dancing week one

So this is the first entry in my online learning journal for anthropology of dance. Funnily enough i don't know what to say. The first lesson we discussed approaches to the study of dance. The meaning centred approach suggested by Wulf in which dance is looked at as a cultural practice and in terms of what it means to the individual is probobly the most interesting approach. It is certainly the easiest to answer in terms of my own self reflexion of my Salsa experiemce this week. On Tuesday I went to the beginners salsa lesson in Mandela Hall, Skinner's idea of becoming aclimatised to movement was evident as the instructor had the students doing the 'karate kid' move, 'the cowboy', 'the sunrise' and 'the shimmy'. The class although a mix group of ages and sexes all seemed to have fun. However I did not get a sense of 'groupness' in the same way as during the Dance ensemble with my anthropology class on Wednesday. The teaching style on Wednesday was more technical and the steps practiced were harder but the class wasn't as aukward as the night before. It felts like something more towards Webers trancendence idea. Finally Friday night took me to Salsa in the Empire. We arrived late so just had an hours dancing before it closed but in that hour we all spun round the dance floor with several strangers, something we would not have done in a normal club as boundaries were lowered for the night. That hour in the Empire was not enough and we went on to a house party where Salsa tunes were DJed and we danced till morning. As Drid Williams suggests there is something inside us which makes us want to dance.