Friday, April 15, 2022

FRIDAY MUSIC: Dancing with joy, by JD

Roger Scruton understood the value of dancing; it is essentially about what he called 'withness' i.e. dancing with as opposed to dancing apart from other people. 

Interestingly he prefers the modern 'rock an roll' energetic dancing of couples in preference to the degeneracy of stiff formal ballroom dancing. He sees the former as having a natural link with to older style of traditional dance in the Mediterranean. 

"The dance is a social activity, in which we exalt and idealise our rational nature. It shows freedom and discipline united in a single gesture, and at the same time made subject to the demands of social order..... it is an occupation of the whole person, and a display of the grace and completion of the soul."

All of that is a long winded way of intruducing these dance videos showing loosely choreographed and (mostly) spontaneous displays of 'social cohesion' or 'withness' as Scruton describes it.









And finally.......... the painting which illustrates this last video refers to the 'heretical' text known as The Acts of John which tells how Jesus led his disciples in a round dance before the crucifixion as described here - http://gnosis.org/library/grs-mead/grsm_hymnofjesus.htm

The Hymn of Jesus was set to music by Gustav Holst and there are one or two versions elsewhere on YouTube.

Lord Of The Dance Hymn (Contemporary Worship Song)

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