Synchrony and Exertion of Dancing Found to Encourage Social Bonding, Raise Pain Threshold

By Christina Lavers
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

“To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.” ~ Hopi Indian saying

There is not one culture on Earth that does not have a long tradition of dance. This suggests that dancing, the act of moving in time to music, is central to the experience of being human. It is such a key form of cultural expression that it has been called the “universal language”. Every culture in the world has a customary style of dance that communicates aspects of the group’s identity, creativity, rituals, history and meaning. In fact, it has even been suggested that a person could learn as much, if not more, about another culture through participating in their dance as they could reading an anthropological paper.

A recent study led by researcher Bronwyn Tarr from Oxford University produced further evidence that demonstrates that dancing plays a role in supporting and strengthening social cohesion. Tarr, a dancer and experimental psychologist, postulated that dance, being essentially cooperative in nature, could have played a role in our evolution by encouraging social bonds and other pro-social behaviour between community members.