ABSTRACT
The idea of environment most fully encompasses the rich contextual field of human experience. Most important for humans is the cultural environment. Awareness is growing of the fact that no body exists without culture, and that culture shapes the body in specific ways. One way to speak of the body from this environmental standpoint is to forego the word 'body' altogether and talk only of 'embodiment'. Music in dance does not just enter and activate our bodies. Its range is more diffuse still, spreading out to engulf the space in which it occurs. Because music always occurs as an event and usually first as a performance, bodily involvement is necessary. This chapter illustrates two examples, a literary one that both states the multi-dimensional character of music directly and exemplifies it in practice, and a musical one that exemplifies musical embodiment on many levels and with unusual richness. The experience of music offers powerful proof of the embeddedness of human being.
