Everyone loves to dance, even people who are too shy to bust a move when someone is watching! Dance is a form of expression that is alive within all of us, and popular styles of dance, like ballet, ballroom, and jazz, have withstood the test of time through their showmanship. Dance festivals are used to celebrate the art of contemporary and ancient movement styles.
The Importance of Dance in Human Culture
Dance is a form of art that recreates selected sequences of human motions, often embedded with symbolism or aesthetic values. Dance can serve multiple purposes, like ceremonial, social, or competitive, but most forms of dance are separated between theatrical (performed for an audience) and social (performed for anyone).
Participatory dances are commonly found in social gatherings, weddings, and festivals as they are perfect venues for playing or creating music. With the help of a flower delivery service, the famous bouquet dance performed at weddings has both a theatrical and social purpose. When another person catches the bouquet, they are bestowed with luck and a potential future spouse.
There are thousands of styles of dance that a person can perform. To try and give tribute to professional dancers and their performances, dance festivals are created.
Why are Dance Festivals Unique?
The prevalence of dance in human culture makes it inevitable that festivals would spring up around specific dances or the art in general. There are plenty of reasons why a dance festival is created or celebrated. Here are a few reasons why dance festivals are so unique.
Promotes a Common or Rare Style of Dance
At their purest form, a dance festival is created to showcase experts performing a style of dance. These festivals typically don’t have a competitive element, but if there is, it’s friendly. Members of the festival may or may not be encouraged to dance with or around the group on stage, but these experts are performing with the intent to provide an entertaining performance.
Traditional Dancing for Cultural Exploration
Dance can tell us a lot about a person’s culture or upbringing as practically all countries have multiple traditional dances that were used for ceremonial, religious, or storytelling purposes. For example, North American Ingenious populations have the pow wow, while Japan performs kabuki. On-lookers can gain valuable insight into how a population performed through dance.
Explores the Ancient History of Dance Ceremonies
Dancers have come together to revive accent styles of dance lost to time or tell stories through dance about historical happenings. For example, Sparta, an ancient Greek province that took pride in its military prowess, instructed boys older than 5 to dance for their elders to become strong. History-based dance festivals often broaden people’s understanding of dance.
Can Discover New Talent Though Competition
Dance and competition go hand and hand. Plenty of dances were created with competition in mind, like breakdancing and hip-hop. In a dance competition, performers will compete to win a monetary prize, trophies, or a scholarship in front of a live audience. Some contests will let the audience decide, but more serious competitions will use a panel of judges.
Festivals Bring People Together
There are few activities more social than dancing, and with so many different kinds of dance, the possibilities of learning and connecting are endless. Dance festivals attract a lot of tourists to areas that typically don’t see a lot of foot traffic, which can also help the local economy. All and all, festivals make dancing more accessible and fun for all demographics and age groups.
Dance Festivals are Used as a part of a Celebration
Sometimes a dance festival won’t be the primary focus of the event but is used to get the audience more involved or end an event on a good note. The Obon Festival, an annual event that honors the dead, includes trained and untrained dancers in the special Obon dances. Although the dance isn’t the main draw to the festival, it does make the experience more fun.