True Left

Speaking of dance, here is a quote from an anthropologist writing in the year 1900. He speaks very highly about dancing as an art form, and basically says Western forms of dance are inferior to African and other "non-white" cultures.

When I read this the first time it stood out to me and I remember thinking the way he spoke of dance made it seem like he viewed it as the highest art form. Maybe I am misremembering, but I seem to recall Deniker or some other anthropologist from this time period explicitly saying how dull and inferior the Western waltz dance style was compared to non-Western dances.

As a professional academic from 1900, he is using typical Western language, but we can see the point he is trying to make:

Dancing. — The productions of the graphic arts charm the eye after completion; those of the musical arts are enjoyed only while being performed. But there is an art which combines these two modes of aesthetic enjoyment: it is dancing. Its plastic attitudes are so many pictures, and its movements have a rhythm like music.

This art, sunk among civilised peoples to the level of a simple amusement, plays a large part in the life of uncultured peoples.
[...]
Let us also note that these dances are to the discipline of the elders in order to afford pleasure to the people of their tribe. The joy, moreover, is mutual, for the performers "feel" the dance without seeing it, and the effects of movement.

Dancing is then a great school of "solidarity" in primitive societies; more than any other act, it brings into prominence the benefits of sociality. But this favourable result is only possible in the smaller groupings, in which at least half of the society may take part in the dance; this condition no longer exists in civilised societies, numbering millions on millions of members: thus in these societies the choregraphic art is in a complete state of decay.
-Joseph Deniker (1900).

So, according to him, these non-Western societies are "uncultured" and "uncivilized", yet possess more laudable art than Western societies.