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In a culture where some guy painting a room white and peeing on the floor is "Art" rather than a hygene problem, "dance" is "art"? To claim that throwing yourself about in the arms of a genderless male for the edification of the adults and the amusement of the children is some higher state of "culture" is mockery.

Actors, dancers, jugglers, street mimes are all of a type, one step above thieves and footpads, and until films started a self aggrandizing campaign, were not people you would want to be seen with in public. Lindsey Lohan, Barbra Striesand, Rosie O'Donnell, Alan Alda, are all wildly overpaid "artists", with the intellects of a fence post, who play 'pretend.'

I'll present this question to all of you. Success in weight-lifting, ice skating, gymnastics, all require constant personal dedication and talent. Are they worthy of a College Level Master's program?

Easy-—
Most dance fields require not only core ed in college, but chemistry, biology, human anatomy and physiology and other related sciences, plus broad history & specific dance history, plus human kinetics, education, spacial theory, basic choreograhy, music and rhythm history etc....

So everyone I know who has a dance degree is not only ultra-smart mentally, but in great shape physically. Not many degrees can boast the best of both worlds.

Fine, you have contempt for art, it’s clear. You seem to have no comprehension of who or what you’re degrading, as if you crawled out of some pre-Victorian time warp. You’re contemptuous, simply because we refuse to hold your opinions in like esteem.... Again, because some of us respect those who are not only artists, but instead of stopping there, went on to be all they can be in their field, in ways of education.

Because they were smart, talented and physcially gifted....they’ve become successful, famous and respected.

Again, you say you’re a snob. I just see you as sad. What a tiny, narrow world you seem to live in.... if so few people have your respect.

Actors, dancers, jugglers, street mimes are all of a type, one step above thieves and footpads, and until films started a self aggrandizing campaign, were not people you would want to be seen with in public.

"You" who? Confederate officers? Baptist preachers? Republican politicians?

If people are willing to pay to subsidize an art, it's art. If no one is willing to pay and the artist demands government grants to make up the difference in his or her income, then there is admittedly a problem with the "art" definition - the individual becomes a welfare recipient. But the dancers discussed above aren't surviving on tax dollars - people pay well to see them.

As for college-level Masters Degree programs - any art or science requiring a sufficiently difficult program of study can be turned into one, provided there are students willing to pay to learn it. The existence of a Masters Degree in Dance doesn't devalue the Masters Degree in Chemistry being offered next door. A Masters Degree in Weight Lifting would not make sense because the skills required can be learned in a very short time - the rest is simply practice and repetition. And colleges do offer Masters Degrees in the broader field of Physical Education, which would encompass weight training.

Thanks for your non-answer. It’s OK, I can see you don’t get it. Actually less than 2% of the population does. By your posts, you have stated your agenda. Your agenda shouldn’t have anything to do with wrestling, or dancing with someone else’s agenda. To the unenlightened, the agenda is all there is. There is nothing else. This time-bound mode of consciousness clings to the Victorian [sic] past for its identity and desperately needs the agenda for its happiness and fulfillment. Therefore, the agenda holds enormous promise but poses a great threat at the same time. That is the dilemma of the unenlightened consciousness: it is torn between seeking fulfillment in and through the agenda and being threatened by it continuously. A person hopes that they will find themselves in it, and at the same time they fear that the agenda is going to kill them, as it will. That is the state of continuous conflict that the unenlightened consciousness is condemned to—being torn continuously between desire and fear. It’s a dreadful fate.

Sorry for you that the arts offend and threaten. Of course Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, George Gershwin, Claude Monet , Shakespeare weren’t very good at what they did. Neither were Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Paine … just wannabe politicians or Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers …silly tinkerers. You, of course know, what they all had in common.

Seems to me that you have your “subjective” and “objective” arguments all twisted up. It’s fine. I’m not going to do your agenda.