THE NATURE OF DANCE

          Dance isn’t just the food to the soul, a mirror to reflect our movements back at us, the chemistry between two shadows, but dance is a pure natural native mother to nature itself. Looking at nature and the history behind it, we will find vast amount of indications and interpretations that explanations what govern every techniques used by dancers. Many historians, philosophers, and psychologist have given different in-depth to the meaning and definition of nature; which explains J.S Mill, a good philosopher who stands against walls to defend what he stands for on different topics indicating how nature applies to us and how it can be applied to the real world with clear examples. He defines nature as the simplest, acceptation, and collective name for all facts, actual, possible or a name for the mode partly known to us and partly unknown; in which all things take place. Mill also states that the nature of things means its entire capacity of exhibiting phenomena; which vary in different circumstance described in general forms of words called laws of things called nature. Doris Humphrey a great pioneer to all dancers and a great scholar herself understood the nature of dance, which is so evident in her choreography and how dancers can relate their bodily movements to nature itself.                                                                                      My journey at Loyola as a dance student has being a learned journey of great experience and transformation. Without any previous knowledge in any dance composition or known theory, I have since seen myself transform from a premature dancer into a beautiful and different dancer entirely; each day I put on my ballet shoe, I understand what my body is telling me to do at every movement attempted in class without any hardship by making use of my breath as emphasized by the instructor, which according to Doris Humphrey, breath rhythm is very helpful when it becomes an importance component of self-concept to any dancer that exhibit the usefulness of it.                                                                                                                                                 The fall and recovery which is very important in all movements performed in class, has been emphasized a lot all through my dance history here at Loyola; but by learning and reading the importance of it, I understand why the topic comes up a whole lot in class to help prevent some major injuries that students encounter when proper placements and movements are not obeyed. Doris’s use of gravity shows what I can do as a dancer in terms of balance, which I make use of when pulling up in releve to prepare me for a jump or when performing a pirouette, which is important even though we just started learning the basics of a pirouette.