Excerpt from Natural Rhythms and Dances The satisfaction of human wants is the most important business of the world when judged by the activity of men and women everywhere. Contrariwise the education and training of people to want that which is good is infinitely more worth while. Without pausing to define the "good" it may be suggested that men would gain greatly by preservation and restoration of the essentials of a simple environment - pure air, open spaces, opportunity for physical activity, less of commercialized recreation and more of simple social life corrected by artistic and educational criteria. Modern man has builded great cities, he has erected economic standards of success, he has transformed the world industrially and has forced himself into a life of sedentary toil. When he looks at the result of his work he finds it is not good and then foolishly sets about devising special exercises to be practiced daily with phonograph accompaniment, or doing breathing exercises for health's sake, or eating yeast rather than wholesome foods because his factory organizations have made wholesome foods nearly impossible. In combating the handicaps and hazards of modern life, it has not always been clear that the way lay in a restoration of the desirable elements in nature. Physical education will make its contribution in modern times, not by proposing artificialities, such as aesthetic dancing and Swedish gymnastics, but rather by emphasizing the essential needs of man and by offering natural forms that represent the best motor expressions of the human race. It is a pleasure to note the philosophic significance of the work that Miss Colby is doing in her classes and in this book that she is bringing to teachers of physical education. Natural Rhythms and Dances is reflecting in Physical Education a new spirit of the times. The wholesome interest in posture, the era of sane dress, the play and recreation movement, the crusade against the sedentary life, the open air and camping programs, the recognition of athletics for girls as well as boys - all attest to the appreciation of the necessity for real and natural procedures as contrasted with the artificial substitutes often proposed. Natural Rhythms and Dances is symbolic of a new spirit in Physical Education itself. It calls for a new emphasis; it connotes new meanings. In particular it says that those who dance must dance as a child, expressing in natural outward forms, inner thoughts and feelings. It is impatient with posturings, with poses, with self-consciousness, with artificiality, with dillentantism. I have had the opportunity and pleasure of seeing most of the material of the book worked out in dramatic form. The rhythms are true copies. They bear no false document of identity, but can serve elsewhere as they have served at Teachers College. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Rhythm is produced in "natural" as well as "cultural" ways. Natural rhythm is not controlled by man, no more than we can control the ebb and tide of the ocean, the rising and setting of the sun, the seasons of the year, or our own life cycle, heartbeat or breathing. But what man does with his body may become a cultural fact: the way we walk, work, dance, sing, make music and decorate objects. In music, rhythm is the organization of time in units. In visual arts rhythm refers to the arrangement of regularly recurring motifs. 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. 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 received by the ear. The symbolic meanings of motifs and colors are an expression of the relation between man and the cosmos." Rhythm, A Dance in Time" explores all these aspects of rhythm: rhythm to be heard and rhythm to be seen.

Rhythm is the fundamental pulse that animates poetry, music, and dance across all cultures. And yet the recent explosion of scholarly interest across disciplines in the aural dimensions of aesthetic experience--particularly in sociology, cultural and media theory, and literary studies--has yet to explore this fundamental category. This book furthers the discussion of rhythm beyond the discrete conceptual domains and technical vocabularies of musicology and prosody. With original essays by philosophers, psychologists, musicians, literary theorists, and ethno-musicologists, The Philosophy of Rhythm opens up wider-and plural-perspectives, examining formal affinities between the historically interconnected fields of music, dance, and poetry, while addressing key concepts such as embodiment, movement, pulse, and performance. Volume editors Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison bring together a range of key questions: What is the distinction between rhythm and pulse? What is the relationship between everyday embodied experience, and the specific experience of music, dance, and poetry? Can aesthetics offer an understanding of rhythm that helps inform our responses to visual and other arts, as well as music, dance, and poetry? And, what is the relation between psychological conceptions of entrainment, and the humane concept of rhythm and meter? Overall, The Philosophy of Rhythm appeals across disciplinary boundaries, providing a unique overview of a neglected aspect of aesthetic experience.