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article where she argued for a view of ballet as an
ethnic dance, as one dance form among others. This is
a crucial anthropological contribution to dance schol-
arship, but Kealiinohomoku’s idea that ballet reflects
Western cultural traditions is perhaps a bit exag-
gerated, especially in the long run. Admittedly West-
ern, ballet speaks to a limited historically dominant
segment of the West, by contrast with the shifting
multicultural landscape of contemporary Europe and
North America. To state that ballet is a form of ethnic
dance also disregards the traditional difference be-
tween ethnic dance as a participatory ritual practice
and ballet as a stage art performance separated from
the audience, although ethnic and folk dance are now
frequently moved from secular and sacred ritual to the
realm of art in stage dance. The genres are further
blurred by contemporary stage dance experiments
with the audience taking part in the performance—
even being invited to go on stage.
The central quest and raison d ’ e
Dance, Anthropology of
Dance has been studied in anthropology for over a
century, also in classical works, but mostly in passing
as an element in ritual and ceremony. This neglect is
likely to have come about because of the elusive nature
of dance, in combination with the fact that dance has
the potential of releasing emotional and erotic forces
that are kept at bay most of the time in everyday life.
There are many examples of political and religious
control of dance, not least in colonial contexts. This
has often produced resistance, expressed through the
creation or revitalization of ethnic and national
dances.
In an article about the beer dance among the
Azande, E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1928) was among the
first anthropologists to show that the study of dance
had a wider analytical potential and that dance needed
to be addressed from a contextual perspective. But it
was not until the 1960s and 1970s that the anthro-
pology of dance emerged as a subdiscipline, evoking
discussions about the origins and definition of dance
that became complicated by the cross-cultural per-
spective. As Adrienne Kaeppler (1985, p. 93) has
remarked, the concept ‘dance’ is a Western category
which often fails to distinguish among different cul-
tural activities. This concern is also paralleled, how-
ever, in the anthropology of music and the arts.
Drawing on her research in Tonga where movement
around ceremonial pig presentations, ka
tre for the anthro-
pology of dance has been to find out what dance says
about its society, informing about social or cultural
circumstances that cannot be su ciently expressed in
any other way. This does not only come about through
direct reflection, but also through social commentary
and critique in the form of parody like (gender) role
reversal or suggestions about alternative social
scenarios and even predictions of political events.
Dance has increasingly been recognized as having an
impact on social change (Hanna 1988, Royce 1977).
But there is also the cathartic view of dance as a safety
valve, a structural outlet, which will keep the social
order and its inequalities intact. Dance is moreover
often a feature of socialization. One of the functional
aspects of dance is that of transformation: the classical
examples are rites of passage when people are moved
from one stage in the life cycle to the next one, such as
initiation rites, wedding celebrations, and funerals.
Like all subdisciplines, the anthropology of dance
has followed main theoretical currents in its parent
discipline. Dance has thus been analyzed through
structuralism, symbolic anthropology, semiotics, and
linguistic theory, generating studies of the deep struc-
tures of dance and dance as nonverbal communi-
cation. Taking these theoretical approaches as points
of departure, some of the first dance anthropologists
worked out their own elaborate models and classi-
ficatory schemes for movement analysis. Drid
Williams’ (1976) theory of semasiology, the meaning
of human movements as action signs, for instance, has
a mixing,
and choreographed group speeches revealed hierarchy
and social solidarity, Kaeppler suggested ‘structured
movement systems’ as an alternative concept to that of
dance. Another anthropological strategy has been to
identify dance events as units of study, rather than to
look for particular dances in isolation. On the whole,
dance anthropologists seem to converge on a con-
sideration of bounded rhythmical movements that are
performed during some kind of altered state of
consciousness, an elevation or even trance.
The pioneering dance anthropologists had to deal
with the ethnocentric assumptions prevalent among
the then mostly autodidact dance historians, about
dance as a universal language and ‘primitive dance’
(often constructed in terms of a generalized ‘African
dance’), as an early phase in a Western scheme of
dance evolution entailing a hierarchicalization where
ballet was regarded as a superior dance form. This
prompted Joann Kealiinohomoku (1983) to write an
3209
Dance, Anthropology of
been developed further by Brenda Farnell (1995) in a
study of Plains Indian sign language.
There are basically three kinds of anthropological
studies of dance. One kind has dealt with meaning,
function, and the cultural context of dance, another
kind has concentrated on the choreographic form. The
majority of anthropological studies of dance, however,
have combined these approaches by taking both
meaning, function, and context and choreographic
form into account, as well as including textual de-
scriptions of the movements and
jective influence, than for those who have been trained
in anthropology.
