SACRED DANCE                                                                                                       What is Sacred Dance?

Sacred dance is considered to be the original form of worship, practised since the time mankind began to paint on cave walls. Today it is a spiritual practice that uses dance as a means of worship, prayer, celebration, meditation, holistic healing and personal empowerment. It can be integrated into any spiritual path because it is the inward participation which allows the dancer to connect with the Divine and allows the spirit to guide the dance. Although some sacred dance is performed in front of an audience or congregation, it is not a performance art. It is the spiritual focus of the dancer which is important not her technique or performance skills. The same applies to the solo dancer: if the focus is not an inward spiritual one, then her dance is just exercise.

Think back to Torvill and Dean's ice dance interpretation of Ravel's "Bolero." Their technical skills were excellent; they were competing in the most prestigious event of the skating world; they were performing in front of a vast audience – but all these are secondary to the fact that they were dancing from the heart, dancing for themselves, totally engrossed in the music and the movement. Perhaps that is why they received the perfect six.

 Dance is a form of sacred expression which is innate. Even in the uterus a foetus will move to the rhythm of its mother's speech. Slow motion photography shows that within a day or two of birth, a baby moves its arms and legs in rhythmic synchrony with its mother's voice. ("The Conscious Ear" Tomatis) Toddlers bounce about to lively music even if they have never seen anyone dance and certainly have not had a dance lesson. My son was just over two years old the first time he saw "The Snowman" but he jumped up and started dancing when the jig started playing for the party at the North Pole, totally ignoring the dancing snowmen on the screen.

 "Through dance we experience a dimension that the linear mind is not structured to perceive. It may have been dance that enabled us to first conceive of existences beyond our immediate physical experience, thereby creating the concept of spirituality, of 'God'." ("Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance" – Iris J. Stewart)

This presents us with a "chicken and the egg" problem. We now dance to celebrate the Divine, but did we create the Divine as a means of explaining the experience of dance?

Meditation                                                                      Meditation is the state of being in which the mind relaxes, in which we can listen to our inner self, to the Divine. We can achieve the same state whilst dancing by letting go of thought and just being the dance for each moment of "now". Meditation can confer insight, serenity, healing, comfort, courage – whatever it is that one is seeking. Dance combines physical energy with the power of the mind: movement adds another dimension to the meditation.  When doing a dance pathworking or a moving meditation, some people like to close their eyes in order to block visual distractions. There are obvious safety hazards in doing this, even on your own in a familiar room, more so in a group. One way round this is to use a veil over the head. This gives a feeling of separateness but still enables you to see sufficiently well to avoid other dancers and anything else which might cause injury. (The symbolism of the veil will be discussed in a later part of this article).

 Another option might be "The Wave. Ecstatic Dance for Body and Soul. A Revolutionary Moving Meditation" by Gabrielle Roth who describes herself as an urban shaman. "'The Wave' is a map to your innermost being. It's a fascinating journey through five powerful universal rhythms.  You can use these rhythms, Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness, to free your body and spirit from ordinary consciousness and catalyse motion deep in your psyche. Each sacred rhythm becomes a teacher, a gateway to your soul." The Wave can be focussed on a theme so that the 5Rhythms become "metaphors for events and people in your life and work."

The video is available (in PAL format) from STACCATO, Bridam, Kents Road, Wellswood, Torquay, Devon, TQ1 2NN. Tel:01803 295442

 Music                                                                                                          Gabrielle Roth has her own musicians, The Mirrors, to create music for her ecstatic dance but you can use whatever moves you: classical, New Age, natural sounds, drumming, didgeridoo, world music, ethnic instruments, hymns, Gospel music or even make your own. If you are dancing to celebrate a harvest, use the sounds of sifting grain and the grinding of a mortar and pestle.

