The Ghost Dance originated among the Great Basin Paiute as a religious movement arising out of the extreme social, political, economic, demographic, cultural, and personal stress brought about by the rapid incursion of Europeans and, later, Americans into North America. Anthropologists refer to such movements as revitalization, nativistic, new religious, and/or transformative social movements. As
Dance Careers Background Dance is one of the oldest of the arts. Anthropologists believe the first formal dances were probably symbolic dances performed by early tribal societies as part of ritual ceremonies held to ask spirits or gods for success in hunting or in battle. Some anthropologists think that dancing and music originally came from
Dance is a complex visual form that communicates through movement in time and space, often in conjunction with music and poetry. Dances convey meaning through culturally understood conventions within social contexts. Dances are produced as a result of creative processes that move human bodies through time and in spatial layouts. They are transient in performance