A Comparative Study of the Movement Accentuation of the Body in Different Nations

Extract

The three gods of the Indian pantheon are represented in sculpture with many arms, so as to symbolize a multiplicity of actions executed simultaneously. I find a similar manifestation in the classical Indian dance: a contrapuntal simultaneousness in pointing out the direction, and rhythmical accentuation, of the movement executed by the different parts of the body, each of them acting and reacting in its own way. The stony position of a quasi-polyrhythmic phenomenon in the sculptures is transformed in the dance into a polyrhythm of movement.

From my own choreographical and research work, from always having observed and used bodily reactions in the dance, I have long been aware that every part of the body has a mind and sense of its own. (This is, from a different angle, the same conclusion which led Ouspensky, in his New Model of the Universe, to say that during a dream each one of the different parts of the body thinks independently of the other parts, and in a different way from the others.)