In the article called, “Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance,” written by Deidre Sklar. She discussed about the five premises that a person should know if they wanted to understand the culture of a dance. The article could help readers analyze the movement in a piece of dance and understand how it could be related to a culture. This essay will discuss about the Native American Sun Dance using three of the premises from Deidre Sklar. Those premises are one has to look beyond movement to get at its meaning, movement knowledge is a kind of cultural knowledge and movement knowledge is conceptual and emotional as well as kinesthetic. According to Lisa Doolittle and Heather Elton, Sun dance is “a great religious drama in which
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He is helped to his feet and then leans back, with his weight against the rope, and continues to dance in this manner, trying to rip his flesh free from the thongs” (Medicine of the Brave, 119). This image represents one of the premises from Deidre Sklar which is one has to look beyond movement to get at its meaning. The reason is that if someone from the outside of the culture happened to see this dance. They would not be able to understand why the dancers must went through all those pains to receive blessings from the above of all. But if the audiences could understand the idea that, “Symbolically, flesh represents ignorance. When they break loose from the thong, they are being freed from the bounds of the flesh” (Dance of the Brave, 119). Then they would look beyond the movements of the dance and understand it differently. Sklar believes, “The concepts embodied in movement are not necessarily evident in the movement itself. To understand movement as cultural behavior, one has to move into words” (Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance, 31). In other words, the movement of a dance would not always directly reflect the meaning of it. Sometimes, the audiences would have to translate the movements that they see from a dancer into words to understand the true meaning …show more content…
This is a critical belief in the Native American Sun Dance culture because they believe that “the purpose of the dance was to remove the bone pieces from the dancers body” (Wiwanke Wachipi - The Sun Dance). This idea could be connected to one of Sklar’s premises in which movement knowledge is a kind of cultural knowledge. Sklar believes, “Movement is an essential aspect of culture that has been undervalued and underexamined, even trivialized” (Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance, 30). In other words, the society have stopped caring about the true meaning behind the movements in a piece of dance. Instead, many people pay more attention to how beautiful a movement might look or how difficult it is to perform a movement. If a dance piece does not look good to the audiences, then the audiences would think that the dance piece is not valuable and unattractive. Additionally, that kind of thought could be dangerous for the future of art because an art piece should not only be judge only its appearance. But it should also be judge by the cultural meaning behind
He is helped to his feet and then leans back, with his weight against the rope, and continues to dance in this manner, trying to rip his flesh free from the thongs” (Medicine of the Brave, 119). This image represents one of the premises from Deidre Sklar which is one has to look beyond movement to get at its meaning. The reason is that if someone from the outside of the culture happened to see this dance. They would not be able to understand why the dancers must went through all those pains to receive blessings from the above of all. But if the audiences could understand the idea that, “Symbolically, flesh represents ignorance. When they break loose from the thong, they are being freed from the bounds of the flesh” (Dance of the Brave, 119). Then they would look beyond the movements of the dance and understand it differently. Sklar believes, “The concepts embodied in movement are not necessarily evident in the movement itself. To understand movement as cultural behavior, one has to move into words” (Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance, 31). In other words, the movement of a dance would not always directly reflect the meaning of it. Sometimes, the audiences would have to translate the movements that they see from a dancer into words to understand the true meaning …show more content…
This is a critical belief in the Native American Sun Dance culture because they believe that “the purpose of the dance was to remove the bone pieces from the dancers body” (Wiwanke Wachipi - The Sun Dance). This idea could be connected to one of Sklar’s premises in which movement knowledge is a kind of cultural knowledge. Sklar believes, “Movement is an essential aspect of culture that has been undervalued and underexamined, even trivialized” (Five Premises for a Culturally Sensitive Approach to Dance, 30). In other words, the society have stopped caring about the true meaning behind the movements in a piece of dance. Instead, many people pay more attention to how beautiful a movement might look or how difficult it is to perform a movement. If a dance piece does not look good to the audiences, then the audiences would think that the dance piece is not valuable and unattractive. Additionally, that kind of thought could be dangerous for the future of art because an art piece should not only be judge only its appearance. But it should also be judge by the cultural meaning behind