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.

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

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

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

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

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.