San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1924-04-05
DANCING IN THE SCHOOLS

Rhythm is a law OF life. Universes
swing in interstellar space. The planets
move around our own little sun, the
center of that universe that concerns
us. The tides rise and fall. The waves
breal; upon the shore, recede and break
again in response to the deep beat, the
systolic and diastolic rise and fall OF all
creation. The winds. the seasons, night
and day. every manifestation of life is
obedient to vast rhythmic laws.
What more natural than that man. in
his struggle upward through the years,
should express his first reactions to the
mystery of life in rhythms? 1t was his
earliest form of religion. The tribal
dances, religious rituals, deeply symbolic,
were mans first readings toward the
Great Spirit which spoke to him in the
waving of the trees. in the beat OF the
rain. in the sea, in the wind. in all the
forces of nature. As man grew in his
powers of expressing what he felt to-
wards life. he put the dance into his
sacred books, his Korans. his Nedas,
Upanishads, and his Bibles.
Havelock Ellis in his dance of Life
has taken the position that dancing,
which has grown out of primitive wor-
ship and its acts of Precipitation, is the
first and central art of life, his thesis
being that life as whole is an art to be
lived beautifully and gracefully. Move
ment, breathing. with its rhythmic rise
and fall. constituting the fist sign of
life, what is more natural. he maintains,
than that the rhythm of individual life
should be expressed as dance: From
this has grown up the folk dances of all
nations and the highly developed and
beautiful art OF dancing.
There are those. however, who lose
sight Of the aesthetic. cultural. and re-
hgious aspects of the dance. its physical
value in building up the body health
fully, proportionately. and gracefully,
anG condemn it out of hand on the
ground of being an excitant to sex. The
vision of girl "who had gone wrong
throl gh dancing, so it was claimed. was
responsible for a petition twelve yards
long recently presented to the school
board. The object OF the petition was
to get folk dancing out of the public
school system.
As { matter OF fact. folk dancing COM
prises a small part of the school activi-
ties. A crowded curriculum forbids IT.
but were this not the case, it is hard
to imagine grounds for objection to these
healthful rhythmic exercises comprising
the folk dances taught Even during the
Fiesta, the time when the school child
rem do the most dancing, there is nc
compusion on those who do not wish tc
take Fart. AS for this being "tempta-
ton" to those children whose parents
oppose dancing. as has been claimed, il
may be as well for the children to learr
to withstand temptation" in youth
They will have to learn it later, for the
world will not be altered to suit theil
ideas of what is right and wrong.
II is to be hoped that the school board
having received this petition with the
respect that it deserves for the sin
ccrity that prompted its presentation
will take no further action. Should i
do away with folk dancing. it woulc
allow the larger interest of the whole t.
be controlled by the arbitrary rules OF ;
comparative few, to the detriment o
aesthetic and physical education in TIL
schools