Dance takes many forms: ballet; tango; foxtrot; waltz; tai chi; aikido; kung fu ...all of these and more are ways of knowing; windows of perception, or as Michael Ahles might say: wings of freedom. We are capable of knowing on different levels---making us at least as unique as we hope we are. Last time I looked.
Warmest, Neuman.

William, not sure why you say that "one essential property of dance is that is it partnered." Haven't you ever seen a person dance by themselves? If that was dance, then partners are not essential!

DANCE TO THE MUSIC (OF TIME)
Dance is the intentional physical embodiment of music. Music is the big mystery, more so than dance. (And don?t diss me about ?dancing to silence? or some such ? that is only dancing to the absence of music.) Fascinating from a philosophical standpoint is 1. How each individual reflects and expresses the music in his/her dancing; 2. The social ritualistic imperative of dance styles and steps; 3. The teaching of culturally agreed upon and recognized dance forms; and 4. The ways an observer of dance reflects on it and responds to it.

William deleted his comment.

John, you have described a wonderfully illuminating exercise: one that explores the difference between what my friend SusanS calls slow thinking and fast thinking. She calls "instinct" an example of fast thinking; you would probably say "intuitive intelligence" is another example. I think of both as more like the absence of thought; more like the goals of meditation. But however accomplished, your description of how to achieve certain new and useful mental states apart from the think-generated, through the application of the body to music, is an exciting avenue for a philosopher to pursue. Thank you.

BTW, John, see how your post reads when you substitute 'poetry" for "dance." "It is my experience that Poetry activates aspects of human perception that are not accessed with common thinking and as a result, it contains more information than common thought ... it contains more clarity and a more accurate perception of what is real.." Metaphor is "more real" than narrative.

In case you missed it, we just had a Live Chat this week with Alva Noe, the guest on this show back in 2013. You can read the chat transcript here.

The thing about the synthetic a priori is that it is not extraneous to the analytic a priori, it is the final term of that analytic, the ultimate reductive term altered, redefined, and re-deployed its antecedence. This is how the a priori can be the consequent term. The most rigorous consequence of the conceit of the absolute logical invariance of antecedence is its variance. It is most explicitly recognized in satire or sarcasm. But if you don't get the joke you effectively rigidify antecedence and so protect it from the synthetic a priori that is its only completing term. The rest is aporia. The least term of time is all the differing it is.
The relation between dance and the rationality of the sensual world is seduction.

Feuerbach has an interesting analogy in his essay on Hegel. Reading this essay it is hard not to find in Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics a glaring case of plagiarism. That would be Feuerbach's ending theme on 'nothingness'. But the essay begins with an image of time as homeopathic. I'm not exactly sure what he does mean in this, but homeopathy is a theory that dilution of a toxin to such a degree that the dosage is probably zero, that by putting a drop of poison in an ocean of diluent, that the smallest dosage of this preparation would cure its toxic effects. But if time is either a moment of differing or a steady drip of the same, how small a dose of this toxic difference is cured us of it and made us invulnerable to it? Isn't the least differing proved the thesis of constancy invalid? Ballet is designed to force human motion into inhuman form. Other forms of dance are claimed to be expressions of human bodily truth, think of Isadora Duncan. Social dance is meant to coordinate human physicality. By moving in synchrony we share bodily proximity in an especially disciplined way. But is it constancy in elegant movement or suspended clumsy-ness? I suppose robots will eventually be made to dance, but I suspect the result will be as unsatisfactory as computer performances of great musical compositions. It is the inability of humans to perfect the design, choreographic or musical, that is the elegance of the performance. The awkward humanity diluted by a fine discipline meant to render it as invisible as possible. And yet that diluted imperfection is the perfection of it, and what the computer cannot imitate. Death is the completest differing time is, and most momentous. And so time is filled with all the drip drip drip of constant need and satisfaction that so dilutes and attenuates our perception of it that we might almost never know how much more real it is. And that is why I say that dance is seduction. But which is the seducer, the discipline of constancy, or its proven attenuation of unendurable moment?
 
 
"If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing..."