Dance, Movement & Spiritualities - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2017

The six seasons of Indian aesthetics expressed in the fifth-century poet Kalidasa’s Ritu Samhara (Cycle of Seasons) depict the landscapes of the natural world as reflections of the shifting inner worlds of a lover in relationship with his or her beloved. Weather patterns, animal behaviours, variances in rivers and cycles of trees parallel the rhythmic dance of desire between humans and between humans and nature. This article traces an ethnographic example of Kalidasa’s work, Ritu: The Seasons as choreographed by Suchitra Sairam in the South Asian storytelling dance form of bharatanatyam. As a unique thematic programme focused on nature, danced in an outdoor venue, Ritu offers kinesthetic insights into how gesture sequences enact a particular oscillation of inward and outward responsiveness between humans and the environment within the aesthetic framework of sringara rasa, an erotic mood. Attuning the dancers’ bodies to aspects of nature nurtures an intimacy at the centre of an embodied ecological relationality.

This article examines Charya Nritya, the contemplative and yogic dance practice of the Tantric Buddhist priests of Nepal. Taking as my focus a dance devoted to a divinity who embodies universal compassion, I elucidate how the ways of moving and somatic sensitivities nurtured by the dance can serve in the Buddhist quest to cultivate a compassionate bodily presence on earth.

Dance scholar Jacqueline Shea Murphy introduces Daystar/Rosalie Jones, who created the first Native contemporary dance company, DAYSTAR Dance Drama of Indian America, in 1980 (and who describes her recent work Dancing the Four Directions in this special issue). Shea Murphy first situates her professional relationship with Daystar/Rosalie, which spans over two decades. She then situates Daystar/Rosalie’s work in the context of this special issue, giving a brief overview of some of the dances she has made over nearly half a century, dances centred within Indigenous cultural story and mythic image, and grounded, directly or indirectly, in relation to place.

Among the Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes region, the Medicine Circle is a teaching tool through which to discover the gifts of our world and one’s relationship with them. These teachings could fill many western books, but with Native Peoples, it is left to the individual, with guidance from Elders, to understand aspects of each direction and allow that wisdom to assist in developing Mno-Bimazdiwin – ‘the good life’. In 2016, Daystar/Rosalie Jones met the challenge of creating a contemporary ‘Native modern dance’ inspired by the teachings of the Anishinaabe Medicine Circle. This is the story of her creative process.

This article proposes one model for living in connection with the earth. Using learned lessons from within African Diaspora dance practices, I suggest a transfer of collective traditional body knowledge about the importance of dancing to contemporary earth-dwellers in hopes of an accessible and practical method for abundant joy, human health and committed contribution to Mother Earth.

Thresholds is a somatic movement excursion that involves a three-part process: the approach, the passing through (liminality) and the arriving into a new space. Language shapes experience. Verbal choices can lead us into an experience or can shut it down. By offering a series of prompts in the writing, readers notice how words cue changes in the body and are encouraged to broaden choices about how to engage their intrinsic intelligence. Utilizing this experiential movement practice, personal narrative, scientific information, reflections and research by other artists and scholars, and visual imagery as modes and models of inquiry and illumination, invoke possibilities for insight and discovery. Attention is focused on inner as well as outer landscapes, amplifying possibilities for broad readership. The function of Thresholds as a movement exploration is threefold: (1) we can notice how language shapes experience, (2) we can feel and experience our inhibitions and expressivity without restrictive judgment, but with discernment and (3) we can recognize commonalities and appreciate difference, heightening intercultural competence. Throughout, Thresholds as a theme links us both to body systems and body-level boundaries. It also reminds us of our fluid nature; there is not just one way to be in the world. The text encourages investigation, offers multiple views and perspectives, and draws on the Discipline of Authentic Movement as a resource for cultivating a discerning inner witness. The conclusion features the author’s reflections on current collaborative endeavours, and an inspiring performance by Project Bandaloop, amplifying the theme of moving between worlds.

Earth spinning in space grounds our world-sense of belonging, as do our spinning dances. This article explores self-world-earth relationships, particularly how direction of attention (intentionality) becomes formative in dancing. More widely, it develops a philosophy of an ethical world gaze, promising to enliven the senses. Somewhere between untenable extremes of optimism and pessimism, actions born of joy and hope draw me towards this possibility. Earth, world and nature entwine in language and perception, but they also have divergent aspects to be theorized. These imprecise terms become increasingly more discrete in the course of this article, textured through perspectives of Buddhism, eco-phenomenology and butoh. Examinations of ethics in dance and attendant relationships of morality build from there. I explore all of this in four sections of this work: Stargazing, Faces of joy and evanescence, Texturing world and nature, and As the moth.

This article focuses on partnership, across couples and centuries. First, the married couple: my mother, a strong and dry intellect, paired with my father, water-god, all flowing passion; seventy years later, my ballroom dance instructor-parents, who teach me relationship through security born of trust, the intact self within dynamic mutuality. Last, the fraught mother–child couple. Woven throughout, a reading of Dante Alighieri’s great medieval poem ‘The Divine Comedy’ (Dante 1949: Inferno, Cantos I, XXXI and XXXIV) serves to shade my travel from dense fear and stasis towards a future where ecstasy can be a daily event. The theme (from earth to dancer) is ground-to-body. Its variations (dancer to earth) glide across the smooth-wood dance floor. In sympathetic parallels, I trace my personal history across multiple psychological landscapes: teacher–student, leader–follower, parent–child, tender care from guide and master to the foundling pilgrim heart. The project of ballroom dancing spontaneously and consciously incarnates the isolated soul. Infernal circles of pain and sin draw the voyagers down; eventually they’ll tunnel up to a new sphere of penance and ultimately of freedom. The circling dance forms evolve but never lose grateful contact with the earth. Neither myth nor literature (maybe both-and), they become a joyfully aware and centred turning on our turning planet as it fulfills its orbit in space.

My book Why We Dance: A Philosophy of Bodily Becoming (2015) calls attention to dance as a theoretical and practical resource for discerning how to respond to this cultural moment in ways that will, in the words of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, ‘Remain faithful to the earth’. Central to my argument is the notion of an experience shift: practices of dancing can offer us the opportunity to know ourselves as movement – not as bodies that move, but as rhythms of bodily becoming, always creating and becoming patterns of movement. After writing the book, I translated my ideas into nine song-poems in order to invite visceral responses. This article shares these song-poems and discusses their importance for dance philosophy.