"But that"s not the way you"re 'supposed" to move!" "It"s not traditional to dance it that way!" "You"re doing it all wrong!" Although anyone who has ever seen someone else practice or even perform a dance has heard these words, it is important to remember, before one judges the dancer harshly, that just because a dance is danced differently, doesn"t necessarily mean the dancer is dancing 'wrong." The observer may simply come from another cultural tradition that dances differently, and perceives the dance"s meshing with other cultural traditions as 'wrong." America is a diverse, rather than a pure culture, and thus has produced a syncretism rather than a pure culture of dance.

             Dance is, first and foremost, in a performed medium. Thus, author Gerald Jonas stresses that no dance can truly be replicated. Every dance is different and new, even when the basic steps are the same, as dance is always in dialogue with the audience-and therefore, in a less immediate but no less dynamic fashion, with the social environment of the dancers and the audience. Witness the fusion of African dance and ballet in Alvin Alley"s trope of dances, to make just one examples of dancing as a living cultural and social process. Where else could such a melding of a plurality of African, modern, and traditional European ballet have been realized, but in America?.

             Secondly, Gerald Jonas stresses again and again, that the cultural social component of dances are always acts of syncretism, works in progress. Although social dances may come from traditions that are specific, dance is by its nature a creative and evolving art form when it is enacted in a community context. For example, take the dances that evolved from African cultures. Every tribe and nation had a particular array of traditional dances. But with the combining of different people from different cultures, new dances were created.