"Western dance scholars have not used the word ethnic in its objective sense; they have used it as a euphemism for such old fashioned terms as "heathen", "pagan", "savage", or the more recent term "exotic". ...
[D]ue to the social climate which rejects the connotations with which our former words for "they" were invested, and because of a certain sophistication assumed by the apologists for the "they", English-speaking scholars were hard -pressed to find designations for the kinds of non-Western dance which they wished to discuss. "




in "An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance" by Joann Kealiinohomoku