Decoding the syntax of modern dance

The expressive arts obviously constitute a means of communication, and as such are clearly susceptible to linguistic analysis. Art is a language: “That painting speaks to me,” we have heard, or said ourselves. Similarly music is called a “universal language.” Modern dance is described in terms of its movement vocabulary and there are syntactical rules for combining these body gestures into a larger structure. Choreography is dance syntax for bodily vocabulary. That the arts are composed of more elemental units, a vocabulary, that is combined through rules or principles, a syntax, into larger structured wholes, seems readily apparent. Meaningful communication is a balance between what is spelled out in the linguistic act itself (the dance) and what a community brings to that act in terms of supplemental information.