African music and dance is a very unique art style compared to most Western dance forms. This often extends beyond music and even beyond the body – into the realms of soul and spirit. Recently, Professor Dyane Harvey summarized African dance as "the soul trying to escape the body and the body trying to escape the soul." To me, it's a faithful representation of a style so multifaceted and seemingly impossible to condense. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayDespite the marked differences between many African dance forms, such as Mendiani (a dance for young girls performed at festivals); the Lamban (a dance for a Djeli, or storyteller); and the Sofa (a rhythm played to honor warriors in times of war), there are still principles generally used to reconcile their differences and unite these styles under the umbrella of African dance. Among the different principles, polyrhythm is considered the most recognizable. Polyrhythm refers to the ability to maintain two different beats – two different rhythms – simultaneously. Dr. Kariamu Welsh Asante states that to achieve this characteristic, one must “step back from the rhythms of the scene and find an additional rhythm that complements and mediates these other rhythms” (Asante 146). Asante compares polyrhythm to an out-of-body experience, where part of a dancer's being fully adheres to a rhythm while another part dances to a complementary sound. This concept isn't the most unusual idea to understand, but it explains why it is often incredibly difficult to transition from much more linear dance forms to the African dance style. When I consider my experience with polyrhythm so far, I immediately think of the times during our dance sessions when Professor Harvey stops us and asks us to pat our heads and rub our bellies at the same time. These two completely distinct movements provide a metaphorical look at the difficulties of polyrhythm in African dance. I remember in elementary school, I was not able to “pat my head, rub my stomach, do some movement.” It is difficult to force your way abruptly into polyrhythmic movement. Rather, the complex nature of movement often comes from within; as Asante says, “the deeper you travel, the more you feel and hear” (146). In my experience with African dance, polyrhythm requires you to let go of your thoughts and allow your mind to forget what you are doing. Eventually, your mind and body find themselves in a dimension of memory but also instinct – as movements begin to form naturally and become more comprehensible as one lets go of understanding. To give an example of such a mystifying scenario, I've found that whenever I focus on "what I'm doing" while practicing African dance, I feel cautious, hesitant to let the music take over. . But when I feel comfortable enough to respond to the sound, even if my movements aren't all precise, they embody the spirit of African dance to a much greater degree. And what is most important about African dance is not the particular choreography that will be judged and criticized; what matters most is the message for which the dancer and his dance are only vectors. It turns out that this abstract principle constitutes the most integral component of African dance, “whatever the theme, theethnic group or geography” (146). Another integral principle of African dance is polycentricism, which Asante describes as "spending time moving" (146). To me, this sounds a lot like polyrhythm, both in rhetoric and in practice. Rather than a specifically learned choreographic style, polycentricism is a sense of movement that must be discovered when dancing. To give a clearer definition, polycentricism involves the body being aware of the different instruments in an African orchestra and the different muscles reacting to these instruments. In this sense, there is no center or basis of dance or music. Each instrument plays a particular rhythm to which a part of the body responds. I see polycentricity most obviously in the Lamban infinity movements we perform in some of our class dances: as our feet move in a very clear one-two-three motion to the beat of the Mother drum, our arms move swing in circles in response to another drum. Both movements are equally important in that the center of the dance is not either. While many Western and even Latin dances have a fundamental movement with added layers of detail, polycentricism involves multiple movements assimilated into the core of a dance. Similar to polyrhythm, this principle requires dancers to step outside of their traditional understanding and slip into a higher plane – one in which they can feel “the cosmos in the body” (146). The third principle of African dance is the curvilinear, which embodies the circular form and structure of most African dances, as opposed to the symmetrical forms of Western dance. In many African cultures, “there is a ‘power’ in the circle, the curve, the round, a supernatural power” (146). In other words, circular shapes have a much greater meaning in African culture than in Western culture. Although it is probably impossible to fully understand this meaning from an outside perspective, dance is one avenue through which we come close to understanding and appreciating this principle, if only for a moment. Looking back, each of our movements in that class was round, not stiff or irregular. And when you think about it, it's clear why this is a principle unique to African dance. The next principle of African dance is difficult to measure or even record: dimensionality. Dimensionality is described by Asante as the “texture” of music and dance that “represents the blur that one sees, hears, or feels” (147). It is less obvious than the curvilinear found in a wide variety of dances and movements; dimensionality is more of a nuance but always present in African dance. It is often simply a vibration or reverberation in the body that adds an extra dimension to the music and dance. In my opinion, dimensionality is significantly less obvious to a newcomer to African dance, and it takes time for this principle to become internalized in a dancer's movements. Epic memory is another very difficult principle to measure; However, unlike dimensionality, epic memory is not movement added to a dance. Epic memory is closer to what I call a conduit when I talk about polyrhythm. It is the idea of ​​a dancer communicating a message and a new experience through their movement. An example of this is well illustrated in some of the Lamban dances we have done in class so far, where we "greet" each other through our dancing. By performing a passionate and spiritual dance,