By dancing in a socially approved way with their peers, individiuals proclaim their allegiance to society as a whole.

Dance, which displays the body in public, is one of the channels of communication used to pass along important social skills from one generation to the next.

A physician who treated mental cases says that he based his diagnosis on the way his patients moved: "The body never lies" was his maxim.

The one unbreakable rule of couples dancing is that the partners must move inter dependently, as a unit.

In many parts of the world-including Polynesia, north Africa & the Middle East-public dancing that focused on a physically linked couple would have been unthinkable, a violation of communal propriety.

The circle, or ring, dance was seen as an earthly counterpart of the heavenly dance of the angels, which was itself a celebration of the resurrection.

Writing, not dancing, is the chosen form of expression of the white man.