Hava Nagila and Dance of Evolution
“Art is a normal and necessary behavior of human beings and like other common and universal occupations such as talking, working, exercising, playing, socializing, learning, loving, and caring, should be recognized, encouraged and developed in everyone. Via art, experience is heightened, elevated, made more memorable and significant” --Ellen Dissanayake
Hava Nagila-- meaning "Let us Rejoice" in Hebrew-- is a popular wedding song and dance (known as the hora) in Jewish communities and an instrumental piece we've been jamming to in the Our Time Wiggles & Giggles class this fall semester. So when I saw its name mentioned in a recent New York Times article, I was delighted to read a scholarly article on yet another perspective on the origin of dance and art but this time connecting it to the mother and child interaction and bond!
Natalie Angier, the author of the article illuminates the work of Ellen Dissanayake, an independent scholar at the University of Washington whose work focuses on the anthropological exploration of art and culture. At a symposium this month, Dissanayake proposed that the origin of art "can be traced back to the most primal of collusions — the intimate interplay between mother and child."
Based on Dissanayake's observational research of mother and child interactions, she's found that "the tightly choreographed rituals that bond mother and child look a lot like the techniques and constructs at the heart of much of our art. These operations of ritualization, these affiliative signals between mother and infant, are aesthetic operations... And aesthetic operations are what artists do. Knowingly or not, when you are choreographing a dance or composing a piece of music, you are formalizing, exaggerating, repeating, manipulating expectation and dynamically varying your theme."
In the past, Dissanayake has also theorized that music "originated in the ritualized verbal exchanges which go on between mothers and babies during the first year of life." (Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind, p.8-- another great scholarly book on the origin of music and how the human brain is wired for music.)
I love reading articles like this because it affirms how innately musical, artistic and creative we are as human beings, and how artfully we interact with young babies and children in our lives.
To read the full article by Natalie Angier, click here: The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start
Hava Nagila-- meaning "Let us Rejoice" in Hebrew-- is a popular wedding song and dance (known as the hora) in Jewish communities and an instrumental piece we've been jamming to in the Our Time Wiggles & Giggles class this fall semester. So when I saw its name mentioned in a recent New York Times article, I was delighted to read a scholarly article on yet another perspective on the origin of dance and art but this time connecting it to the mother and child interaction and bond!
Natalie Angier, the author of the article illuminates the work of Ellen Dissanayake, an independent scholar at the University of Washington whose work focuses on the anthropological exploration of art and culture. At a symposium this month, Dissanayake proposed that the origin of art "can be traced back to the most primal of collusions — the intimate interplay between mother and child."
Based on Dissanayake's observational research of mother and child interactions, she's found that "the tightly choreographed rituals that bond mother and child look a lot like the techniques and constructs at the heart of much of our art. These operations of ritualization, these affiliative signals between mother and infant, are aesthetic operations... And aesthetic operations are what artists do. Knowingly or not, when you are choreographing a dance or composing a piece of music, you are formalizing, exaggerating, repeating, manipulating expectation and dynamically varying your theme."
In the past, Dissanayake has also theorized that music "originated in the ritualized verbal exchanges which go on between mothers and babies during the first year of life." (Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind, p.8-- another great scholarly book on the origin of music and how the human brain is wired for music.)
I love reading articles like this because it affirms how innately musical, artistic and creative we are as human beings, and how artfully we interact with young babies and children in our lives.
To read the full article by Natalie Angier, click here: The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start
posted by Miss Sunny at 12:03 PM
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