The spirituality and culture intercrossing in the human body through the art of dance

Abstract

In my paper I am going to discuss the issue of the priority of arts in human culture propounding at the same time the scientific approach of some dance anthropologists and dance aestheticians who claim that dance was the first art the human being created, much earlier before writing and speaking emerged. This view is endorsed by another view that the rise of writing and speaking has been of evolutionary character and was obtained by humans relatively late. Therefore dance being virtually and directly a bodily expression can be categorised as an non-verbal expression, separate from the writing and speaking skill. Firstly, I present a main stream of anthropologists advocating my point of view and provide stark evidence for that. Secondly, I will examine an example of sacred dance which can be an epitome of spirituality/religion and culture interaction taking place in psycho-physical reality of the human body, in other words, in a Person. My point of view is going to be substantiated by a wide range of phenomena from cave painting to Dervish dance. The conclusive argument I am going to propose concerns the relationship between religion and art, the human body and sacredness.