Abstract
MR. HAMBLY has surveyed dancing and music as a communal activity and expression of emotion literally from the cradle to the grave, for he begins with the celebration of a birth and ends with the dance which follows death—often long after death, like the dance in the Nicobarese ceremony of disinterring the dead and collecting their bones. He does not concern himself with the individual or merely exhibition dancing as such, although in some of the Eastern dances it would be difficult to draw the line—for example, the whipping dance as a test of endurance as performed in the Sudan which he describes—and it would be easier to discriminate even in this case if it were possible to trace whether or not there were any possible connexion with the whipping ceremony sacred to Artemis, which was once celebrated at Sparta.
Tribal Dancing and Social Development.
By W. D. Hambly. Pp. 296 + 26 plates. (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1926.) 21s. net.
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Tribal Dancing and Social Development . Nature 119, 488 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119488a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119488a0