Hmmm. Is dance a language?
…you mean the language of dance? That language, that method of communicating one’s emotions and desires and, on frequent occasion, whatever one’s choreographer wishes to convey. Dance can be argued as a universal language among the world of possessors of movement.
Dance is a language because it is a means of communication and expression, and has form and structure.
That is not to say that dancers are the Spanish teachers of the world, but they can offer another perspective into an emotion or feeling or story that cannot be portrayed through verbal or written, or even musical portrayals.
Dance=Romance Languages
JQ
I think that one can view the evolution of communication as a spectrum. Physical body movement on one side of the spectrum and the written word on the other. Movement or dance stylized or otherwise was formed to express an emotion or a thought that did not require a specific meaning, unless the object could be visualized. (bringing the lamb or the corn to the dance circle) When you introduced sound, the word, a spoken language you could combine both movement and sound to form a better communication between humans (now you could make the lamb sound and did not need to bring it). In the next stage of development we have omitted the movement since we wanted to communicate in absentia, with a distance between the speaker/writer and the reader/listener. Therefore it was necessary to invent a set of symbols that could describe both the movement, the feelings and the expression which is part of the missing communication. (now you did not need the dancers or the lamb, you could tell it in third person). Today we communicate on-line. The irony is that we reverted to the visual and the verbal by adding pictures and sound and omitting grammar and structure. I believe we are searching for the same physical space communication we had, being present at the dance. We moved into virtual communication with the invention of the computer.