 History                                                                                                           Although we have only been able to record dance on film for the last hundred years or so, sacred dance has been documented through art and literature: the writers of ancient Greece and Rome have almost unwittingly left us a record of some of the sacred dances of the Classical era; the Bible contains accounts of dances of worship; artists have captured real occasions of spiritual dance as well as interpreting written accounts of it; statues also freeze a moment of ecstatic movement. Medieval paintings show that dance used to be a part of the Christian religion in this country. Although dance returned to its place in social life after the overthrow of the Puritan regime, it wasn't until early in the twentieth century that it was once again viewed as a medium for spiritual expression. The revival began with dancers such as Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham and Ruth St Denis who was the inspiration for the Sacred Dance Guild and Dances of Universal Peace which are major sacred dance organisations. Sacred Dance Ministries can now be found all over the world, and especially in America. "A recent survey in 'Dance Magazine' found churches in more than twenty-three denominations that now embrace dance in some form as part of worship: Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, Unitarian, Mennonite, Russian Orthodox as well as some Jewish synagogues. Could it be that the return of dance as religious and spiritual expression coincides with the rise of women in leadership roles in the church?" ("Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance")

 Why dance?                                                                                                                      I n the West we are conditioned to think of prayer as being spoken, read or sung. Anything physical was considered sinful because the body was seen as vastly inferior to the mind or spirit. The pleasures of the flesh – including the enjoyment of dance – had to be denied if you wanted a place in heaven. However, words can sometimes be limiting: how many times have you been stuck for words because we just don't seem to have the right words in our language to express what we are feeling. Even within one country people don't all speak the same language – but language barriers can be transcended with dance, movement and gesture. Indeed, we often enhance the spoken word with gestures in order to emphasise or refine the meaning of what we are saying. When we dance our prayers, our thoughts are given motion and energy and our spiritual light is magnified. Try dancing your prayers instead of reciting them and see (or feel) what happens. You might also like to read "Sweat Your Prayers" by Gabrielle Roth.

Dance Training                                                                                               Must you have some form of dance training before you can practise sacred dance? Yes and no – both answers are right. To use clichés: if the spirit moves you, go with the flow. In other words it doesn't matter if you have never attended a dance lesson in your life – you can still express your emotions through movements unique and specific to you. Most people have a natural rhythmic ability which is only inhibited by their lack of familiarity with the experience or the fear of feeling daft or looking foolish. This is where the other half of the answer comes into its own. Any form of dance gives you a vocabulary of movement with which you can feel comfortable and use as your form of expression. The downside, however, is that you can limit yourself to that learned set of movements thereby cutting yourself off from other forms of expression. Gail Stepanek, founder of Improvisational Inspiration says:

 "As we enter into improvisational dancing, we automatically live in the present moment and enter the unknown, moment by moment, as we are creating. As we abandon and surrender ourselves to the dance that unfolds from within, we enter a 'thought-free' state where the mind becomes a focussed instrument for the song of the heart and we are able to enter deep levels of joy and bliss and a feeling of union with the all-pervading spirit.

"In offering ourselves fully to the spirit, to the sacred dance, spirit enters and moves us, transforms us, awakens our soul's passion, enlivens every cell of our body. We become the essence of spirit in motion, the divine cosmic dancer. The sacred dance can take us across from one world to another, from one state of mind to another, from contraction and fear to expansion and love. It is a symbol of life, vibrating, alive and radiant. It can guide us home to our true state of inner freedom." ("Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance" by Iris J Stewart P134)

Improvisation or Choreogphy                                                                          Some people find it easier to surrender to the music, to the moment. For them the act of trying to remember what comes next would impinge upon the experience and detract from its essence. Others would maintain that practising set moves - which have a spiritual significance - until they become second nature, frees the mind and spirit to concentrate upon the experience. Neither is wrong. Just as we all learn in different ways (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic), so we have our preferred way of dancing.

If your dance is a narrative one which is being performed for an audience or congregation, then it is important that all those present see all the moves relevant to the story. Therefore choreography is necessary to make sure that nothing is missed out and to enable the audience to understand the story and share the experience it is telling.

Veil Dance 

Many ancient cultures have a story about a Goddess (usually a Goddess of love or of the harvest) who travels down into the underworld to seek a loved one (Ishtar and Tammuz, Isis and Osiris, Demeter and Persephone to name but a few). During her absence from the earth nothing grows and there is neither love nor celebration. As the Goddess journeys to the centre of the underworld, she passes through seven gates. At each one she removes a veil. The stripping of the veils symbolises facets of our lives and personalities which we don't really need. At the centre of the underworld we stand unveiled and meet our true selves. In the legend of Innana she meets her dark sister Ereshkigal who represents everything she had hidden or denied about herself. By restoring the loved one to life or by integrating the two halves, the Goddess is complete again and can return to the upper world. In modern society the dance of the seven veils is seen only in the physical sense i.e. as a strip tease. Its true meaning has been lost. On another level the legends explain the change of the seasons and the cycle of death and rebirth: once the Goddess returned to earth, complete with her veils, everything flourished again. Behind the veil is hidden the secret of life therefore dancing with a veil affirms the vitality of life itself. There are pictures and statues from ancient times which appear to show women dancing with veils but after the Greek and Roman civilisations there is nothing. This is almost certainly due to the dominance of patriarchal religion and the consequent suppression of female mysteries.   

