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The impulse to move is the raw material that cultures shape into evocative sequences of physical activity that we call dance. This phenomenon is universal. Courting and courtly dances; wedding dances and funeral dances; dances of healing and dances of instruction; dances to arouse, amuse, or uplift onlookers; dances to usher in the seasons and dances that appeal directly to the gods; dances that tell stories and dances that seek to create a formal beauty that cannot be put into words: There is no end to the variety of purposes to which the dancing body can be put. But meaning as well as beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and one person's shudder of religious ecstasy may be another person's shimmy of sexual abandon. So intensely personal is dance, so closely linked to cultural identity, that when people disagree about the meaning and value of specific dances the resulting confusion may breed contempt, anger, even violence. To question or belittle other people's dances is to challenge their right to be themselves. As the famous line of W. B. Yeats reminds us (and no book about dance would be complete without quoting it): "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
"The Power of Dance" by Gerald Jonas. Patterns. A short prose reader 5th ed.