Dance can be art, ritual, or recreation. It goes beyond the functional purpose of the movements used in work or athletics in order to express emotions, moods, or ideas; tell a story; serve religious, political, economic, or social needs: or simply be an experience that is pleasurable, exciting, or aesthetically valuable.
The ordinary potential of the body can be expanded in dance, usually through long periods of specialized training. Primary elements of dance include 1) the use of space-floor patterns, the shapes of the moving body, and designs in space made by the limbs; 2) the use of time- tempo, the length of a dance, rhythmic variations, and the attitude toward filling time, from taking one's time to making quick stops and starts; 3) the use of the body's weight- overcoming gravity to execute light, graceful movements, surrendering to gravity with heavy or limp movements, or exerting the body's weight against gravity with strength; and 4) the use of energy flow- tense, restrained, or bound movements or freely flowing motion.
It is not known when people began to dance; however, because expressive movement is so spontaneous, because dance is almost universal, and because it is so intimately interrelated with other aspects of a culture, it is possible that dance was created along with the evolution of man kind. Many animals perform dance like movements in situations similar to human play. These movement rituals, lack the conscious use of the symbols that is present in human dance.
The modern world will foster more borrowing of dance among different countries, as well as the creation of new dance forms based on mixtures of various national styles. Modern people have lost the dances of the past millennia because no method existed to preserve them. Today, with film, videotape, dvd's, and dance notation, the dances of contemporary cultures can be preserves for subsequence generations.