Seeing the Eyes of God in Human Form: Iconography and Impersonation in African and Hindu Traditions of Trance Performance in the Southern Caribbean (2012) (original) (raw)
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A journal has arrived that explores how dancing spiritualities move lives
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, 2014
Before human beings gave importance to sitting still and staring at a fire, it is likely that they found their most meaningful inspirations and links to the unspeakable and unthinkable through spirited movement. The ancient rock art of southern Africa, and the ongoing healing dances of Ju/'hoan Bushmen (or San) give us a clue about the origin of dancing spiritualities and how they moved lives. From the cradle of Africa, movement and dance spread around the world, and were central to the earliest forms of shamanism and religion. In the earliest times, dance was inseparable from the mysteries that gave rise to religion. Following this, textuality, interpretation and narrative understanding became the more dominant forms of expression for matters of healing, transformation and soul work. With these came a false separation of mind from body, a dissociation of spirituality and healing from movement, and a distancing of dance performance and pedagogy from scholarly inquiries into spiritual aspects of human experience.
Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 2015
This research was conducted on the Brekete Gatsi cult in Ghana to investigate the use of the body in action during the dance in the ritual context. Brekete is a possession cult found among the Ewe's of the Volta Region-Ghana. Devotees in this cult worship the deities Kunde and Ablewa on every Friday, Sunday and during ceremonial days. They also propitiate other pantheons who are children of Kunde and Ablewa. During ritual moments they call on these deities, who manifest themselves by embodying trained mediums to enter into an act of communion with the religious community. This state of embodiment is manipulated by rhythms paralleled with ritual sacrifi ces and dance which the community believes attains effi cacy through possession. Therefore, this article will discuss the role of two dances which are performed during the ritual of the cult. Both dances occur during the same ritual events but may be distinguished by the fact that one of them is accompanied by possession and the other is not. I have therefore labelled them as Wu (Dance) and TrOwo le ewu du (deities are dancing). It is through the analysis of these dances that it is possible for the reader to understand the relationship between the mundane world and the supernatural world of the people who perform in this cult. The methodology used has been that of classical anthropological research approach and more particularly of participant observation of events of which I had no prior knowledge due to my Christian urban upbringing. I wish to highlight the exoticism of the experience for a researcher who, despite his own upbringing, tackled a different religious phenomenon irrespective of his social and religious affi liations. Thus, with my focus on the bodily actions and how they are used to gain access into the celestial world, I identify dance as an instrument and a medium by which the physical evidence of possession comes about. To that effect, and through the phenomenon that religious possession dance is laden with complexities and meaning, this article will hereby develop how the ritual processes and the differences between the movement of "Wu and TrOwo le ewu du" teaches us about the ritual effi cacy of possession dance. I argue here that both possession dance and the dance without possession (i) are contra-kinetically constructed, (ii) have movement sequences employing sagittal symmetrical principles, and (iii) although they have limited motifs of the steps and arm gesture, the possession dance has many variations. Finally, the Wu serves as a prelude to TrO di amedzi (deity has embodied or mounted its medium) and TrOwo le ewu du, which has the concept of possession among the Brekete Gatsi cult based on the philosophy of repetitive motif characterised by intense energy, rhythmic tempo and musicality (multidimensional, accentuation and phrasing) from the brekete drum.
Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé
World Literature Today
In her landmark interdisciplinary study of African diaspora religious systems through dance performances, Yvonne Daniel considers three religious systems that rely heavily on dance behavior-Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba (commonly called Santería), and Bahian Candomblé. Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé offers the rare opportunity to see into the world of mystical spiritual belief as articulated and manifested in ritual dance.
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2019
Even a seventy-year-old's birthday party can be eventful and wild, especially if unexpected guests arrive from another realm. Just such an arrival happened at Michelle Asantewa's mother's celebration in Guyana. Asantewa, who left Guyana in childhood, is an independent scholar who has taught English and Literature at the London Metropolitan University. She was a doctoral student there working on a thesis when her family sent her a video of this birthday party-turned-ritual event. The video depicts a family gathering of singing, dancing, and drumming. Then, her cousin "ketches Komfa," or "catches spirit," or what Guyanese Spiritualist and Faithist practitioners otherwise call "manifestation." Asantewa does not view the experience as odd, but reactions from those in the video seem curious to her. Clearly, people recorded in this Komfa ceremony are aware that a young woman had undergone possession, on the floor "flinging" herself passionately. Yet there is also confusion. No one seems to know how to react to their spirit visitor. Asantewa describes
ALTERED STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS: DANCE-INDUCED SPIRIT POSSESSION AND TRANCE
Ibadan Journal of Theatre Arts, 2020
Spirit possession and trance are very dominant features of Altered State of Consciousness (ASC), especially within religious spheres. However, dance and movement, with the accompaniment of music/sound, create such an enabling environment, for individuals who are so predisposed, to easily and quickly transpose from the normal states of awareness to altered states of mystical interactions. Also critically discussed is the term ASC as both a religious and psychological phenomenon. This paper, therefore, explores ASC within the context of dance, using two different case studies in explaining the intricacies of trance, in particular, and spirit possession. Preamble This paper was prompted by a relatively personal experience during a dance workshop the author had organised some years back with the renowned Nigerian dancer and choreographer, Qudus Onikeku, as guest choreographer, who was around for the Yemoja Festival in Ibadan; a traditional religious festival attended for the purpose of having a first-hand experience of trance. The dance workshop lasted for two days and had so much to talk about than just the intended purpose of organising it. The Workshop Sessions The first day was a day for participants to learn and get acquainted with new dance styles, particularly the techniques of the choreographer, followed by discussions on the art of dancing beyond the walls of the classroom and the university at large. It was more of a practical workshop session.
