Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores the idea that dancing was and is, as John Blacking stated 'a primary modelling system' (1984:4) or, in other terms, a means of inventing worlds to come in a context where novel relational configurations and innovative ideas may be tested without any stakes at play.

Paper long abstract:

In what is seemingly her last published article, Why people dance-evolution, sociality and dance (2016), Andrée Grau (1954-2017) draws upon her mentor John Blacking's provocative ideas concerning the significance of dance in human evolution, 'a special kind of exercise of sensory, communicative and co-operative powers that is as fundamental to the making and remaking of human nature as speech' (Blacking in Grau 2016). By the 1970s, he already attributed to dance a precedence in human development. In response to Frank B. Livingstone's 1973 article Did the Australopithecines sing? in which the author suggested that singing was the precursor to speech, Blacking made the counter-intuitive proposal that dancing preceded walking, which requires skills of balance and control to adapt to gravity. Proto-dancing of the kind presumably performed by our prehistoric forbears emerged, however, through a surrendering to the forward thrust of body movement given free rein. I suggest thinking of this as a mode of movement experimentation. Moreover, as Grau (2016) convincingly demonstrated, dancing is a fundamentally relational practice due to the collective and cooperative rhythmic activity it entails and generates. From these two premises, I argue that dancing was and is, as Blacking stated 'a primary modelling system' (1984:4) or, in other terms, a means of inventing worlds to come in a context where novel relational configurations and innovative ideas may be tested without any stakes at play. To substantiate my argument examples will be drawn from a variety of dance cultures from theatre dance to ritual masked dance.