Do the intrinsic characteristics of a dance change?

Was it Heraclitus who said a man cant stand in the same river twice because the man has changed and so has the river?

Our experience of a dance (or of any thing in this world) has to change.

Rock and Roll burst into pop culture as an expression of freedom from stuffed shirt restraints - but soon became simply a normalized form in which conformity and uniformity could be expressed.

Because the context changed.

The first time we hit something new it is in innocence. But to look for the experience again is to be grasping and predefining by definition. This always reflects in a way that might still be energised but is not in the blessing or joy of innocence - because coercion is at work!

What is a dance?

I feel a dance is a vehicle or conduit that - if used as such - is an invitation and invocation of connection with life. The living dance comes through the vehicle - which is a way of bringing focus of attention to eternal qualities that express in changing forms.

There is also the channel opened by the musicians with Life as inspiration - and relationship with the dancers as the expression and extension of the music. (Though I once shared in an amazing silent circle dance).

With recordings one becomes used to the same form, but in life, music is responsive to the atmospheric of that moment in that group.

I heard a concert pianist describe once how active the audience was in his capacity to play. An engaged attentive receptive audience lifted his capacity to play to capacities otherwise inaccessible. I can testify to this.

As a musician I find I sing where I find the life, and also bring to life.
I want to allow an essence to be communicated through me. Because I love to be so alive and it is a joy to share it.

But also I come into a freedom to express or convey qualities within the music that might have been only potentials in the recording.

A dance's form is the brush strokes by which the living mind paints in a creation that reveals itself to itself.

I have always had the sense in the music and dance we share of:
"What it is to be human"

Embracing this in each and all of its energies has always opened:
"What it is to be Divine".