Dance and the Soul

By Paul Valéry

Let me begin at once by telling you without preamble that to my mind the dance is not merely an exercise, an entertainment, an ornamental art, or sometimes a social activity; it is a serious matter and in certain of its aspects most venerable. Every epoch that has understood the human body and experienced at least some sense of its mystery, its resources, its limits, its combinations of energy and sensibility, has cultivated and revered dance.

It is a fundamental art, suggested if not demonstrated by its universality, its immemorial antiquity, the solemn uses to which it has been put, the ideas and reflections it has engendered at all times. For the dance is an art derived from life itself, since it is nothing more or less than the action of the whole human body; but an action transposed into a world, into a kind of space-time, which is no longer quite the same as that of everyday life.

Quite a bit of philosophy, you may think...and I admit that I’ve given you rather too much of it. But when one is not a dancer; when one would be at a loss not only how to perform, but how to explain, the slightest step; when, to deal with the miracles wrought by the legs, one has only the resources of a head, there’s no help but from a certain amount of philosophy. In other words, one approaches the subject from far off, in the hopes that distance will dispel the difficulties. It is much simpler to construct a universe than to explain how a man stands on his feet - as Aristotle, Descartes, Liebnitz and quite a few others will tell you.

Dialogues, Paul Valéry, tr. by W.M.Stewart, Princeton University Press, 1971.

back to Dance and Classicism