Is there a universal beauty? Is there a type of art, a kind of music or a style of dance that is considered beautiful by all of humanity? Or is beauty learned? Is it instilled in a person by the culture in which they exist?
I’ve often wondered this. I am torn. As I look at popular artists, I see both a trend towards what is commonly considered beautiful and a tendency to purposefully disregard that aesthetic — both seem to argue for a universal beauty. I think too of the mathematics of the universe and the perfect proportions that seem to be consciously embedded into all things, and I cannot help but believe that somehow there must be an equation for beauty too.
We know that the most famous classical music follows logical patterns. We know that proportional art appeals to people. And I believe those same aesthetics apply to dance. As I so often do, I’ve turned to Isadora Duncan, to get her take on the subject.
“Man has not invented the harmony of music,” Isadora wrote. “It is one of the underlying principles of life. Neither could the harmony of movement be invented: it is essential to draw one’s conception of it from Nature herself, and to see the rhythm of human movement from the rhythm of water in motion, from the blowing of the winds on the world, in all the earth’s movements, in the motions of animals, fish, birds, reptiles, and even in primitive man, whose body still moved in harmony with nature…..All the movements of the earth follow the lines of wave motion. Both sound and light travel in waves. The motion of water, winds, trees and plants progresses in waves. The flight of a bird and the movements of all animals follow lines like undulating waves. If then one seeks a point of physical beginning for the movement of the human body, there is a clue in the undulating motion of the wave.”