Modern veil dance, therefore, does not have a historical continuity from the past. It should be considered more as a re-instatement of the concept. Time and dance have moved on since the Roman era and so the physical side of the dance incorporates many modern ideas drawn from ballet and other sources. The more spiritual side of veil dance is still there within the legends which have survived and can be adopted or adapted for use within expressions of spirituality and sacred dance in the twenty-first century. 

An interesting aside on the subject of veiling and the secrets of life comes from the dancer Morocco in her article "Dance as Community Identity in Selected Berber Nations of Morocco". Talking about the Blue People of the Tuareg tribe she says: "Why do Blue men, feared to this day for their ferocity and skill as warriors and respected as businessmen, "veil" and defer to their own women? Because of their belief that the world has a great number of evil "spirits" eager to invade the body via any opening - especially the mouth and nostrils – so they must cover/protect the entranceways, but since women know the secret of life (only they can conceive and give birth), they have natural protection against these evil spirits."

Guedra

The Guedra (pronounced gee-dra with a hard g sound) belongs to the Blue People. The word guedra means the cooking-pot which could be covered with a skin and used as a drum; the blessing dance and the woman who performed or led the blessing dance. The guedra dance is performed at night. The drum plays a heartbeat rhythm whilst others clap or chant. The aim of the Guedra (woman) is to envelop the area and all present in good energy, peace and spiritual love. This is transmitted from the Guedra's soul via her hands and fingers. Morocco, (ibid) describes it thus: "Pulling the tail of her robe over her headdress so that it covers her head, face and chest…. The "veil" signifies darkness, the unknown, lack of knowledge. Her hands and fingers are moving under the covering, flicking at it, trying to escape into the light. When she feels the time is right, the Guedra's hands emerge from the veil's sides. "With hand –to-head gestures, she salutes the four corners: North, South, East and west, followed by obeisances to the four elements: Fire (the sun), Earth, Wind and Water. She touches her abdomen, heart and head, then quickly flicks her fingers towards all others present, in life or spirit, sending blessings to them from the depths of her soul's energy.

"Why does she touch her abdomen? In the east, the heart is known to be fickle and unreliable. When somebody wishes to convey true depth of affections or emotions, the way of expressing it is to say: 'You are in my liver.' By indicating the approximate spot on her abdomen….the Guedra underscores the depth and sincerity of her blessing.

"Blue People believe their second fingers to be direct lines to the soul, with power to transmit blessings or curses, so the Guedra directs most of her mini-bolts of energy through them, gently holding them a bit lower than the others. This energy can be specifically focussed on an individual, present or not, to a group or to the entire world. 

"If her hands flick to the front, the Guedra sends blessings for the future, to the side – the present, to the back – the past, overhead – to the sun, down – to the earth, from side to side – to the waters and winds. Time is a circle. In the guedra, the vast majority of movement flows from the fingers and hands, with some arm movements from the elbows down.

"The ribcage is lifted and lowered/relaxed, as in some African dances, when extra emphasis is called for. The head can be turned from side-to-side, causing the braids to sway. As the guedra comes to a crescendo, accent in the chest movements transfers from lift to lowering and the head swings more strongly from side-to-side with chin lifts, causing the braids to 'fly'.

"…the guedra goes on for quite a while, gradually increasing tempo and intensity, but still keeping the heartbeat rhythm. Likewise, the guedra's breathing also increases in intensity, until she collapses in a trance.

"So seriously is it taken by Moroccans in general, that his majesty, King Hassan, had his own personal Guedra, B'shara of Guelmin."

The guedra should not be confused with the Zar, the Egyptian trance dance.

