In the United States and other countries, there has been a decline in public and private support of the arts, including dance. Awareness that dance is not just entertainment but also a form of education and healing may reverse the trend.
Participants in dance, both dancers and viewers, may experience catharsis and develop a sense of mastery or self-discovery.
Through dance, people meet demons, ward off death, shake off sin and evil, come to terms with life crises, mediate paradoxes, resolve conflict, revitalize the past to re-create the present, enhance their self-concept and body image, attract attention, assert themselves, confront the strong, and persuade others to change their ways.
Among its many uses, dance/movement therapy aims to help people overcome trauma, often by nonverbally bringing the elements of the experience to the fore.
In the interweave of mind and body, dance is a mode that allows people to work through difficulties, anticipate the future, recollect the past, and confront the present.
The symbolism in any kind of dance allows for recall, reenactment, and reexperience of events for purposes of resisting, reducing, transforming, and escaping stress.
Saying the lion is kind of the beasts says something about lions and also something about kings.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, dance is not a universal 'language' but many languages and dialects. There are close to 6000 verbal languages, and probably that many dance languages.
In contrast to what the women have been told (that they are dumb and ugly) and how they have been controlled with confined strictures, the dance class is a safe place in which the women have choices and can improve their self-concept.
It is the persistence of dance in helping people to resist, reduce, and escape stress since early humanity that attests to its efficacy.
The 1980's witnessed a new dance genre in New York City and Los Angeles. Slam Dancing was perhaps a way for adolescent males to deal with the stressors of maturation, aggressive personal feelings, and violence in the society at large. Through dancing, the youths expressed raw power and rage while achieving euphoria, enhanced self-concept, and a healthy fatigue.
Danced healing rituals (in African village compounds, temple courtyards, dance-therapy studios, public theaters, and other social settings) reinvoke old traumas for exorcism and the transformation of fear, convince people that evil is gone or possible to dissipate, and reaffirm communal solidarity and a sense of well-being.
Dance releases energy mobilized by the fight-or-flight stress response that was otherwise restrained.
Dance therapy provides an outlet for energy and a safe and playful environment in which many areas of conflict can be identified and worked through, and appropriate adult roles and behavior tried out.
He [Wilhelm Reich] believed that the individual's walk, stance, and breath patterns revealed a specific character type. Reich thought chronic muscular tension indicated repression and blocked the expression of affect. An example is the tight holding of the chest area as a sign of repressed feelings of need and longing.
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John Blacking Ethnomusicologist