1. Mo
ing Bodies, Gender, and Sexuality
In the upsurge of studies in the human and social
sciences on the body as culturally constructed, the
mo
ing body has nevertheless continued to be marginal
(Reed 1998), except in recent dance scholarship in-
cluding dance anthropology where it has been promi-
nent often in tandem with issues of gender and
sexuality. Such issues, also including gay dancers, were
early identified by Hanna (1988) in a cross-cultural
review. Since then a few monographs that combine
attention to moving bodies, gender, and sexuality have
appeared. Jane Cowan’s (1990) work on the body
politics of gender in a town in Northern Greece focuses
on dance events, including for example lively wedding
dances which unite a contradictory ideology of in-
equality and visions of closeness in the dancing bodies.
For the women, dance is an ambivalent pleasure since
they have to balance their sexual expression carefully
between release and control; unlike that of the men,
women’s dancing demeanor always runs the risk of
being interpreted as indecent.
This is also a problem for the professional female
entertainers, singers, and belly dancers in Cairo that
Karin van Nieuwkerk (1995) writes about, who see
their job as ‘a trade like any other.’ Performing at
celebrations such as births, engagements, and wed-
dings, these Egyptian entertainers create much hap-
piness and are in fact crucial for the success and
prestige of these occasions. Nevertheless, they are
regarded as dishonorable in the context of Islam and
class in Egyptian society because they make a living
out of disclosing their bodies in public, thereby
tantalizing men. In Cynthia Novack’s (1990) eth-
nography of contact improvisation, the American
communal art-sport that emerged in the 1960s, gender
relations are quite differently featured in line with the
prevailing ideology of egalitarianism. Although the
body is constructed as nongendered in contact im-
provisation, the performers’ touching and supporting
of each other’s weight while moving together, usually
in duets, sometimes produce sexual and sensual
feelings both among them and the observers.
Novack’s study spans more than two decades,
showing that the movements of contact improvisation,
and thus the construction of these moving bodies, and
the arts organizations around them, followed changes
in American culture so that this dance form gradually
diminished together with the egalitarian agenda of the
1960s and 1970s. Body and space are in focus in Sally
Ann Ness’s (1992) interpretation of the sinulog danced
in Cebu City in the Philippines. Ness connects dance
movements and space to everyday movements like
walking and the urban landscape of Cebu City. A
Philippine ballet, Igorot , which Ness (1997) discusses,
produces neoethnic bodies in a structure of post-
or illustrations such
as photographs or simple movement transcriptions
consisting of circles and arrows that indicate directions
and patterns of dance.
In the United States, research on dance in its cultural
context has dominated, just as in the United Kingdom
where John Blacking was a key figure in the emerging
interest in the anthropology of dance. In continental
Europe, dance ethnologists, also called choreologists,
who came out of a long nationalist folklore tradition,
documented folk dances in their own societies, for
preservation and revival, stressing formal character-
istics along the lines of music research there. During
the Communist era in Eastern Europe, dance (and
other folklore) researchers found themselves in ideo-
logical conflict over state manipulations of their
objects of study and control of their investigations
(Giurchescu and Torp 1991).
In the 1980s a new generation of dance anthro-
pologists joined the growing interdisciplinary area of
dance and movement studies. Engaging with feminist
and gender critiques, notions of the body, identity
politics, and literary and cultural studies, scholars of
dance and movement studies became more visible in
the academic world, also because there was an in-
creasing number of them. Dance historians have
moved towards ethnography and social and cultural
theory redefining their field as critical dance studies,
while dance anthropologists have added Western stage
dance and culture, as well as European folk dance, to
their previous focus on non-Western dance and
movement. Most dance scholars, including dance
anthropologists, have been trained as modern and
or
classical dancers. The anthropological study of dance
usually requires participation in the dancing, at least
some kind of bodily knowledge of the steps that are
investigated. The fact that dance anthropologists learn
sequences of steps and movement that are completely
different from their earlier movement experiences is
something they often report on in a humble spirit,
while it actually deserves recognition not least as an
important methodological strategy. Some dance
anthropologists have thought of their own dancing in
the field as a part of the recent reflexive turn in
anthropology, which has also had an impact on the
anthropology of dance. The presence of the ethno-
grapher in the field seems to have been more of a
problem for neighboring dance scholars, however,
who have worried that this would entail undue sub-
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Dance, Anthropology of
colonialism and transnationalism. J. Lowell Lewis
(1992) also links everyday movement and dance
movement in Brazilian capoeira , the martial art and
dance with roots in Brazilian slavery and, further
back, in Africa. Lewis analyzes capoeira as a cultural
style through the metaphor of play: bodily, musical,
and verbal.
identity, accurately entitled Paper Tangos , Julie Taylor
(1998) has inserted small black-and-white photo-
graphs in the margin on every page. A quick flipping
through the pages thus creates an image of live
movement, of a film as it were, of couples dancing the
tango.
