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Humans dance.
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It is a basic fact about us.
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Indeed, there is no such thing as a culture which doesn't move to music.
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In Zimbabwe, they dance the Dandanda; in Bohemia, the polka.
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People in southern India dance the Bharatanatyam, and in Argentina, the tango.
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Regardless of time, regardless of place, we find a way to bust a move.
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It's fun, sure, but that doesn't really explain things.
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Dance seems to be the ultimate frivolity.
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So how did it become a human necessity?
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The answer lies in our social nature.
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We are born into groups: groups that already have ideas and customs and languages and symbols.
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We call these groups "societies" and they are essential to human flourishing.
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Yet jealousies, conflicts and disagreements also drive us apart.
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A century ago, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim set out to provide a scientific understanding of what glues societies together in spite of our differences.
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A part of the answer is what Durkheim called "collective effervescence".
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This is, in his words, a sort of electricity.
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It's that exhilaration, almost euphoria, that overtakes groups of people united by a common purpose, pursuing an intensely involving activity together.
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Collective effervescence is a "flow", a joyfulness, loss of boundaries, a sense that your self is melding with the group as a whole.
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The excitement of a group creates an intense force that lifts people up and draws them together on an almost spiritual plane.
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And sure enough it's an experience that is found in religions across the world.
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And dance is the great accelerator of collective effervescence.
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Dance – especially in its ritual and sacred forms – is a social glue.
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Recently, Bronwyn Tarr, a trained dancer and evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, has been testing Durkheim's ideas further.
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Dr Tarr has found that we humans have a natural tendency to synchronize our movements with other humans.
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We find ourselves tapping along, nodding our heads, without even meaning to.
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It's as if we're all quietly searching for a common rhythm to share.
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When we observe another person moving, this activates a region in the brain which helps us make those movements ourselves.
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When we mimic our partner's movements, and they're mimicking ours, similar neural networks in both partners open up a rush of neurohormones, all of which make us feel good.
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This is the neurological basis to Durkheim's collective effervescence – the melding between "self" and "other".
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Cue the music.
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Even without dancing, music can leave us flush with feel-good chemicals: endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin.
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In fact, it can make us feel so terrific that our pain tolerance can rise appreciably when the tunes are flowing.
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Just listening to music can create such a euphoric delight that it appears to activate opioid receptors in the brain.
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Through that excitement, music gets people to dance.
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As everyone whose been overtaken by the thrill of a great song knows.
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Bring all of these strands together: the music, the exertion, the synchronic swirls, and you can see why we so like to cut a rug.
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Keeping to the beat together, we feel exhilarated due to the neurohormones.
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And just as Durkheim intuited a century ago, we feel more tightly bound with our fellow dancers.
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Such intensely shared experiences make the collective possible.
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Without it, we would hardly be human at all.