ARTS: Artuklu Sanat ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi

Öz

This article argues that dance, as an essential medium of communication, uses body language, posture, poses and movements as tools to express and convey thoughts and feelings. It has been observed that through the ages human communities and cultures have used dance for a variety of purposes. Although people have been dancing since ancient times, we have not yet been able to answer the question as to why people dance. There are a wide range of theses on this subject, but the most widely accepted of these is that people dance to express their feelings. People can dance for religious, social, artistic or even medical purposes like movement therapy that works in accordance with certain medical treatments but the main idea within dance has mostly been to communicate as a form of self expression, as a mode of storytelling and as a means to share a message. In religious dances, people aim to communicate with a being higher than themselves, whereas in dances performed for societal and artistic purposes people aim to communicate with others or with their inner self. This article aims to outline the communicative aspect of dance through the examination of relevant sources and scientific research. In line with the data obtained through analyses and literary review, this article will examine whether dance is a form of communication or not. Due to the limited resources in Turkish in the field of dance, this article aims to serve as a starting point of discuss and study and begin to remedy the lack of literature on dance in Turkey and give the Turkish people a general idea on the communicative elements of dance.