Philosophy as dance

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Plato thought statesmanship was a bit like weaving, sophistry a little like angling; the writer Justin E.H. Smith likens philosophy, unexpectedly, to dance. He argues that philosophy is best regarded as 'a universal human activity with many distinct cultural inflections.' Dance, to his mind, is a better analogy than (say) ballet, something 'by definition, European,' though it may well crop up outside Europe 'by diffusion or appropriation.' The tradition of European philosophy that traces its lineage back to Plato and Socrates is, then, like ballet, a single cultural inflection of a universal activity."