Dancing Culture Religion

In this provocative study of dancing, Sam Gill examines the interpretive styles of a variety of cultural dance traditions in discourse with the philosophic traditions of Schiller, Merleau-Ponty, Barbaras, Derrida, Leroi-Gourhan, and Baudrillard. As a scholar of religion, Gill provides special consideration to the importance of this emerging appreciation of dancing as a perspective inclusive of body and experience. Beginning with an extensive study of movement, Gill contextualizes the study of dancing on the premise that moving is shared among all animate organisms while dancing as a learned type of movement offers insight into what makes us distinctly human. Each chapter delves into the many factions of dancing: moving, gesturing, self-othering, playing, seducing, masking, and praising. Gill also draws on the analysis of contemporary dance films and musicals, his experience as a dancer and dance teacher, his extensive research on dance traditions, and his interest in neurobiology and phenomenology to develop the core of this rich exploration of dancing, the structurality of all dances.

Sam Gill is professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.