Some of the most popular discos in America and Europe were started as gay establishments, which began to open their doors to anyone who wanted to dance.

Some of the most popular discos in America and Europe were started as gay establishments, which began to open their doors to anyone who wanted to dance.

Dance in this century has remained primarily a personal ritual operating, like most avant-garde art, as an idiosyncratic form rather than a tribal expression of religious powers or a corporate expression of societal values.

At the root of all the varied manifestations of dancing, lies the common impulse to resort to movement to externalize emotional states which we cannot extemalize by rational means.

Dance has been transformed from an involuntary motor discharge, a ceremonial rite, into a work of art, conscious of, intended for, observation.

The nobility danced for the sake of social grace, to exhibit their finery...peasants danced to make themselves happy, to escape the routine of their life, and to meet their future wives and husbands.

White performances were always dull in comparison to the astonishing expressiveness of Black dancers. Behind the white person's inarticulate body were centuries of condemnation of dancing on religious grounds.