In addition to simple figures illustrating the text,
some dance anthropologists have learnt advanced
standardized notation systems for transcription of
movements, such as Labanotation, which is the most
widely used, or Benesh or Eskhol–Wachmann no-
tation systems. As it takes about two years to master
any of these systems completely, it is like learning
another language. In the Western dance world, trained
notators, or choreologists, document ballet and dance
productions through these systems, and they have also
been important in the medical rehabilitation of dis-
abled people. There is, however, a degree of interpret-
ation involved in the notating process, which means
that different notators may describe the same move-
ment somewhat differently. There has also been a
discussion in dance anthropology about the applic-
ability of these Western notation systems to non-
Western dance and movement forms, although there
seems to be an agreement that they can be used for
such purposes as well. Certain conventions have
developed to deal with cultural translation problems,
so that the particular use of Labanotation, for ex-
ample, may be explained in a ‘key’ for readers.
Photography and film are other, often complemen-
tary techniques, for conveying dance and movement.
There is, however, an element of cultural selectivity in
their use, as in video recording which has increased
substantially during recent years. Video has also
become a significant aid in the mechanical work with
drawing the symbols for the scores of Labanotation
and the Benesh notation system. The expanded use of
technology in dance research has accentuated ques-
tions of copyright and ownership which are further
complicated in a transnational context. The area of
dance and technology (also including television, CD-
ROM, and choreography software computer pro-
grams) is generating a growing amount of new
research.
Future research in the anthropology of dance is
likely to include more systematic reception and audi-
enceresearch.Theanthropologicalinquiryintodanceis
already being extended to popular dance genres such
as rave, dance shows and dance in musical videos, and
to world dance, both in Western and non-Western
contexts. Unlike ethnomusicology which attracts
mostly men, the majority of dance anthropologists
have been women. This may have played a role in the
relatively modest position of the subdiscipline.
Another circumstance that works against an accumu-
lation of knowledge that would produce major growth
in the anthropology of dance is that anthropologists
often write one book on dance and then move on to
other research interests.
2. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Transnationality
Ethnicity and nationalism are often negotiated
through dance, but in different ways depending on
historical and political circumstances. J. Clyde
Mitchell’s (1956) small classic monograph on the
Kalela dance in colonial Northern Rhodesia is an
early instance of ethnic dance. The Kalela dance was
performed every Sunday by labor migrants who had
moved from the countryside to the town of Luanshya.
While describing colonial society, the dance was also a
marker of a ‘tribal’ group identity called for in contrast
with other groups in the town. The European folk
dances which European dance ethnologists have long
been documenting can be categorized as ethnic dances.
Yet it was the growth in studies of nationalism in the
social sciences generally that inspired dance anthro-
pologists to investigate ethnic and national dance, for
example, by relating Irish traditional dancing and
Javanese court dance to the wider escalating concern
with questions of representation, authenticity, and
appropriation. In a study of the de
adasis, female
temple dancers in South India, Joan L. Erdmann
(1996) points out that it is time to rewrite the history of
Indian dance without orientalism such as the Western
label ‘oriental dance,’ in order to make room for
indigenous categories. This is a completely different
situation than that in post-revolutionary Cuba which
Yvonne Daniel (1995) discusses in her study of how
the government replaced ballet with rumba as the
Cuban national dance. Rumba was associated with
the working class and the African heritage, which
suited the socialist state ideology. Although most
dance anthropologists seem to agree that all dance
forms are more or less mixed, with increasing global
contacts, ethnic and national dance forms are be-
coming even more mixed than before. Igorot , the
Philippine ballet which is a mixture of classical ballet
and traditional Philippine dance, has been described
as an instance of cultural hybridity (Ness 1997).
Helena Wulff (1998) discusses homogeneity and di-
versity in the transnational world of ballet, drawing on
Howard Becker’s (1982) notion of art worlds.
