For the Indian,dance is a personal form of prayer. When the Eagle Dancer puts on his costume,when he begins to dance to the music,he doesn't simply perform it; he actually becomes the eagle itself. The dancer is virtually inseparable from the dance.
Jamake HighwaterWhat dance achieves, what play and sex achieve are the same thing that poetry achieves. They transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Jamake HighwaterDance has been transformed from an involuntary motor discharge, a ceremonial rite, into a work of art, conscious of, intended for, observation.
Jamake HighwaterThe story of dance in the Western world is as much an alternative vision of the events of history as is the folk history told for generations by primal people.
Jamake Highwater