ORIGINS OF DANCE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 11452, 28 February 1931, Page 11

ORIGINS OF DANCE

ITS GRIM ROMANTIC PAST

Professor Elliot Smith, who lectured at Cecil Sharp House on the origin of tliq dance, said that dui lug the last two years he had seen a great variety of dancing in many countries. At a conference he had attended in Java he had watched the people collected from a great many islands and from the higher civilisation of Java and Batavia dancing every kind of danco that had Been invented, from the most primitive dances to the highly sophisticated dances of tho Javanese. Thq Javanese dances were really plays in which epic stories of India were acted with a solemnity and reverence that made them like a religious service, says the “Manchester Guardian.” The Professor said that many primitive dances were intimately connected with marriage, sacrifice, initiations, and the idea of various kinds of rebirth. The root idea, was perliap9 that the dance, reanimated a body from which life had gone, and this developed into tho idea that it brought about a change into a new'; life. For instance, the Spanish gipsies had an old marriage ritual. The ■ bride was swathed like a mummy and placed in a coffin. Then the bridegroom and attendants danced about to wake her to reanimation. She was set on he.r feet, and her bridesmaids, dancing round her as if she wore a maypole, unwound tho wrappings that bound her. Ritual dancing seemed to go. hack to the beginning of agriculture. The Professor described ‘ how the human race, which had probably existed for a million years, roamed about hunt-’ i-ng for, food, but knowing nothing of . the art of cultivation till the time, perhaps about six thousand years ago, v when the discovery of how barley could be cultivated transformed the whole of human existence and made settled life possible. The man who realised that by extending the area of inundation of tho Nile he could increase tho area of cultivation, was regarded as having superior powers. Because ho could also, by observing the moon and stars, estimate the time when inundation would occur 5 it was ultimately believed that be mac e the flood and caused the fertility of the corn.

Professor Elliot Smith put forward the theory that the whole ritual of dancing was associated with the death of this king, known later as Osiris, that liis despairing people j regarding -him as their protector, tried to recreate his body. The whole ritual of dancing centred around the process! of mummification. Tq supply what was lacking in the mummified (body libatfeiis and perfumes were provided. To recreate the environment in which ho had moved certain incidents in his life were re-enacted in dramatic dances. Osiris was later regarded as a god .and the creatorof the world, but the dance: rituals were observed for successive kings. Tho. story, of tho Osiris cult developed tragically, for in an (early stage it became the custom to kill the king when he grew old and incapable At a later stage, when tho king’s power was-enormously enhanced and ho controlled the destinies of the whole people, he invented the idea of human sacrifices,. and new rituals were devised . The Professor told how animal substitutes were found for these, human sacrifices and their symbols took the place of . tlio sacrifices, and so he came to consider the possible origin of the hobbyhorse that figures in some. English folk-dances to ; day. It might represent .the.horses that used to be buried with.. Eastern -kings to, carry their souls tp the skips.