3. Transcription, Technology, and Property
Rights
To convey movement through the text is an obvious
ambition for dance anthropologists. In her little book
on tango and the multidimensional national Argentine
3211
Dance, Anthropology of
Still, the anthropology of dance contributes to
central debates in the human and social sciences,
especially to an understanding of culture in terms of
process and diversity. Importantly, dance and move-
ment are not only shaped by society—dance and
movement also shape society. This occurs in in-
creasingly complex ways as the genres of dance and
movement in society shift and grow, inviting more
studies of the anthropology of dance.
Taylor J 1998 Paper Tangos . Duke University Press, Durham,
NC
Williams D 1976 Deep structures of the dance. Journal of Human
Mo ement Studies 2 : 123–44
Wulff H 1998 Ballet across Borders . Berg, Oxford, UK
H. Wulff
See also : Body: Anthropological Aspects; Cultural
Relativism, Anthropology of; Entertainment; Evans-
Pritchard,
Sir
Edward
E
(1902–73);
Religion:
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809–82)
Nationalism
and
Identity;
Ritual;
Ritual
and
Symbolism, Archaeology of
1. Darwin’s Life
Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury,
England, on February 12, 1809. His Father, Robert
Waring Darwin (1766–1848) was a prosperous physi-
cian. His mother, Susannah Wedgwood (1765–1817),
was the daughter of the industrialist Joshiah
Wedgwood II (1769–1843). She died on July 7, 1817.
This early bereavement is often invoked as having
affected Darwin’s health, both physically and men-
tally.
Although he developed an extracurricular interest
in the natural sciences, the young Darwin was con-
sidered a mediocre student. At the age of 16 he was
sent to Edinburgh to study medicine. He interacted
with scientists there and furthered his interests in
natural history, but he had no desire to become a
physician and realized he would not need to earn a
living. His father however insisted upon his having a
respectable profession, and it was decided that he
would prepare to become a clergyman. He therefore
enrolled at Cambridge University on October 15,
1827, and remained there until 1831. His academic
performance was respectable, though not outstanding.
But his scientific interests were encouraged by the
faculty, especially the botanist John Stevens Henslow
(1796–1871).
Darwin was preparing for some scientific travel
when he was invited to join a naval surveying
expedition on HMS Beagle as uno cial naturalist and
gentlemanly companion to the captain. The Beagle
departed on December 27, 1831, circumnavigated the
globe, and returned on October 2, 1836. This long
period of field research laid the foundation for
Darwin’s later career. Working in isolation no doubt
forced him to think for himself, and he had much
opportunity for reflecting on the many books he had
with him, especially the Principles of Geology (1830–2)
by Charles Lyell (1797–1875). Darwin became one of
Lyell’s major supporters. While in South America he
developed a theory of coral reefs which he verified
later on during the voyage. It was his geological work
that first made him famous. However he also studied
Bibliography
Becker H S 1982 Art Worlds . University of California Press,
Berkeley, CA
Cowan J K 1990 Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece .
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Daniel Y 1995 Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba .
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN
Erdmann J L 1996 Dance discourses: Rethinking the history of
the ‘oriental dance’. In: Morris G (ed.) Mo
ing Words .
Routledge, London
Evans-Pritchard E E 1928 The dance. Africa 1 : 446–62
Farnell B M 1995 Do You See What I Mean? University of Texas
Press, Austin, TX
Giurchescu A, Torp L 1991 Theory and methods in dance
research: A European approach to the holistic study of dance.
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Hanna J L 1988 Dance, Sex and Gender . University of Chicago
Press, Chicago
Kaeppler A L 1985 Structured movement systems in Tonga. In:
Spencer P (ed.) Society and the Dance . Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK
Kealiinohomoku J 1983 [1970] An anthropologist looks at
ballet as a form of ehnic dance. In: Copeland R, Cohen
M (eds.) What Is Dance? Oxford University Press, Oxford,
UK
Lewis J L 1992 Ring of Liberation . The University of Chicago
Press, Chicago
Mitchell J C 1956 The Kalela Dance . Institute by the Manchester
University Press, Manchester, UK
Ness S A 1992 Body, Mo
ement and Culture . University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Ness S A 1997 Originality in the postcolony: Choreographing the
Neoethnic body of Philippine dance. Cultural Anthropology
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van Nieuwkerk K 1995 A Trade like Any Other . University of
Texas Press, Austin, TX
Novack C 1990 Sharing the Dance . University of Wisconsin
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iew
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3212
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809–82)
zoology and botany and assembled a superb collection
of specimens.
