The Syntax of Dance




My years of studying Linguistics offered me the windows of fathoming dance. Like verbal language, I came to understand more its structure- the morpheme it offers and the semantics it conveys. The Chomskyan in me is just starting and I suppose I may “structuralize” it.

When I first came to learn the formal “words” of dance, I was mesmerized by the selective high-sounding ones. Later did I know that the meaning of Modern Dance could oppose yet equal the beauty of Classical Ballet. Like a child babbling its first words, I mustered a few and began lavishing it, augmenting my lexicon. But it was still a raw battle for LEARNING. I felt I only knew its derivational properties and not the inflectional side of it. Come to think of it, a second language sprouted just when the first language was still substandard. When my vocabulary grew to a handful ones, I realize the functions of each and how it could be used in a sentence called dance phrase.
Now the theories I cling to are beginning to simmer. The windows of its syntactical understanding bring hope that I could be a linguist of DANCE.

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