We are all aware that, when we are lazy for any length of time, we get slack and soft. The primitive savage who lives by hunting and is in continual danger of raids from his neighbors, cannot afford to get slack. He must keep himself fit every day of life. How was this to be managed by our prehistoric forefathers when there was no fighting, with the weather soft, and a delicious fish easily to be caught quite near the dwelling? It is pretty safe to say that, owing to the want of condition—if they were not dancing tribes—they did not leave descendants which are among us in the twentieth century.
It seems strange how readily a group of negroes who are apparently exhausted after a long day’s work will join in dance with their fellows, and how, when not very tired, they will in their laziest moments spring up and take vigorous exercise of this kind. Every doctor will tell you that there are plenty of women to-day who have not the strength nor the energy to do any work or to walk a couple of miles, but who will dance from evening till morning without showing any great fatigue. Among such Pagans as the Zulus and Masai, who organize themselves for war almost as well as has ever been done by the most civilized Christians, there is practically no distinction between military exercises and dancing. This is proof enough to show that dancing had a survival value throughout the long stretch of the Stone Age. Dancing taught primitive men to move in compact bodies without confusion, and especially without getting so bunched together that they could not use their weapons.
To-day the true war-dance only persists among us in the form of military marchings, but the other primitive dances have left numerous descendants of all kinds and degrees, down to the modern tango. Among these non-military dances the survival value, apart from the healthy exercise which they provided and their general disciplinary effects, worked through the agency of sexual selection.
In the case of the primitive dances the working of sexual selection was beneficial as conducive to racial fitness. The dances in which women took part gave opportunity for appraisement of exactly the kind needed for a sound choice of mates under savage conditions. It afforded the chance, so lacking in our present civilization, of advertising any admirable qualities which might be possessed. It was a test not only of physical grace and perfection, but of activity, taste and temper. It contributed to honest matrimonial dealing—especially when danced in the approved ballroom costumes of savage times.
There have been many discussions as to why clothes were first worn—whether for ornament, warmth, or decency—but one may fairly say without any doubt whatever that, from the first ages until now, dance clothing has been mainly decorative. Here we find an ethical justification of matters connected with dancing dress, which has often provoked severe criticism among puritans. Without a doubt from the earliest times until now the dance has been a chief purifying agent in the marriage market—has played the part, in fact, of those market inspectors appointed to guard against adulteration.
It is a most extraordinary thing, when we come to consider man’s place in Nature, that he ever began to dance. Not that dancing is uncommon in Nature; many birds, especially those of the crane tribe, execute elaborate dances during their season of courtship, and as a mere pastime when they have nothing else to do. Few, if any, of the mammalia appear to indulge in organized dances, unless we give such a name to the frisking of young lambs and the prancing evolutions of horses and antelopes. Assuredly, in our direct line of descent nothing of the kind could have existed as far back as our knowledge and imagination will carry us. You cannot very well dance in the trees, which, according to Darwin, were the real nurseries of our species; and when you come down to solid earth your weak prehensile lower members would only make you ridiculous and contemptible if they attempted any performance of the kind.
Mother Nature, however, is a dame of infinite varieties, and seems continually to be trying the most bizarre experiments apparently without the least prompting or justification. The products of these experiments are called ‘sports,’ and there seems no limit to their possibilities. Chimpanzees delight in thumping hollow trees and knocking pieces of wood together, while it is said that the gorilla waddles to war to the sound of the drum, improvising a substitute by beating his hands against his brawny chest.
In the Western world professionalism in dancing has happily not had the blighting effect on the pursuit that it seems to have had on some other forms of pastime. But if we go to the East we find that practically all other forms of dancing have ceased to exist. We see the effect of this tendency most fully developed in China, where the recreative dancing of European society seems to be quite beyond the comprehension of a well-bred Chinese, who naïvely asks the question: ‘Why do you not pay people to dance for you?’
Stage dancing seems to be an interesting instance of the degeneration into pure luxury or something which was at one time a helpful influence to the race. This is a tendency observable in many phases of life when the pressure of evolutionary forces is somewhat relaxed. Most of the luxuries pertain to matters which at one time had a survival value, and it cannot be said that they have retired from among the evolutionary forces even to-day; but their effect, if still beneficial to the race, lies in aiding Nature to eliminate the unfit.