Darwin did not become an evolutionist until after
his return to England, though he began to take the
idea seriously toward the end of the voyage. Back in
England he began to sort out his specimens and put
them in the hands of specialists. Expert opinion,
especially on the birds of the Galapagos Archipelago,
convinced him (ca. early March, 1837) that evolution
was a viable idea, and he set out to develop a theory.
That included a search for a mechanism. His note-
books indicate a vast amount of reading and thinking
about many topics, including psychology.
Darwin’s discovery of natural selection occurred
around September 28, 1838, when he read the Essay on
the Principle of Population (Malthus 1826). Its author,
who went by the name of Thomas Robert Malthus
(1766–1834), was the first professor of economics.
Darwin had already changed his conception of the
natural economy to a competitive one but he had not
made the crucial connection. The insight came from
understanding what happens to human reproduction
as resources get harder to come by with an increasing
number of mouths to feed. It then became evident that
some individuals would reproduce more than others.
How much economics Darwin actually knew is ques-
tionable, but the general notion of individualistic
competition was clearly available from the economics
of his day. When, in the 1850s, Darwin developed his
ideas about biodiversity he was to some extent helped
by his reading of the French zoologist Henri Milne-
Edwards (1800–85), who applied the idea of the
division of labor to physiology and anatomy. Darwin
realized that specialization would make for more
e cient use of resources. Evolving populations would
seize upon different places in the economy of nature
(Eltonian niches, as they are now called).
Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood on
January 29, 1839; their first child was born on
December 27 of that year. They set up house in
London, but his health began to deteriorate and he
suffered from mysterious ailments for the rest of his
life. In 1842, the family relocated to a country residence
near Down, south of London. Nonetheless Darwin
was highly productive. A book on his voyage (Darwin
1839) was a popular as well as a scientific success. He
edited the zoology of the voyage and, in addition to
minor papers, published three volumes on his geo-
logical research: (Darwin 1842, 1844, 1846). Devel-
opment of his ideas on evolution continued, and he
wrote a sketch of a book on it in 1842, and a draft in
1844.
In 1846, Darwin began some research on barnacles
which led him to spend eight years revising the group
and writing a vast taxonomic monograph (Darwin
1851, 1854) which in effect was his first book on
evolution. He then proceeded to work up his materials
on evolution. A large book entitled Natural Selection
was in the process of composition when, on June 18,
1858, a manuscript from Alfred Russel Wallace
(1823–1913) arrived in which the same basic mech-
anism was proposed. A joint paper was read before the
Linnean Society on July 1, and on July 20, Darwin
began to write an ‘abstract’ that ultimately became the
Origin of Species (Darwin 1859). The first of six
editions was published on November 24, 1859.
Darwin brought out a series of books that dealt with
a broad range of evolutionary topics. These books all
included results of his ongoing empirical research,
much of it on the sexuality, physiology, and behavior
of plants. A book on orchids (Darwin 1862) was
followed by one on climbing plants that first appeared
as a journal article (Darwin 1865). What had been a
section of Natural Selection became The Variation of
Animals and Plants Under Domestication (Darwin
1868). It was the second of what are considered
Darwin’s ‘major’ evolutionary works. The third was
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
(Darwin 1871). The Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals (Darwin 1872) was followed by a series of
botanical works (Darwin 1875, 1876, 1877a, 1877b,
1880). The last of his books dealt with earthworms,
especially their behavior (Darwin 1881). Darwin died
at his home at Down on April 19, 1882. He was buried
at Westminster Abbey on April 26.
2. Darwin’s Scientific Contribution
Darwin brought about the most important revolution
in the history of the human intellect. For that very
reason it has taken a long time for his ideas to become
assimilated and the process is far from complete.
Although he was able to convince the scientific
community that evolution had in fact taken place, he
was far less persuasive with respect to natural selec-
tion, which only became the majority view towards the
middle of the twentieth century. Furthermore, evolu-
tion as Darwin and his successors have come to
understand it was something quite different from the
‘evolution’ of his predecessors and many of his
contemporaries. This is true of both evolution and its
mechanisms.
Darwin’s early geological research was crucial to his
intellectual development. It gave him experience in
thinking historically, dealing with real events that
happened to concrete particular things. The fossil
record, however, was still very poorly understood, and
one of Darwin’s major contributions was showing
how incomplete it was. It was biogeography, not
paleontology, that convinced Darwin that evolution
had occurred and provided his most compelling
arguments for it. But that required thinking about
groups of organisms not merely changing but also
having common ancestors. Darwin’s predecessor
Lamarck (1744–1829) had published a branching
diagram, but his basic conception was that of multiple
3213

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