by Meridith Blake

Created on: September 25, 2009

Confidence's role in dance

The true definition of dance is simply movement. Did you know we dance all the time without a single thought? When we are walking, skipping, spinning around in circles or exercising we are also dancing. You see to dance doesn't require any thought; we do it because it comes naturally. We are born with rhythm, some of us just do not know it and a few of us live in fear of what others will think or say. Which brings us to the biggest question: Do we have the confidence to dance? The answer is YES!

Confidence's role in dance is full trust, belief in the powers, or reliability of a person or thing. To have confidence is to have faith in one's self, your own powers (abilities), gaining self-confidence or self- reliance; assurance expressive of all the different passions. Think about it dance has certainly been an important part of ceremony, celebrations, rituals, and entertainment since before the birth of the earliest human civilizations. One of the earliest structured uses of dance was in the performance and in telling of myths. Having confidence in yourself allows you to do anything you put your mind to:

You can expressive you're feelings in dance (movement). Getting your point across or trying to find the right words to say to someone you are crazy about can be frustrating but not through dance. When you dance it sends a message to the audience, divulging your mood. Talking or any other correspondence doesn't have the power to convey anything and leave an amazing affect on the listener. If I were to choose a form of dance that best moves an audience it would defiantly be contemporary dancing. Did you know a long ago Egyptians, Indians and other nations use to send signals through dance to attract the opposite sex letting them know their feelings on wanting them to be their lover. Before the production of written languages, dance was one of the methods of passing stories down from each generation. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, ranked dancing with poetry. He also said after studying their attitudes and talents to imitating the passions certain dancers, with rhythm applied to jester, could express manners and actions as well.

Art should aspire to imitate nature: We all love to do this on Halloween; we dress in costumes and choreograph how we are to be polite and ask nicely for our candy. Dance enables us to seek out the things that we desire to have. That is why children play and dance (bop, tap and hop) around to get our attention and it works because the power of luring is instilled in us naturally.

Emotions, the fantasy: We have the freedom to create emotion through ballet. We are the splendor of small things, beauty of untrained bodies and unsophisticated movement. We progress further in expertise, strength and flexibility when we carry confidence and courage with us at all times.

Entertainment: if we don't feel we have it in us, it is ok because we can learn from talent through other dancers. Michael Jackson taught us street dancing in the seventies and soul train introduced us to break dancing. Hip hop became popular in the sixties and still is today.

We are all dancers with classicism of the past.

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