[World Dance various sources]

Beauty and variety at first seem endless and  bewildering for every spoken language there is an accompanying language of movement each one  carrying messages from the heart of a society to understand the role of dance in human history  we must somehow decode these varied patterns of body language of Silent Communication  these are folk dances of Germany [Music] these whirling dervishes of Turkey [Music]  ostrich dancers from the Andes [Music] funeral masters from the Sudan [Music] Americans at a Sunday afternoon love-in in Los  Angeles what have these different movement Styles each one apparently so unique and so irrational  what do they have to tell us about the history of culture with choreo metrics we enter this  planetary Kaleidoscope looking for steady pattern searching to find measures of movement that vary  regularly with culture and with social structure this Burmese Hill farmer appears to be  tracing intricate circles with his movements we'll begin our search here observing  the tracing of the limbs through space in Navajo girls Define a one-dimensional  system and to the spiraling arabesques of these Indonesian candle dancers  tracing three-dimensional paths [Music] the up and down bouncing and linear arm  shaking of these New Guinea dancers shapes a one-dimensional style contrastive to the curving  two-dimensional gestures of these Polynesians and to the spiraling three-dimensional gyrations  of a Celanese fire dancer foreign [Music]