Dance and religion have been intertwined in various ways through the centuries. The attitudes toward dance expressed in ancient Greek writings and the Bible are part of a philosophical legacy that has been influential throughout the intellectual and cultural history of the Western world. The ancient Greeks believed that dance was supreme among the arts, indeed that it was fundamentally inseparable from music and poetry. In the Laws, Plato writes that all creatures are prompted to express emotions through body movements, and he notes that such instinctive response is transformed into dance by virtue of a gift from the gods: rhythmic and harmonic order. Other Greeks held the general belief that dance was originally transmitted directly from the gods to humans, and consequently that all dancing is a spiritual endeavor. Whatever the origin of dance, classical historians maintain...