Dance and Drill.

The article presents various aspects of dance and drill. Engaging in community dance and/or military drill by moving rhythmically together for lengthy periods of time is a very effective way of arousing shared and friendly feelings among the participants. This effect is reinforced by music and voicing, all the way from band music and choral singing to drill sergeants' shouts of "Hut, Hip, Hip, Four." Even when the immediate excitement subsides, such exercises leave a residue of fellow-feeling and readiness to cooperate. This had important effects in times past and still exhibits itself in religion, war, politics, and innumerable social settings where people dance, sing, and keep together in time. When rhythmic dancing and music-making first arose among humankind is unknown, but must have been very early, perhaps before Homo sapiens emerged and before language developed among our ancestors to make us fully human. Song and dance kept other world religions in ferment in much the same fashion. Tension between enthusiasm generated by dance and song and the authority of established priesthoods and legally defined systems of belief was persistent throughout religious history.