One of the most widespread and dramatic styles of folk dance performance throughout much of Europe over the past six centuries has been sword dancing, specifically the linked styles—often called “hilt and point” or “chain” sword dances—which were first reported in the late Middle Ages and are still practiced in a number of countries. In these dance styles, a group of dancers, normally ranging from four or five up to twenty-odd, moves through various figures, minimally lines and circles but often using very complex and demanding movements. The dancers are connected to one another by swords, or sword-like implements of metal or wood, which they usually hold with the hilt in their right hands and the point of the next dancer's sword in their left. The dancers have traditionally been men or boys, often members of a guild or profession, or in rural areas, the men of a parish or district.

The dances are usually presented in the winter, most often during Carnival time or Shrovetide in much of northern and central Europe, or on Boxing Day or Plough Monday in England. But they might also take place on a local patron saint's feast day or other popular holiday. In Spain and Portugal the dances have been performed at Corpus Christi, in the summer. In many countries they have been presented to entertain royalty, wealthy tourists, folklore collectors, or other distinguished audiences. Particular speeches, songs, or short dramas have sometimes been associated with these dances. It has not been uncommon for a piece of mock combat to take place, perhaps with a fencing scene. A dramatic moment in some dances comes when the swords are locked or laid together. They then can be displayed in a star shape to the audience; used as a platform for a performer to stand on; or placed around a performer's neck, for an “execution”, sometimes followed by a “resurrection.” Nonetheless, the emphasis and originality of this style of dancing lies in the linked movements of the dancers, connected by their swords.

Agon has often been cited as a key composer/choreographer collaboration, and its choreographer, George Balanchine, himself considered it “the most perfect work” to come out of his creative relationship with composer Igor Stravinsky (I). It is surprising, therefore, that so little has been written regarding the details of the interaction of music and dance. Most writers have concentrated on the dance or on the musical aspects of Agon, or have made only broad generalizations about its musical/choreographic structure.

In this article, I begin the analysis of structural relationships between music and dance with the main focus on rhythm. This is perhaps an obvious starting point for analysis, but it seems an especially important one, given the rhythmic complexity of the musical score and Balanchine's acknowledgement of the rhythmic lead that music provided forhim (2). It was Stravinsky's rhythmic style that Balanchine so often referred to when admiring the composer's work (3). In Agon, Balanchine seems to have been far less concerned with responding to pitch structure than to the rhythmic content of the music.

In the twentieth century, dance performances in the Republic of Korea have undergone a number of changes in terms of settings, audiences, and performers. Since the 1970s dance activity has blossomed under the auspices of university dance and physical education departments; there has been a steady increase in the number of professors of dance and also in the number of students majoring in dance. With the regular academic calendar, a concert season has developed and professor-choreographers have been pushed to provide new dance pieces for these concerts. Many of the new works freely blend vocabulary from various styles of Korean dance, such as court, professional female entertainer (kisaeng) (I), mask, and farmers' dances, with spatial arrangements suited for a proscenium stage.

While this creative activity is indicative of the growth taking place in all areas of Korean society, older specialists in Korean culture and arts have noted that recent efforts involve changes in the movement qualities and moods created by dancers. As these specialists watch younger dancers perform the traditional dances they often lament that “something” is being lost (Lee, Du-hyon 1984).

Whatever the particular intentions of the playwright, Arthur Schnitzler's Der Schleier der Pierrette (The Veil of Pierrette), a ballet-pantomime first performed in Dresden, January 22, 1910, with music by Ernst von Dohnányi, became, in the first year of its composition, a vehicle of avant-garde experimentalists on the Russian theatrical scene. In October 1910, Vsevolod Meyerhold used Schnitzler's ballet-pantomime for his own avant-garde interests in commedia dell'arte motifs, producing Columbine's Scarf (a variant title) at the House of Interludes in St. Petersburg. Three years later, in 1913, Alexander Tairov, as anti-Meyerholdean as he was anti-Stanislavskian, also staged a version of Der Schleier under the title The Veil of Pierrette, at the Mardzhanov's Free Theatre in Moscow. Both directors, relying on different aesthetic principles, used the commedia dell'arte ballet-pantomime as a statement against Stanislavskian psychological realism (1).

This article is part of a larger work in progress in which I am exploring meanings of community, tradition, and performance practice among contra dancers, callers, and musicians, and looking at this material from a local, regional, and national perspective (1). In this article I analyze the contra dance world as a community built around expressive culture and discuss some of the ways in which community is formed on the dance floor and maintained through the regular repetition of dancing and music making at specific dance events. I will look at context as well as at aesthetic, behavioral, and social factors, in order to see how the processes of performance create multiple dimensions of meaning for those involved—processes that lead to the formation of community. Because participants are engaged with actions associated with creativity, identity, and learning, each will have his/her own experience of what this “community” means. The continuous interplay between individual experience and group interaction during performance, seen as a subtext to a relationship between marginal group and dominant culture, represents a complex cultural microcosm empowered by many voices.

The study of dance, let alone “dance anthropology,” is still barely accepted by academia in the schools and universities of the United Kingdom. On the whole, Farnell's 1981 discussion of dance and dance education in England is still relevant. There is, however, a growing awareness among British anthropologists of the critical relevance of dance within the field of anthropology and among dance scholars of the relevance of anthropology to dance studies.

In the last decade or so a number of studies that look at the state of the art within the field of “dance” anthropology have been published in the United States and in Europe (see, for example, Giurschescu and Torp [1991], Kaeppler [1991], Lange [1980], Sklar [1991], and Williams [1986]). It would be more accurate to talk about the anthropology of human movement, as do a number of the writers mentioned above, since the concept “dance,” as known in English and other cognate languages, may not be appropriate cross culturally. I find the term “anthropology of human movement,” however, rather cumbersome, and since it is “dance”—rather than martial arts or signing systems, for instance—that is usually looked at by the authors I will be referring to later, I consider the use of the term “dance anthropology” justifiable.