Dance Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about dance

Dance Trivia Quiz Questions and Answers

What is dance?
A: Dance is a performing art form consisting of purposefully selected sequences of human movement.

This movement has aesthetic and symbolic value, and is acknowledged as dance by whom?
A: Performers and observers within a particular culture.

How can dance can be categorized and described?
A: By its choreography, by its repertoire of movements, or by its historical period or place of origin.

An important distinction is to be drawn between the contexts of theatrical dance and what?
A: Participatory dance.

These two categories are not always completely what?
A: Separate; both may have special functions, whether social, ceremonial, competitive, erotic, martial, or sacred/liturgical.

Other forms of human movement are sometimes said to have a what?
A: A dance-like quality, including martial arts, gymnastics, cheerleading, figure skating, synchronized swimming, marching bands, and many other forms of athletics.

Theatrical dance, also called performance or concert dance, is intended primarily as a what?
A: A spectacle, usually a performance upon a stage by virtuoso dancers.

It often tells a what?
A: A story, perhaps using mime, costume and scenery, or else it may simply interpret the musical accompaniment, which is often specially composed.

Most classical forms are centered upon dance alone, but performance dance may also appear in what?
A: Opera and other forms of musical theatre.

Participatory dance, on the other hand, whether it be a folk dance, a social dance, a group dance such as a line, circle, chain or square dance, or a partner dance such as is common in western Western ballroom dancing, is undertaken primarily for a common purpose, such as what?
A: Social interaction or exercise, of participants rather than onlookers.

Such dance seldom has any what?
A: Narrative.

Even a solo dance may be undertaken solely for what?
A: The satisfaction of the dancer.

Participatory dancers often all employ the same movements and steps but, for example, in the rave culture of electronic dance music, vast crowds may engage in what?
A: Free dance, uncoordinated with those around them.

Archeological evidence for early dance includes 9,000-year-old paintings in India at the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, and Egyptian tomb paintings depicting what?
A: Dancing figures, dated c. 3300 BC.

It has been proposed that before the invention of written languages, dance was an important part of the oral and performance methods of doing what?
A: Passing stories down from generation to generation.

References to dance can be found in very early recorded history; Greek dance (horos) is referred to by whom?
A: Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch and Lucian.

The Bible and Talmud refer to many events related to dance, and contain how many different dance terms?
A: Over 30.

In Chinese pottery as early as the Neolithic period, groups of people are depicted doing what?
A: Dancing in a line holding hands.

The earliest Chinese word for "dance" is found written in what?
A: The oracle bones.

Dance is further described in what?
A: The Lüshi Chunqiu.

Primitive dance in ancient China was associated with what?
A: Sorcery and shamanic rituals.

During the first millennium BCE in India, many texts were composed which attempted to do what?
A: Codify aspects of daily life.

Bharata Muni's Natyashastra (literally "the text of dramaturgy") is one of the what?
A: Earlier texts.

It mainly deals with drama, in which “what” plays an important part in Indian culture?
A: Dance.

It categorizes dance into what four types?
A: Secular, ritual, abstract, and, interpretive.

The text elaborates various hand-gestures (mudras) and classifies movements of the various what?
A: Limbs, steps and so on.

A strong continuous tradition of dance has since continued in India, through to modern times, where it continues to play a role in culture, ritual, and, notably what?
A: The Bollywood entertainment industry.

Many other contemporary dance forms can likewise be traced back to what?
A: Historical, traditional, ceremonial, and ethnic dance.

Dance is generally, though not exclusively, performed with the accompaniment of what?
A: Music and may or may not be performed in time to such music.

Some dance (such as tap dance) may provide its own what?
A: Audible accompaniment in place of (or in addition to) music.

Many early forms of music and dance were created for what?
A: For each other and are frequently performed together.

Notable examples of traditional dance/music couplings include what?
A: The jig, waltz, tango, disco, and salsa.

Some musical genres have a parallel dance form such as what?
A: Baroque music and baroque dance.

A musical rhythm requires what two main elements?
A: First, a regularly-repeating pulse (also called the "beat" or "tactus") that establishes the tempo and, second, a pattern of accents and rests that establishes the character of the metre or basic rhythmic pattern.

The basic pulse is roughly equal in duration to what?
A: A simple step or gesture.

Dances generally have a characteristic what?
A: Tempo and rhythmic pattern.

The tango, for example, is usually danced in 2 4 time at approximately how many beats per minute?
A: 66.

Just as musical rhythms are defined by a pattern of strong and weak beats, so repetitive body movements often depends on alternating "strong" and "weak" what?
A: Muscular movements.

Given this alternation of left-right, of forward-backward and rise-fall, along with the bilateral symmetry of the human body, it is natural that many dances and much music are in what?
A: Duple and quadruple meter.

However, since some such movements require more time in one phase than the other – such as the longer time required to lift a hammer than to strike – some dance rhythms fall equally naturally into what?
A: Triple metre.

The ballet developed out of what?
A: Courtly dramatic productions of 16th- and 17th-century France and Italy.

Ballet reached widespread vogue in the romantic era, accompanied by a what?
A: A larger orchestra and grander musical conceptions that did not lend themselves easily to rhythmic clarity and by dance that emphasised dramatic mime.

What are the three main categories of kabuki?
A: They are jidaimono (historical), sewamono (domestic) and shosagoto (dance pieces).

Indian classical music provides accompaniment and dancers of nearly all the styles wear what?
A: Bells around their ankles to counterpoint and complement the percussion.

The dances of the Middle East are usually the traditional forms of what?
A: Circle dancing which are modernized to an extent.

Folk dances vary across Europe and may date back how far?
A: Hundreds or thousands of years.

Many have features in common such as group participation led by a what?
A: A caller.

Some, such as the maypole dance are common to many nations, while others such as the céilidh and the polka are deeply-rooted in what?
A: A single culture.

Some European folk dances such as the square dance were brought to the New World and subsequently became what?
A: Part of American culture.

The first ballet dance academy was what?
A: The Académie Royale de Danse (Royal Dance Academy), opened in Paris in 1661.

Shortly thereafter, the first institutionalized ballet troupe, associated with the Academy, was formed; this troupe began as a what?
A: An all-male ensemble but by 1681 opened to include women as well.

African American dance developed in everyday spaces, rather than in what?
A: Dance studios, schools or companies.