If a person experiences boredom while walking and has no tolerance for this state, he will move restlessly in fits and starts or go this way and that.
However, someone with greater tolerance for boredom will recognize, after a while, that walking as such is what bores him. Consequently, he will be impelled to find a kind of movement that is entirely different. Running, or racing, does not yield a new gait. It is just accelerated walking. Dancing or gliding, however, represent entirely new forms of motion. Only human beings can dance. It may be that boredom seized him while walking, so that after—and through—this “attack” he would make the step from walking to dancing. Compared with linear walking, straight ahead, the convoluted movement of dancing represents a luxury; it escapes the achievement-principle entirely.
Words by Byung-Chul Han, taken from The Burnout Society (2010). Image: American model Renée Gunter modeling Haute Couture clothing on a fashion runway circa 1970s. Source.
