The paths of thought taken by Socrates and Nietzsche traced the evolutionary path of current Western philosophy. In their theoretical reflections on human nature, both point beyond the affirmation of the freedom of the spirit as the only direct path to self-realization. Breaking the barriers of the tangible to not be prisoners of an imposed reality is a task that both philosophers found in the practice of dance.
For Socrates, the search for beauty led him to the path of dance when he learned to dance at the age of 70, convinced that art was synonymous with mimesis, that is, that the only function of the artist was to imitate the perfection of nature.
Greek culture referred to “poiesis” or artistic creation as an open manifestation of feelings and experiences through sounds, gestures, and words. In everyday life in Greece, dancing was an activity intimately related to Dionysian rites filled with singing, dancing, and theater. Festivals in honor of Dionysus were a space to experience pleasures through music and dance.
Socrates conceived the body as the character of the soul, the visible element of the essence that has no color or form. While Athenian philosophers defined beauty as a calculation of symmetry and numerical proportion, he found spiritual beauty in the movements of dance that are only symmetrical with the infinite energy of the cosmos.
Several centuries later, Friedrich Nietzsche revolutionized philosophical thought by conceiving free will as the fundamental end of every human being. Nihilism recognized dance as the movement of the body in union with the spirit. The man who dances exercises the authentic will to power, defying the laws of gravity with each step.
Dancing requires consciousness of the ego by allowing our limbs to respond to the Dionysian impulses of life. Dancing relates the mind and passions; therefore, dance is the art that leads to the superman.
Nietzsche’s philosophical concepts are inspired by Greek culture, which explored dance in communion with the supernatural and mythical, because when the dancer is in sync with his body, all his movements and turns are the expression of freedom itself, uniting the presence of the body with time and space.
In Greek thought, dance, along with music and poetry, form the fundamental triad of expression of Dionysian aesthetics that Nietzsche resumes and exemplifies in the free spirit of Zarathustra.
The human being transcends his limits and transforms himself when he dances. He ceases to be himself to become a work of art, and therefore something superior to the herd.
In dance, the body speaks, merging with thought in a new language impossible to categorize within a specific philosophical current because it goes beyond words and is the very essence of human movement on stage, representing the choreography of daily routine.
To dance is to affirm life, finding full happiness through the flow of our own energy by aligning ourselves with the world and following the rhythm of vital music.
To dance is to feel with every nerve of the body the intensity of the chaos of the Universe. Freedom cannot exist solely in thought without externalizing itself, just as Nietzsche would only believe in a God who knows how to dance, the superman can only trust in movement to release all the emotion of his passions.