Dance theory is the philosophy underpinning contemporary dance, including formal ideologies, aesthetic concepts, and technical attributes. It is a fairly new field of study, developing largely in the 20th Century. It can be considered a branch of expression theory and is closely related to
music theory and specifically
musicality. While musicality deals with finding a particular matching pair of dance and music that fit each other in various respects, dance theory is a broad term encompassing the
origins,
styles,
genre,
footwork,
artistic expression, etc. of dance.