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

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 basic vehicle of the dance is the human body. When and how people dance is determined by their attitudes towards their body.

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.

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.

The new kind of dancing meant liberation not only from the rules of leading and following but from rules of any kind.