Reach back a long distance into times of the Stone Age when humans lived together eating, sleeping, hunting game scraping, carving and making marks reflecting signs, language, and symbols on walls, floors, and ceilings of caves.
Life was vitally portrayed in rich and abundant ways when animals were imitated and admired yet, not exempt, from the food chain and prey. In recognition of seasons and cycles of the beauty and profundity of life and death rituals and sacred ceremonies were part of the whole. There were significant meanings and relationships in the living veins of art, body, and soul.
Frederick C. Tillis1
Art, Body, and Soul
Dance has been an important part of ceremony, rituals, celebrations, and entertainment since prehistoric times: "One of the earliest structured uses of dance may have been in the performance and in the telling of myths. It was also sometimes used to show feelings for one of the opposite gender. It is linked to the origin of 'love making.' Before the production of written languages, dance was one of the methods of passing these stories down from generation to generation."2 Depictions of human figures dancing and primitive musical instruments have been discovered in prehistoric cave dwellings and rock shelters around the world.
There is a human need to tell stories, share myths and legends through art. It is the primary mode in which we learn about life and ourselves, discover human values, become sociable. Sharing myths and legends, of stories of loss and grief and hope and love is as old as the ancient Sumerian epic Gilgamesh,3 which extends back to the third millennium BC.
Recent CNS Nursing and the Arts columns have presented and discussed the importance of dance for those with Parkinson's disease. The ways in which dancers use "thought, imagination, eyes, ears, and touch to control movement" have proven to be the key to helping individuals with movement disorders gain balance and freer movement. As Parkinson's disease progresses, individuals have difficulty with expression, communication, and fluid movement. The art of dance portrays myth, stories, and legends in gestures and images. It unleashes expressiveness hidden within. This is what the sculptor Auguste Rodin called "fugitive truth."4 A medieval monk once said that the faculties of the soul were memory, reason, will, and the 5 senses. If we accept this to be true, then this dance class speaks to that truth.
When the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) teachers of the Parkinson's Dance Program (PD Program) conduct classes, they include elements of modern dance, ballet, tap, jazz, social dancing, and aspects of the MMDG repertoire. Each of these dance styles has a rich history. All are about music and expression. The gestures in dance are a kind of sign language, a primal act meant to tell a story. However, it is the teaching of aspects of the MMDG repertoire that, I believe, is central to the success of the PD Program. Because students of the PD class learn aspects of actual dance programs performed by the MMDG such as the opera Dido and Aeneas, they are thus taking part in "the recognition of seasons and cycles of the beauty and profundity of life and death rituals and sacred ceremonies." They have rediscovered what should have been theirs all along "significant meanings, and relationships in the living veins of art, body, and soul."
Frederick C. Tillis, PhD, is Professor Emeritus Department of Music and Dance and serves as Director Emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center and Director of Jazz in July Workshops in Improvisation at the University. His catalogue includes more than 150 compositions and commissions, spanning both jazz and classical European tradition in various media-symphony, orchestra, jazz instrumental, choral, chamber music and vocal works. Melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic textures reflect elements of various musics of the world including Asian and Western cultural backgrounds.
Dr Tillis has written thirteen books of poetry and a text book Jazz Theory and Improvisation. As a jazz saxophonist, he has traveled with Tillis-Holmes Jazz Duo and the Tradewinds Jazz Ensemble to 19 countries. He has been artist in residence in South Africa, Japan, and Thailand (http://www.frederickctillis.com).
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