Introducing Spirit/Dance: Reconstructed Spiritual Practices
Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 2023
This project was provoked by the almost nonexistent pushback from the Democratic liberal establishment to the (2020) exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse, despite his acknowledged killing of two Black Lives Matters protesters against the police murder of George Floyd. It builds on three prior articles arguing for the revival of ancient Dionysian practice, Haitian Vodou, and Indigenous South American shamanism to empower leftist revolution. In essence, I propose an assemblage of spiritual practices that are accessible today for the neo-colonized 99% of the global population, by synthesizing and reconstructing three democratic, lower-SES, Indigenous religions, all of which share a militant defiance of their respective tyrannical plutocracies. To avoid cultural appropriation, I center these reconstructed spiritual practices on the figure of the "mage," a psychosocial healer loosely analogous to a shaman. And the mage's signature activity, "magic," I redefine naturalistically as free interpersonal performative action, practiced using two theoretical disciplines (philosophy and psychology) and two practical disciplines chosen by each mage. More precisely, Spirit/Dance channels the "spirits" of dead ancestors, historical figures, legendary heroes, mythical beings, and fictional characters, into the three ultimate objectives of "mindfulness" for psyches/souls, "liberation" for mindful bodies, and "social justice" for liberated communities, indirectly empowering long-term revolution.
Africa e Mediterraneo Cultura e Societa 37: 15-22., 2001
‘If there is one feature of indigenous life which has been the subject of the cinematographer, be they commercial, professional, academic or tourist, it has been dancing’ (Gordon 2000, p. 1) As asserted in the quote above, the dances of ‘the primitive Other’ have fascinated observers from the time of European contact to today. In particular, the perceived abandonment of body and movement exhibited by ‘the dancing native’ – epitomised by apparent attainment of ecstatic states of trance through dancing – has been exoticised and reified as a ‘marker’ of difference. Further, these frequently have been linked to defined ethnic categories, usually those characterised by ‘primitive’ and small-scale socio-political organisation. Widlok (1999, p. 234) describes for Khoe-speaking Namibian Hai||om, for example, that ‘[a] close examination of the Hai||om medicine [trance] dance is promising with regard to questions of cultural variability and diversity because it is … an important ethnic marker …’. The reification and increasing commodification of dance as marker of particular and authentically ‘traditional’ ethnic identities has been further enhanced by touristic and consumptive requirements for a sacralised and noble Other: offsetting both what Durkheim delineated as the anomie of modern life and reiterating the civilised and advanced state of the observer (Garland and Gordon 1999; Gordon 2000). As Rony (1996, p. 65 in Gordon 2000, p. 1) argues, indigenous peoples thereby are identified with ‘the body’ in a way that affirms the conventional dualisms of modernity: between mind, culture and civilisation on the one hand, and the body, nature and wildness on the other. It is not difficult to locate where the various ‘typical’ observers of ritualised dances fall in relation to this conceptual divide, and where, by default, the indigenous participants of dances are situated. ...
Dancing on Earth: The Healing Dance of Kalahari Bushmen and the Native American Ghost Dance Religion
Dance and the Quality of Life, 2019
This chapter examines two cases in which practices of ecstatic or transformative dance, though caught in the crosshairs of Christian colonialism, refused to die: the healing dance of the Kalahari Bushmen and the North American Native American Ghost Dance. Representatives of these two traditions regularly describe their dancing in religious terms. This chapter argues that this use of religious vocabulary challenges modern western interpretations of the dances by revealing the ways in which dancing generates values, including what counts as quality of life. Introducing an ecokinetic approach, I show how these two dances provide participants with effective means for navigating coloniality in ways that not only assert ethnic or cultural identity, but cultivate life-enabling relationships with the natural world. Dancing, these cultures teach, plays a vital role in the process by which people affirm their humanity in the face of forces that would otherwise deny it; dance is essential to o...