Dancers only... When is a movement just a movement and when is it a dance?

Question:Please be thoughtful.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Please be thoughtful.

A movement is just a movement when it is the thing, itself, and there is nothing more to it: a scratch, a bite, wriggling in a guy's lap. A movement becomes dance when it takes on symbolic meaning that communicates an idea or emotion that is more than the sum of its parts.

I'm going to make an analogy to verbal utterances. Take the sound "uh." When this sound is emitted when you're trying to push a boulder, it is just the thing, itself - a grunt. But when you utter two of them in rapid succession - "uh-uh" - it can mean "no." You don't even have to shake your head, yet the listener will be compelled to hear meaning that communicates more than just the double-grunt sound.

Or how about drawing lines? This line - I - could be drawn on a paper to divide the left side from the right. As such, it is just a line. But when we use it to represent a word in written communication, it takes on the meaning of "me, myself." Or this line - ). If it were just a single brushstroke, it would be pretty meaningless as a curved line. But add more marks - :-) - and we have a smiley emoticon, a form of artistic communication.

The same goes for movement versus dance. Dance is a form of communication. You can have dance without music and you can have mere movement (washing dishes, lifting weights, performing a sex act) with music playing, even if you're moving in time to the beat. The existence of passion or "putting your heart and soul" into it does not distinguish one from another, as you can have someone performing a ritual act of religious purification by whipping themselves while the Hallelujah Chorus plays in the background, and it still won't be dance.

A movement is stamping your foot to kill a bug. Dance is when you stamp your feet to ask the gods for rain, re-enact the buffalo stampede around the camp fire, or do a shuffle-flap-ball change.

A dance is when you are moving to a beat and atleast have one of more move.
a move is just a move, its as simple as that.

A movement is always a dance when it is creative and from the heart. A movement is always a movement when it produces an emotion (good or bad) in the dancer and the viewer!

dance is an artistic expression with an emotion or purpose behind it and a story to tell. a movement is just moving with no real purpose or feeling behind it

A movement is when you just don't put your heart and soul into it.

I like to think of dance as when you put all of your heart, soul, passion and freedom into any interaction you make, it doesn't necessarily have to be like jazz or ballet etc. it can be as simple as waving your hand.

a dance is anything you put your heart into! It is kinda how you look at it- a movement can be something you learn and think of it as a chunk, while a dance is an art form and it seems to flow better. It you make your movements flow, it will be a dance!

A movement is only a machination of something that you have been taught, is something that you know when you hear "5-6-7-8" you are to do.

But when it is a dance, your soul will fly through time and space and like two lovers in an embrace, your soul and the music will become one and you are now not only the person moving, but are now part of this song that has somehow married itself to your soul.

Movement is only exercise, but dance is your soul telling the world that it is happy, that it is shining, that it is singing its gloriousness and its divine sense of being that it is, that you are, alive.

A dancer is someone whose very life is engulfed by the passion that he or she feels when after the count of 8 is finished, the collision of heart, soul, mind and body explode into a mad and orgasmic happiness, a blissful sense of being, that can never be reproduced nor pretended to be anything other than what it truly is.

When a hula dancer becomes one with the beat of the drums, when said dancer sends their kahea out and up into the heavens, where Papa and Wakea are, where God lives and where Angels sing in the presence of a love so grand and deep and real, so childlike and timeless, it is almost though you can see the music as it flies around them, like butterflies in a mad rush around brand new blooms, heavy with nectar and brilliant beneath the spring time sky.

Mapu
Choreographer - Ke Uhane O Ka Hula

Also on the web as The Web's Infamous Aunty

A movement is the same as one single step of a dance. Several steps, movements, are necessary for a dance.

A movement is when a location or position is changed.
Dance, is when it's passion. Coming from the heart. More than movement, it has a power of connection. And the power to inspire. :)