origin of dance

Words are inadequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involves. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participating in collective ritual.

Most of us today think of dancing as a mating ritual perfhrmed by couples or something that we pay to watch professionals perform onstage, but most dancing throughout history has been a group affair. From military drill to ecstatic religious dances, the community dances of villages on festival occasions, and the tribal dances of indigenous people around the world, groups of people assemble to move their bodies in unison, sometimes for so long that they drop from exhaustion or pass into a trancelike state. The effect in all cases is to create a sense of unity among members of the group who have danced together.

- David Sloan Wilson