Consideration of the Dance from a Jungian Viewpoint

The dance is a natural manifestation of inner dynamic processes, closely related to man's psychic functioning. Its primordial roots, its universality, its numinous affect, reveal its archetypal quality. The prehistoric existence of the dance may be assumed, and with the beginning of history it makes its appearance; among the earliest relics of sculpture, painting, and myth, we find its trace. This is as true of the Eastern cultures as of the West; the dance is confined to no ethnic group. Its transformative affect has brought it into the field of magic and religion. It has been a communal activity serving to propitiate the gods, to ensure an abundant harvest, to promote victory in war, to channel and maintain libido in the accomplishment of a task. Marriage ceremonials, tribal festivities, the legends and mores of a people have been celebrated in rhythmic rituals. The dance has served as an outlet for the comic spirit, ribaldry, and satire; Mercurius has used this medium. Both sacred and profane usage have made of it a religious mystery and an unholy means to power: David danced before the Lord and Salome before Herod. Cathedrals have echoed to the slow steps of sarabande and pavane. The black revels of Walpurgis Night evoked the Powers of Darkness. Man has danced for God and the Devil.

In the modern world, the range of the dance has been severely contracted, although it remains active and potent in the realm of art and does service in both recreation and education. Yet the dance is a part of the phylogeny of man and the impulse lives on within him. To dream of the dance is not unusual. Even those whose lives have brought them no contact with this activity may nevertheless turn dancers in their dreams and be joined to the rioting witches, the outrageous buffoons, the ecstatic devotees, whose choreographic rituals and eruptions in the past gave such full expression to the flow of life. Arising afresh out of archaic residues, such dreams may be explicit, their content