Is dance a profoundly human ritual? Philosopher Vincian Despret dispels this belief and asserts that the animal kingdom, especially birds, also swing for expression. He lifts the veil over everything revealing their movements.
In 2007, the sulfur cockatoo became a YouTube sensation. Danced like a snowball god to Queen and Cyndi Lauper hits. Lateral movements, head swings, paws that beat the rhythm, the animal took such obvious pleasure in it that two years later several American scientific studies relied on it to confirm that “the spontaneity and variety of movements on music; are not only human” (A study by Anirudd D. Patel). In the late 1990s, the philosopher Vincian Despret participated in a study of a species of bird, the scaly goshawk, that dances in groups. He wondered how people would interpret this gesture Scaled Babbler Dancea new edition of which has recently been published by Éditions La Découverte.
to be with each other
Peacock spiders regularly perform wild choreography in Australian gardens. The men stake their lives on precise dances, deploying colorful tufts and snapping their feet. It is enough to vibrate the hair and pupils of their targets. if the dance is missed, they can be devoured. In the animal world, when we talk about dance, it is primarily a question of nuptial parades, which are fascinating when we know how many human couples are also formed during swinging steps. “I had studied the parades of great crested cubs; there was a ritualistic, very rhythmic dance, males and females holding blades of grass… It’s a balletic ritual that prepares the biological synchronization of the birds,” recalls Vincentian Despret.
These birds were able to dance in other circumstances. They could improvise with human dancers
Vincent Despres, Philosopher
The philosopher notices that this dance, which enables one to become one with the other, violates the boundaries between animals and humans. He talks to us about choreographer Luke Patton, who in 2015 Lightbird, a show with Manchurian cranes. “It showed that these birds could dance in other circumstances. They could improvise with human dancers who had learned to do quick gestures for them, says Vincian Despret. The birds had invented them one by one to answer them. It was an example of a common script, where each learned the language of the others from the common ground of dance and gesture.
Confirmed in the group
In Gossip dances in the morning, a video of the scaled babbler dance we found on YouTube, five, then seven, then a dozen gray birds forming a line on the rocky ground, they mislead each other, raise one wing, then the other, change places under chirps; This species of passerby seen in the Arabian Peninsula multiplies during the worst hours of the day, dawn and dusk, when predators are hard to spot. This ritual unleashes passions among ornithologists. Amots Zahavi’s theory particularly impressed Vincian Despret. for the Israeli scientist, it is really a dance, not a game in which you have to stay in the middle as long as possible to show your courage (the environment is dangerous if the predator arrives).
“According to Amots Zahavi, it is a group synchronizing dance that has the communicative purpose of evoking shared emotional or affective states and overcoming an individual’s sense of vulnerability. The word “dance” is important, it emphasizes the ritual, the code, the communication, it clarifies the philosopher. These birds say to themselves: “Look, I’m willing to take a risk with you.” The fact of dancing causes them stress and, overcoming it, they assert themselves collectively and remove the sense of danger. »
The fact of dancing causes them stress and, overcoming it, they assert themselves collectively and remove the sense of danger.
Vincent Despres, Philosopher
Common language
A cockatoo’s frenetic rhythms or scaly babbles create an uncontrollable urge to dance in those who watch them. “When you teach dogs or chimpanzees to dance, clumsiness occurs. But with the birds, which are also the first musicians, we are amazed, we have the impression of apprentices”, emphasizes Vincentian Despret, who believes that in our feelings of dancing animals, we should not read anthropomorphism, but the other. the way
“Anthropomorphism is a way of opening up interpretation. But for dance we can also see zoomorphism by saying that people dance. When we see this cockatoo dancing on the queen, we discover that some animals inhabit rhythms we thought we invented. It’s overwhelming to see music affect our bodies in the same way that it’s overwhelming. When we see an animal obsessed with dancing, we find a common language with it, and it’s amazing.
Source: Le Figaro
