More than an Expression : PBS SERIES TRACES DANCE AS ART, RELIGION AND POLITICAL WEAPON

“If you understand someone’s dance, you immediately start learning about their culture and their values,” says Rhoda Grauer, creator and executive producer of “Dancing,” an eight-part series premiering Monday on PBS.

Filmed in 18 countries on five continents, “Dancing” focuses on the rules, taboos, messages and meanings that are formed when people dance. The series examines such topics as dance as an art form, a vehicle for worship, a political weapon, an instrument of self-expression and as a source of pleasure and entertainment. Dancer Raoul Trujillo hosts.

The premiere episode, “Out of the Mouths of Babes,” features Jacques d’Amboise, former New York City Ballet star, who introduces the kids from his acclaimed National Dance Institute in New York to the pleasures of ensemble dancing.

Dance has given D’Amboise a center to his life. “I am 59 and I have been dancing since 7 years old, so that is over half a century,” says D’Amboise. “I have been dancing in every field and on every level. Dancing opened up a whole world to me.”

And gave him an education. Though he only completed one year of high school, D’Amboise has six honorary doctorates. “I am a visiting professor for 11 years at the University of Santa Barbara and a full professor at the State University of New York,” he says. “Why? Because of dance opening such a world of education to me.”

When Grauer began doing serious research on “Dancing” five years ago, she envisioned it as a multipart series on dance in America. But the format quickly changed. “First, I had to define my subject,” she says. “What was American? What was dance? That really shattered all of my boundaries. So I started thinking about the various functions that dance serves in life.”

Tap dancing, Grauer points out, is uniquely American, but its roots can be traced back to Africa. “If you look at the Martha Graham technique, you eventually end up looking at some Asian forms because she is influenced by yoga,” Grauer says. “American really meant the world. So what I tried to do was pick themes that were really historical in their nature.”

Parallels exist between the development of dance in Western Europe and development of dance in America, Grauer found. “The Ashanti court is still active,” Grauer says. “In Ghana, the Ashanti are the predominant ethnic group. They have a king and a whole system of sub-chiefs. You didn’t become a king of the Ashanti by birth, you were elected from a noble class. The Ashanti didn’t have written language, so all of their histories were part of songs, chants and talking drums.”

Grauer not only learned about dance while making the series, she also became aware of the effects of colonialism and cultural suppression. “One of the first things that people do is suspect the way other people use their bodies,” she says. The predominant Protestant Europeans were taught that the noble part of humans were their soul and spirit.

For Africans, “their deities were in the Earth,” Grauer says. “Their movements, the whole way they used their bodies was very different. Europeans traveled around the world and dancing immediately became the object of suspicion. If you look at ritual dances in Native American ceremonies, it is often an occasion to bring huge numbers of people together. Certainly in early American history, Indian ceremonials were stopped because Christians saw them as pagan and pagan was bad.”

Grauer didn’t run into any difficulties filming dances and rituals from various cultures. “People couldn’t believe that television wanted to film what they were doing,” she says. “They welcomed us with open arms. I expected not to be able to shoot Kabuki--the artists are owned by syndicates which are like corporations--but we have the two best Kabuki artists on Earth.”

She did abandon plans to shoot several forms of dance, including Native American Hopi rituals. “The Hopi are one of the few Native American tribes that were never converted to Christianity,” she says. “Their ceremonials are linked to dance and they have not allowed cameras. I spent a lot of time going to Hopi and meeting with people. Suddenly, one morning I woke up and said, ‘Why am I doing this? They don’t want this filmed.’ Western culture is a very aggressive culture. We don’t accept no.”

She also ruled out China and South Africa because of political unrest. “We were going to Cambodia because there is a resurgence of court dance, but there were so many things we had to deal with, like not getting malaria in India and not getting our cameras stolen in Nigeria,” Grauer says. “To target parts of the world that were literally engaged in warfare was a bit much.”

“Dancing” premieres Monday at 8 p.m. on KPBS and KVCR and 9 p.m. on KCET. The series will continue Mondays through May 24.