Livre - Rhythm, a dance in time

Everything in life moves through time. We think of time as progressing, measured in seconds, minutes, days and years. Man tries to get a grip on time by dividing it, with a beginning, a development and an end. He tries to make it audible, visible and tangible. Rhythm is produced in ‘natural’ as well as `cultural’ ways. Natural rhythm is not controlled by man, such as the ebb and tide of the ocean, the rising and setting of the sun, the seasons of the year, or his own life cycle, his heartbeat and his breathing. But what man does with his body becomes more and more a cultural fact: the way one walks, works, dances, sings, makes music and decorates objects. Some types of rhythm are audible (music), others visible (patterns), and some are both (dance, where one sees the dancer move and hears the sounds he makes with his body). Musical rhythm is produced by and through the human body. Through stamping, shaking, percussion, concussion and scraping, rhythm is produced. The Australian Aborigines use clapsticks and a ‘didgeridoo’ to accompany their songs and dances. Both are in a way extensions of the body: the clapsticks of the hands, the didgeridoo of the Lungs. Dance is a way to translate music into space. On an individual level people dance for physical pleasure, for aesthetic enjoyment, to let off steam, to express themselves, or to attract a sexual partner. On a societal level people dance to accompany work and war, to cure illness, to drive away evil spirits, or to honour the ancestors and the gods. Rhythm is a way of creating order: in music, rhythm is the organization of time in units, in visual arts rhythm refers to the arrangement of regularly recurring motifs. Symmetry is an important form of arranging motifs, and is a basic component of rhythm, auditive as well as visual. Rhythmic cycles in the music of the Islamic world are illustrated in the correspondences between the art of sound and the other arts: poetry and musical rhythms are related to geometrical patterns and calligraphy. Visual symmetry is an important aspect of textile decoration. In South Indian music, the analogies between rhythm, woven patterns and symbolic figures are striking. Weaving patterns reveal themselves as they emerge from the loom or unfold before the discerning eye, just as a listener delights in the patterns gradually perceived by the mind, and not merely transmitted by the ear. The symbolic meanings of motifs and colours are an expression of the relation between man and the cosmos. The cosmic order of the Balinese is manifested in the ‘nawasanga’ (a cosmological map resembling a compass-card), the religious ceremonies and offerings to the gods and the demons, the musical tuning systems and the musical instruments. This book explores all these aspects of rhythm: rhythm to be heard and rhythm to be seen.