covid, this dance we are dancing, and whether indeed movement or dance would offer us the tools we need to regain and relearn a form of collective balance.
How have we gone from dancing in the streets on Sunday together, twisting and twirling in ballrooms, howling and doing the wild rumpus under the moonlight, to dancing alone mostly in sweaty clubs, feeling not much of the steps but yes the energy of all those dancing also alone? Is there a case for us being able to dance with individual expression but on a broader collective compass?
  WHAT IS DANCE?
 The health benefits of dance are well documented. Dance is a form of exercise that benefits your body but also your mind; it improves memory; it helps the brain form new interconnections and to work faster.
 It increases flexibility, balance, spatial awareness, and the health of your heart, as well as allowing for creativity, and individual expression.
 As a therapy, it is used against Alzheimer's and dementia, to reduce stress and anxiety, but also to combat loneliness and depression when practised in a social environment. Improvising allows you to move in ways that you are not familiar with and in doing so it breaks usual patterns and olds behaviour (Stuart James Waters, Laban Contemporary Dance Teacher for CAT- in conversation with myself and Florence Leon- 2nd April 2020).
 WHY?
The anthropology of human movement is relatively young, dance anthropology or dance ethnology was not established as a solid field of research within anthropological studies till the 1960s-1970s.
 It appears that dance is one of those things that makes us human- dance is present in all known cultures and each one of them has some form of traditional dance that they feel represents them.Â
 Chilean traditional dance is called 'Cueca'- based on the courting dances of a hen and a cockerel- not my favourite and one I had to learn at school and perform for Independence Day reluctantly. Our Argentinian neighbours got instead- life IS unfair- to represent their flamaboyantness with the passionate, beautiful irresistible impossible to learn Tango as their cultural icon.Â
 The French, on the other hand, waltzed a lot, at least in my memory, somehow entangled with Leonard Cohen's eighties this waltz this waltz this waltz singing - I am not sure my dancing in the streets for Liberation is correct. That, is not traditional French folk dancing like Morris dancing is to us in the UK.
 I chose to draw waltz because it s dizzying nature and I am a romantic after all. It was my personal favourite tempo when I did dance Tango too- but it is a shared European dance with ballroom credentials, a Viennese invention - apparament.Â
 It is that dance- just like biscuits- is a form of ethnographic record, and that it somehow embodies the culture it comes from? But that it can transcend borders, class systems, that it is contagious and dangerous even?
 The difficulty with a history of dance is that we don't know what first men danced to, or what steps did they rock in Greece. I have the feeling that Egyptians did not know much about The Bangles.
 'It is possible to conjecture that the cave dweller may have pretended to be an animal, when he danced at the dawn of the world, the dances of the primitive man are generally mimetic. He has not learnt to express himself in any other way'.
 Crick, Malcolm. Explorations in language and meaning: towards a semantic anthropology. London: Malaby Press, 1976 - P9
 But dance, is not strictly human...
