ABSTRACT
DANCE, AS WE have seen, is a central act in the matsuri. It is so essential that, without it, a festival would either be badly mutilated or cease to be a festival. Dance makes ordinary time into festival time just as its motions are distinct from everyday movements of the body. Dance is ritual behaviour par excellence. Its movements are also divine, resembling the way deities are believed to move and manifest themselves. A corollary to this belief is that dance is no human invention, but was transmitted by the deities. By imitating the movements of the deities, people can commune with them and establish a unity between deities and themselves. The elevating, uplifting and liberating force of dance, which frees the body from the weight of gravity, took on associations with divine power, making dancers into deities. Dance is therefore not just a skill, but a transcendental, divine art.
