The human nature of dance: Towards a theory of aesthetic community

Abstract

Abstract My first theoretical musings about whether dance might be part of our human biological endowment date to my daughter’s infancy, a time of sensory–emotional delights, full of breathy duets of dipping and twirling, finger dancing and shared rhythms. I had a distinct sense that she was initiating these dances, and I remember thinking, ‘I wonder if we’re wired for this.’ I forged a deeper connection between dance and biology two decades later during an extended inquiry into the meanings and effects of dance for six non-verbal children with deaf-blindness (Bond 1991, 1994a).