In eighteenth century Philadelphia the evolution of cultivated society closely followed-or rather kept step with-developments among the English elite. Colonists considered Bath, England to be “the centre of refined Colonial Society”, and those who could afford the time and expense visited there in order to attend plays, participate in assemblies, and absorb the latest trends in fashion and culture. Following the British model, one important attainment of any colonial gentleman or lady was grace of physical manner, evidenced in good part by skill in dancing. These manners and skills could best be appreciated in assemblies of polite society, assemblies where refined conversation, dancing, card-playing, and supping frequently provided the forum for social mingling.

Philadelphia was among the first of American cities to formalize such gatherings when, in 1749, a group of gentlemen who led the city's political, professional and mercantile life joined together in establishing the Philadelphia Assembly, sometimes also called the Dancing Assembly. As early as 1753 the fame and gentility of this assembly had spread to England, for Walter Ewer, Jr. wrote from London to his cousin William Sword in Philadelphia to ask if the latter had ever attended the city's Assembly, which Ewer wrote was reported to be “a fine one”. Another source recalled that “the dancing assembly among the gentry had high vogue, partaking, before the Revolution, of the aristocratic feelings of a monarchial government”.

Among the Yoruba-speaking people of Nigeria recreational dances are a popular art form usually performed at purely social gatherings such as weddings, funerals (of elderly people), or child-naming ceremonies. They are distinct from the more symbolic dances which may accompany such social events, or even from the more formally structured and often public events such as historical festivals, initiation rites, and ancestral remembrance ceremonies. The recreational dances, which are performed mainly for relaxation and entertainment, are also opportunities to express and communicate emotions arising from the occasion being observed. Social ceremonies in Yoruba society are simply inconceivable without recreational dances.

Social festivities are of course not the only occasions for these dances; they are also performed on non-specific occasions for purely aesthetic fulfillment or as an expression of general well-being. At the end of a day's work, for example, friends or relatives get together to relax, or as they say, “múfàáji”—’ catch relaxation.’ At such fàáji evenings dance performances feature prominently alongside story-telling and riddle contests, games, poetry chants, or merely sharing anecdotes. Occasionally, too, a popular dance form may find performance space at the end of a successful symbolic ceremony, when the inclusion of a different form, both thematically and conceptually, is no longer a distraction from the desired goals of the ceremony. At such times recreational dances produce a cathartic effect following the tension of the event's significant symbolism.

The purpose of this study was to examine basic psychophysiological response levels in professional ballet dancers and the effects of different performances on these responses. Electrical activity of the trapezius muscle, blood pressure, heart rate, and skin-conductance level were measured during a resting state and before, during, and after rehearsals, first-night performances, and shows performed from 10 to 50 times. Subjective mental tension during performance was evaluated, as was performance success. The influence of sex, age, experience, artistic level, role, and the type of performance were studied.

Principals had less tension in the trapezius muscle in the resting state than corps de ballet dancers and soloists. Principals' psychophysiological activation during performances was increased more than that of soloists and corps de ballet dancers as compared with baseline values. The type of performance influenced subjective mental tension and physiological responses. During the last general rehearsals (with an audience) physiological activation was higher than during first-night and other performances. Age and experience did not affect physiological activation. Sex differences in subjectively estimated success and mental tension, as well as in physiological measurements, were small.

The demand for ultra-leanness imposed on today's ballerina has evolved over primarily the last thirty years, and did not characterize the traditional classical ballet that dominated the field during its preceding four hundred years. Evolving public taste has tended to prefer increasingly slender figures, and the more Olympian levels of performance dancers must now exhibit further reinforce the demand for extreme leanness.

The author's forty years of dance education experience and performance of classical ballet have made her aware that excellent training has become ever more widely available to the younger members of our society. Their rigorous training— continued well into the high school years—supports the achievement of a high level of technical and aesthetic perfection. Today's elite classical dancers are trained to make ever more revolutions in ever more complex and faster paced turns, and to do quicker and more intricate allegro work. They are trained to execute more complex jumps with greater elevation, and to sustain their balances with less preparation time. Furthermore, as the quality and quantity of professionally-oriented ballet schools have increased dramatically, today's dancer is facing an exponentially increased level of competition.

Increasingly demanding techniques and more intense levels of competition require today's dancers to meet what are, in the author's view, extreme standards of leanness. Each year among the hundreds of beautifully trained dancers who audition for the few vacancies available in professional ballet companies, many are rejected on sight because they do not project the proper, or ideal, body image: long legs, long arms, long neck, oval shaped head; a body of excellent proportions; and, perhaps of greatest importance, a “bone-thin” frame. Ballet masters recognize that extreme leanness enables the dancer to become more energy-efficient, physically articulate, and agile; it facilitates partnering and pointe dancing; and projects an aesthetically pleasing athletic, or sylph-like, image to the public that subsidizes the art.

The Green Table is unique on our stages. In the late 20th century no one is dancing anything quite like it. This is not only because of its age–many ballets are older but look modern. Dancers almost unconsciously speak in the idiom of their time, steadily and imperceptibly polishing the patina off old artifacts to keep them fresh. I think even in well-preserved ballets there is much that is not prescribed, many expressive choices that aren't even acknowledged. When a dancer learns a role, he or she tries to accomodate to the steps, to own them. Most often, the steps end up accomodating to the dancer. They end up looking contemporary, whatever their origin.

The Green Table is an exception. Its production style and its dance idiom are attached to the late-expressionist period, that remote phase of cultural history between the great wars, so earnest in its innocence and anger, its fears and its ironies. Because of his particular method of fitting image to action, Kurt Jooss gave us a document that insists on telling us about its time, even as it reflects into our own.

The goal of expressionistic art, literature, and music was to use emotion and memory as a conduit to more universal feelings. Unlike the Romantics, to whom they were related, the expressionists did not view their art solely as a personal outcry. Expressionism nearly always had a spiritual component. This took the direction not of personal uplift or ecstasy, but of a surge toward the cosmos. Expressionists wanted to know and dramatize their connections with nature, with archeological time, with mystery and magic, and with other human beings living in their own time and place. Early expressionism unleashed a chaotic, anarchic freedom that often looked like madness. After the real trauma of World War I, artists began to draw back from those limitless, destabilized, early visions, into the safety of more rational, formal structures.

Comparison is the basis of theory. To know a thing is to know what it is not, and to theorize is therefore to compare a thing with many other things, including the thing itself at earlier stages, if the theorizing is about how the thing develops. The more “abstract” the theory, the greater is the range of things that can be compared—the more phenomena, in other words, the theory embraces.

The above paragraph is our way of warning the reader that, while we offer a theoretical perspective on the development of ballet, we spend most of our pages introducing an abstract way of making comparisons–comparisons pertinent not only to the differences between contemporary and earlier ballet but also to the differences between ballet and other artistic endeavors. The publication of this essay in a dance journal is justified by our concluding pages, therefore, but it is our hope that not just dance theorists will profit from (and add to) our analysis, but so also will persons of a theoretical bent interested in any of the arts.

One more word of preliminary explanation. A decade ago we published an essay in the Journal of Social History that offered a radically sociological interpretation of the development of ballet. Our article challenged conventional accounts of ballet history that charted the course of ballet as chiefly a product of its dominant performances and personalities.