Dancing and Drumming

The Zar is sometimes referred to as a trance dance. However, it is more than that. A zar is used in North African countries, including Egypt, as a cathartic healing for someone – usually a woman – who has been “possessed”. The rite is normally performed by women who are led by an older, more experienced woman. The “spirit” is not necessarily driven out of the person: sometimes it is integrated or placated. Although zar shares some characteristics with sacred dance, it differs in its intent: both use strong drum rhythms and both effect an altered state of consciousness through dance but the purpose of zar is to heal the person who is troubled. 

Sacred dance, on the other hand, uses drumming and dance in a way that parallels that of the shaman or shamanka (female shaman). The drum is often referred to as the “shaman’s horse” because s/he rides the rhythm up the World Tree until s/he reaches ecstatic communication with the spirit world.

Women have always been the makers and keepers of rhythm because the rhythms of life are so strong in a woman. Her life is governed by rhythms and patterns: the heartbeat, the monthly menstrual cycle and the lifelong cycle of birth, life, death and re-birth, witnessed yearly in the changing of the seasons and reflected in varying lengths in the rest of the natural world. “The matriarchal early planters invented the drum, underlining their ritual dance with a regular ostinato sound. Drums beat for the birth of a child, a coming of age, marriage and a death. It was said that the all-begetting Mother beat a drum to mark the rhythm of life.” (“Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance” Iris J. Stewart). The circular shape of the drum has symbolic meaning: the ever-repeating cycle of life, eternity and the cauldron of Cerridwen which in turn was referred to as the womb of life.

“Tempo” and “temple” share the same Latin root so it is not surprising that drumming and rhythmical dancing are used as a means of expressing spirituality. The brain of a human being has four definable rhythms: “beta (walking, talking and other daily activities); alpha (relaxed meditative); theta (inspiration, creativity and extrasensory perception) and delta (deep sleep). Rhythm is energy so…when we move to drum rhythms we feel as though we’re being carried along by the beat – a feeling of effortlessness and safety… Perhaps that is why rhythm seems to lift time out of the realm of the ordinary, as we know it, and transmutes it into timelessness. Rhythm is essential to transcendence; because of its power, the drum becomes a force in its own right, its mesmerising beat affecting the soma and the psyche.” (Ibid) 

Different rhythms are often associated with different spirits or saints, depending on the culture. When these sacred beings are invoked for healing through drumming and dance it is the rhythm which acts upon the heartbeat and also causes body rhythms to change. The percussive shifts stimulate adrenalin producing the fight-or-flight response which then transforms into the desire to dance. “Drum-inspired dance has the potential for restoring our sense of balance, for changing our focus and for soothing the nervous system. Emotional states of joy and fear are energy-based and easily become rhythmically expressed; energy-depleted psychic processes, such as grief and depression, can shift with external rhythmic activation. As the right and left hemispheres of the brain are joined together in this way, a deeper integration takes place, one that expands consciousness.” (Ibid) In other words, we connect with the divine.

The connection, however, takes place not within the beat of the rhythm but in the stillness between the beats. This stillness is also mirrored in the pauses in the dance. Ideally the dance and the drum should work as one, with the dancer following the drum and the drummer responding to the nuances of the dance. Neither leads; both follow, both live the rhythm and in its pauses both find the divine soul.

Mazes, Spirals and Serpents

Snakes are considered in many cultures to be symbols of healing because of their ability to shed their skin and emerge renewed. The physicians’ emblem, the caduceus, which comprises two snakes entwined, possibly derives from this and, interestingly, is the same shape as the double helix of our DNA. However, the symbolism goes beyond the physical and the emergence of the “new” snake from its old skin becomes a metaphor for the spiritual mystery of birth and rebirth. Throughout the history of mankind the snake has played an important symbolic role: the earth serpent represents the energy lines which flow through and under the earth, and the creative energy which flows through people.

Cultures all over the globe have evidence of snake dances in the form of mazes, spiral dances which reflect the coiled serpent, or indeed dancing whilst holding a snake. This is seen in evidence from Minoan Crete which had a strong snake culture. Snakes were synonymous with life. On a practical level they guarded the granaries from attack by rodents and, in Pharaonic Egypt, snakes were encouraged and considered lucky in domestic settings, not least because of the protection they afforded to the food stores.

