Social history picks up the drumbeat of dancing in both the condemnation and the celebration of popular culture. Listen to the curé of Savigny (Rhône) in 1821, worrying about the peasants' overindulgence: “since they are full of passions, and dancing only enflames these passions, since these meetings never finish without crime, since a single debauched person can infect those who watch him, and since things are said [at dances] which should not be heard, and things are done which should not be seen, it is prudent for priests to oppose dances altogether.” A century later this was the mot d'ordre of his eminence the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris, who proscribed modern dancing, and also that of the moral pundit of Le Peuple, who called the tango, the fox trot and the shimmy “une sorte de précoce et dangereuse défloration virginale.”

In a now classic study Mitchell demonstrated that dances quite beside their aesthetic interest offer important insight into social structural processes. Dances characteristic of the transitional period in Africa frequently offer valuable insights into patterns of changing social organization and into the cultural perspectives of the participants. I am going to scrutinize here some features of dances now being exchanged in Western Equatorial Africa—in particular among the Pahouin peoples or Yaounde-Fang speakers of northern Gabon, Southern Cameroons and Equatorial Guinea. These peoples traditionally had simple non-market economies. In recent years they have been brought rapidly into a modern economy through the introduction of cash crops and migrant labor. The question arises: what is being exchanged in the distribution of these dances and what is the consequence of this exchange? In a transitional economy there are almost surely other values in transaction than those measurable in modern currency.

Although expressive aspects of a culture are generally believed to be related to the values and sentiments which prevade that culture, few studies to demonstrate the relationship have been carried out on nonverbal, more accurately non-vocal, aspects of culture. This paper is a result of my attempt to view traditional Eskimo dance as an expression of Eskimo values, sentiments, and cultural foci.

Eskimo values and cultural foci are described as I perceived them during eight months of ethnological field research (1973–74) among a group of coastal Eskimos in southwestern Alaska. I cannot vouch for the universality of these values in Eskimo groups throughout the arctic, but my impression from the literature is that they are widely held. The dances I describe, however, are not universal, as dance varies from one region to another and even from village to village within some regions (Theresa Tomczak, personal communication 1972). The community I am reporting on is Tununak, on Nelson Island, Alaska.

There is evidence for the existence of some kind of grammatical structure in a passage from Golek Lambangsari, a Javanese classical court dance for women, composed by Sasmintamardawa of Jogjakarta, Java. In the passage under examination Sasmintamardawa used two different choreographic methods for manipulating the Javanese classical dance material: first, the more usual traditional, multipart variations with their connecting transitions; and second, very short, simple variations which seem not to have transitions between them. An analysis of the boundaries between the phrases in this passage reveals that the boundary conditions are different for each choreographic method, and further, for each level of the structure of the passage. The latter discovery indicates that the structure of the passage (no matter which choreographic method is considered) is different at each of three levels which I define in the boundary analysis—phrase, subphrase, and basic movement unit—and that there is some overall organizing grammatical principle causing this to be so. An explanation of Jogjanese classical female dance style phrase structure precedes the boundary analysis of the passage from Golek Lambangsari.

Every few years there is a resurgence of interest in what has come to be known as danse du ventre or, less elegantly, belly dancing. By whatever name it may be called, however, this dance has inevitably elicited an exaggerated response from those not accustomed to the social background to which it belongs. In the past a climate of disapproval has hampered any attempt at serious evaluation of this dance form; at the present time the situation has reversed to a point where the enthusiasm of its protagonists has become the chief hindrance to an objective assessment. A dance whose enduring charm has managed to survive not only a body of disparaging commentary, but the spurious and tawdry aura surrounding so many of its practitioners, seems deserving of a fresh appraisal.

In 1917 Margaret H'Doubler, on a year's leave from the University of Wisconsin, had been given a difficult assignment. Blanche Trilling, her chairman, had asked if she would search the dance studios in New York City for a kind of dance activity “worth a college woman's time.” Studying philosophy that year at Columbia University, Margaret H'Doubler had complied with pronounced lack of enthusiasm, her predominant interest being in teaching basketball. Her time nearly expired, she found herself, however, suddenly excited when, at the music school of Alys Bentley, she saw children on the floor moving in their own ways to a stimulus provided by the teacher.

“Of course,” she recounted later, “Get on the floor where you are relieved from the pull of gravity … and see what the natural, structural movements are.” She continued to visit Miss Bentley's studio during the short time that remained and began to organize a course in “new dancing” to be offered almost immediately in summer school in Madison.

The Irigwe, numbering around 17,000, are the third largest of several dozen so-called “plateau pagan” tribes on the Jos Plateau in Benue-Plateau State, Nigeria. Situated on the western edge of the Plateau around 20 miles west of the towns of Jos and Bukuru, the Irigwe have their own language and social traditions which clearly distinguish them from the other plateau tribes. They are currently reknowned all over the Plateau, indeed all over Nigeria, as skilled dancers. The focus of this paper will be to describe and analyze briefly the importance of Irigwe dance groups as emissary delegations, traditionally between various Irigwe sub-groups, and nowdays also between Irigwe as a whole and the rest of Nigeria. The maintenance of boundaries between socio-cultural groupings which regularly interact often involves agents of one sort of another who serve (on a de facto if not on an explicit basis) as bridges between the groupings. Dance group members in effect form such bridging agents in Irigwe.

Irigwe is a segmentary society lacking any traditional political chieftaincy. Twenty-five semi-autonomous agnatically based tribal “sections” are bound together on the one hand by each section's having exclusive responsibility for performing one or another ritual felt to be necessary for the tribe, and on the other hand by cross-cuting affinal and cognatic bonds mediated by both primary and “secondary” intersection marriages (Sangree 1972). The Irigwe divide their 25 sections into two geographically discrete clusters: Rigwe, the “parent” division, south of the swiftly flowing Ngell River with 10 sections, and Nyango, the “child” division, north of the river, with 15 sections.

The Diaghilev Ballets Russes introduced its startled audiences to a revolutionary dance theatre. History recognizes Diaghilev and his collaborators as an indelible influence on the course of twentieth century dance; an influence re-orienting ballet's goals as well as audience expectations. It is difficult to chart the progressive re-education of the public over a twenty-year period (1909–1929). London, however, in the year 1921, provides an excellent vantage point for a retrospective evaluation of the Ballet Russe's impact.

The year 1921 found Serge Diaghilev in a difficult predicament. Massine, his productive and inventive choreographer, left the company ending “a period that for length and the fertility may be compared with the first period of Fokine.” Diaghilev now faced the opening of a new London season without fresh choreographic talent. He turned to unprecedented recourse—the presentation of a full length Petipa ballet, never before seen in the West. His choice was La Belle au Bois Dormant, the pride of Petipa's reign, unveiled in London as The Sleeping Princess. A summary glance at historical backgrounds reveals how uncharacteristic a venture this was.