ABSTRACT
When I tell people that I teach undergraduate courses at Skidmore College that focus on the anthropology of dance, they frequently give me quizzical looks that ask, “What does anthropology have to do with dance and what does dance have to do with anthropology?” These are fair questions to ask, especially when the popular image of an anthropologist today is associated with Indiana Jones-types digging up past civilizations, or alternatively with Jane Goodall-types patiently observing the behavior of nonhuman primates in the wild. But for a cultural anthropologist like myself who studies the contemporary lifeways of “other” human groups, the relationship between anthropology and dance is a close one. It turns out, in fact, that dance is a near-universal human activity practiced in a variety of ways throughout the ages and around the world.
