If voice flowers into patterned speech and song, then bodily gestures lead to dance. The parallelism between speech and dance is evident in the elaborate sacrificial ritual where the second half is often danced entirely by the medium. In other words, there is less speech and song in the second part of ritual because the total technology of the body is employed (rather than just the mouth and throat of the voice).

    If song is “speaking through melody,” then dance is “speaking through gestures,” i.e., as in mime. One of the most pleasing acts in the said ritual part is the medium dancing cooked food on plates held by both hands. S/he passes these around--sharing a gift--in space. It is an obligation for participants to receive it with both hands. It was quite striking to contemplate on how concepts of morality and goodness were physically embodied in such a drastic, sensuous artistic gesture. Thus, in those movements, the human body becomes the very medium of sociability. Like song, the miming body gesticulates personhood in ritual dance. It shapes human relations that ritual enacts. Dance is therefore myth inscribed on the body.

Medium dancing cooked food offerings