African music and dance is a very unique artistic style compared to most Western dance forms. It often goes beyond music and even beyond the body – into the realms of the soul and spirit. Recently, Professor Dyane Harvey summarized African dance as “the soul trying to escape the body and the body trying to escape the soul.” This, to me, is an accurate representation of a style so multifaceted and seemingly impossible to condense. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Despite the stark differences between many African dance forms, such as the Mendiani (a dance for young girls played at festivals); the Lamban (a dance for a Djeli, or storyteller); and the Sofa (a rhythm played to honor warriors in times of war), there are still principles generally used to reconcile their differences and unite these styles under the umbrella of African dance. Among the various principles, polyrhythm is considered the most recognizable. Polyrhythm refers to the ability to maintain two different rhythms – two different rhythms – at the same time. Dr. Kariamu Welsh Asante states that to perform this feature, one must “step away from the rhythms of the scene and find an additional rhythm that complements and mediates the other rhythms” (Asante 146). Asante likens polyrhythm to an out-of-body experience, where one part of a dancer's being adheres completely to one rhythm while another part dances to a complementary sound. This concept is not the most unusual idea to understand, but it explains why it is often incredibly difficult to transition from much more linear dance forms to the African dance style. When I consider my experience with polyrhythm so far, I immediately think of the moments in our dance sessions when Professor Harvey stops us and asks us to pat ourselves on the head and rub our bellies at the same time. These two completely separate movements give a metaphorical look at the difficulties of polyrhythm in African dance. I remember in elementary school I couldn't do "pat on the head, rub the belly, do movements". It's difficult to brute force your way through polyrhythmic movement. Rather, the complex nature of movement often comes from within; as Asante says, “the deeper you travel, the more you feel, the more you listen” (146). From my experience with African dance, polyrhythm requires letting go of thought and allowing the mind to forget what you are doing. Ultimately, your spirit and body find themselves in a dimension of memory but also of instinct – as movements begin to form naturally and become more understandable when you let go of understanding. To give an example of such a perplexing scenario, I've found that whenever I focus on "what I'm doing" while performing African dance, I feel cautious, hesitant to let the music take over. But when I feel comfortable enough to simply react to the sound, even if my movements aren't all accurate, I embody the spirit of African dance on a much higher level. And the most important thing about African dance is not the particular choreography that will be judged and criticized; the most important thing is the message of which the dancer and his dance are only a channel. This abstract principle happens to be the most integral component of African dance, "regardless of theme, ethnic group, or geography" (146). Another integral principle of African dance is polycentricity, which Asante describes as “time-passing movement,” (146). This, to me, is very similar to polyrhythm in bothrhetoric than in practice. More than a choreographic style learned ad hoc, polycentricism is a sense of movement that must be discovered during dance. To give a clearer definition, polycentricity implies that the body is aware of the various instruments of an African orchestra and that the various muscles respond to those instruments. In this sense there is no center or fixed point of dance or music. Each instrument plays a particular rhythm to which a part of the body responds. I see polycentricity most evidently in the endless Lamban movements we perform in some of our class dances: as our feet move in a very clear one-two-three motion to the beat of the Mother drum, our arms sway in circle in response to another drum. Both movements are equally important as neither is the center of the dance. While many Western and even Latin dances have a core movement that is given layers of detail, polycentricity involves multiple movements that assimilate into the core of a dance. Similar to polyrhythm, this principle requires dancers to step outside of their traditional understanding to slide onto a higher plane, one where they can feel “the cosmos in the body” (146). The third principle of African dance is the curvilinear, which embodies the circular shape and structure of most African dance, in contrast to the symmetrical forms of Western dance. In many African cultures “there is 'power' in the circle, in the curve, in the round, supernatural power” (146). That is, circular shapes have much greater significance in African culture than in Western culture. While it is likely impossible to fully understand this meaning from an outside perspective, dance is one avenue in which we come closer to understanding and appreciating this principle, if only for a moment. Looking back, each of our movements in this class were circular, not rigid or jagged. And reflecting on this, it is clear why this is a unique principle of African dance. The next principle of African dance is difficult to measure or even record: dimensionality. Dimensionality is described by Asante as the “texture” of music and dance that “accounts for the confusion that is seen, heard, or felt” (147). It is less noticeable than the curvilinear which can be seen in a wide variety of dances and movements; rather, dimensionality is more of a nuance but is still ever-present in African dance. Often it is just a vibration or reverberation in the body that adds an extra dimension to the music and dance. In my opinion, dimensionality is decidedly less obvious to a newcomer to African dance, and it takes time for this principle to be internalized into the dancer's movements. Epic memory is another very difficult principle to measure; however, unlike dimensionality, epic memory is not an additional movement in a dance. Epic memory is closer to what I called a conduit when I talked about polyrhythm. It is the idea of ​​a dancer communicating a message and an unspeakable experience through his movement. An example of this is shown well in some of the Lamban dances we have performed in class so far, where we "greet" each other through our dance. By performing a passionate and spiritual dance, we actually convey a spiritual experience to our audience. That experience can be as simple as a greeting or as complex as a ritual. The next sense, also a bit abstract, is the holistic one. The holistic is the equal nature of African music and dance. Similar to my description of polycentricism, no part of the music or dance is “emphasized or accentuated beyond the whole” (150). At the