The association of the snake with life is seen very clearly in these sinuous movements of the belly during childbirth. These serpentine moves were copied and developed by the dancer to include not just the abdomen, but also other parts of the body, such as the arms. Pictures or statues of Indian Goddesses with several sets of arms show this idea very clearly. Group dancers in a line can physically re-create the undulating shape of the snake as it moves, or they can spiral inwards thereby making the image of a coiled serpent. Circular mazes are a permanent construction of the image of the snake and the devotees who danced through this image would twist and wind until they reached the centre, a point of spiritual significance. The outward path represented their rebirth into a new life. In some cultures it is a cosmic serpent or snake Goddess who gives birth to the earth and its inhabitants.

 To dance the energies of he snake, use fluid, undulating movements of the hips, rib-cage and arms. These movements should roll to and fro in waves, but circles and spiral moves can also be included, as well as head slides. Slow, mesmerising music is often preferred but remember that snakes can and do move like lightning when necessary. 

A final thought – in the Middle East, hissing like a snake during a dancer’s performance is seen as a compliment and in Greece, during the Karaguna (a traditional snake folk dance), the dancers make a hissing sound to accompany the leg lifts.

Rites of Passage

Even today, with all our sophisticated technology, pregnancy and childbirth are still both a risk and a miracle. How much greater must this have been for our foremothers. No wonder that in pre-historic times women were revered as the giver of life and that women, as “the producer of offspring, thus also became the inspiration for the dance of reincarnation/regeneration…. a dance performed in the hope of immortality, for a life after death.” (“Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance” Iris J. Stewart) Dance moves which use the hips, abdomen and lower back (bellydance is an ideal example) prepare the woman’s body for the strain placed upon it by the developing baby and subsequent labour, as well as helping her to regain muscle strength afterwards. Beyond the physical benefits, “belly dance puts a pregnant woman deeply in touch with her power and beauty as creator and progenitor……Birthing is Life taking over, and yet positive participation in the process by the woman is essential.” (ibid)

At the other end of life it has invariably been a woman’s work to care for the dying and to be the midwife to the soul as it leaves the body for its new life in another realm. Dancing for the soul expresses the belief in rebirth. “Funerary dance is often a chin dance performed with arms interlinked in a protective manner, showing support and comfort for the community, and symbolising the unity of life and death, thus sustaining the connection between the departed and the living.” (ibid) Circular dances were a physical manifestation of the circle of life, death and rebirth. This idea appears in the Goddess vegetation myths mentioned earlier in the Veils section of this article.

These legends make a good basis for dance drama about life and death.

For a woman, there area several fundamental and physically obvious stages between birth and death, and these are often referred to as Rites of Passage. The first of these is the menarche, the onset of menstruation. A dance ritual, during which the young girl takes her place in the circle of women, shows her that she is growing in spiritual power and is now ready to learn the women’s mysteries. On a practical level, she will also learn that certain movements can also help to relieve menstrual pain, such as pelvic circles and figure eights.

The next major life change is marriage and in some Middle Eastern countries the carnal knowledge required for the wedding night is imparted by an experienced  dancer, such as the  Scheikha in Morocco, who dances the movements and behaviours that the girl will need to know. This is done as part of the pre-wedding celebrations in an all-female group who share a lot of irreverent laughter at the dame time. 

Childbirth has already been discussed earlier in this article so the next rite of passage in a woman’s life is usually the crone stage. As there is no definite start to the menopause (or even a definite end) it is difficult to pinpoint a time to celebrate a positive initiation into the freedom of the crone phase. Many women today would reject the idea anyway, because in this youth-centre (some would say obsessed) culture, the wisdom of the crone carries little weight or respect, although I think the pendulum is beginning to swing back again simply because the movers and shakers of the sixties are now in (or approaching) their sixties and are not about to take old age lying down. They might enjoy celebrating this new phase of their life by holding a croning ceremony which could include dance. Not surprisingly, there is an increasing body of literature on the subject of women’s third age and three of the best writers are Susun S. Weed, Marian Van Eyk McCain and Jean Shinoda Bolen.

Conclusion

Sacred Dance has metamorphosed and survived down the centuries and now we are the keepers of the flame.  However, there is no particular style of dance which can be labelled definitively as “Sacred Dance”, no right or wrong ways of dancing, no set formats or situations which call for Sacred Dance. If all this seems nebulous, then consider the paradox that it is the very adaptability of Sacred Dance which has preserved it. It is now up to us to continue the spirit of the dance and, in due time, to pass it on.