ABSTRACT
In Ten Lectures on Theories of the Dance (1991) semasiologist Drid Williams presents a thorough review of the dance literature available to dance scholars today.2 She constructs a sort of intellectual genealogy, examining critically the manner in which various writers over the years have attempted to understand and account for danced behaviours and for the beliefs and practices of those who dance. She demonstrates quite clearly how inadequate, often ludicrous, is much of what has been written about dance. She shows that writers have seen the origins of dance in sex, in play, in animal behaviour, or in magic, to mention a few examples. This made her conclude that 'in short, the dance could have begun in nearly any primordium that anyone cares to postulate and its essence has been located nearly everywhere' (1991: 7).
