The purpose of dance---art as performative enactment

The purpose of dance.

Since tribal society, movement with or according to certain rhythm or pattern has become an essential part of human society. Either in form of paints, dancing, or ceremony, we have found archaeological evidence in most every early settlement of our ancestors.

Without any doubt, dancing is about movement. But why would someone else’s movement have any affair with us? 

The answer is, we can feel it! Our sight will be guided by the highlights of the movement showed by dancer. By feeling the floating gestures, we would be able to explore some rare area we’ve never been, or someplace we have seldom noticed but is deep inside our inner world. We capture the tension created by the performer. We bring our life experience into it and disclose our ownmost truth. More interestingly, a great piece of art usually requires little life experience other than our basic life. Sometimes, one art piece could even be international or intercultural, that is, beyond the separation of language or culture. I believe that’s the source of what Gadamer called concept of ‘festival’, i.e. shared ties among human beings.

That makes sense. Before human languages are generated, the world already exists and runs well. Human tribes are built and were operating in the world established on sound, picture, texture, and movement. Everything is communicated via gesture, imagination and empathy. We FEEL the world before we describe the world. Thousands of years passed, everything in the human society now we are experiencing is basically translation or re-representation of the nature universe. According to Greek philosophers, truths are covered during the process of translating and re-representing, while art is the key that leads us back to the disclosure of truth (Unconcealment). Art IS the tunnel, in the opinion of Heidegger, that allows us to rediscover.