Dance bans are tools of oppression. As with the persecution of witches in the Middle Ages, emancipated and independent women are a great danger to totalitarian regimes, such as those in Iran today.
The goal of totalitarian regimes is to prescribe a certain way of life and thinking to people. The less a person thinks independently and has forgotten who he is, the more uncritically a person accepts these regulations.
Whoever dances comes into contact with himself. The person feels himself, knows who he is and what he really needs. That is why dancing people are difficult to manipulate. Dancing is a catalyst for civil disobedience and makes dictatorship more difficult.
Throughout human history, dictatorships have banned dance or prescribed how people should dance.
According to legend, Irish tap dancing originated during a ban on dancing. Stiff as a board with arms hanging down, people danced with their feet because the police controlled the pubs through the windows and could not see their feet.
In patriarchal dictatorships such as the one in Iran (not only there), dancing women are logically something like “glitches in the matrix”.
I personally think that now more than ever it is important for women to regain access to their bodies. Considering the public control measures that are being installed in the course of the pandemic, Pina Bausch’s famous quote, “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost,” takes on a relevance of existential importance.