Traditional Groupings and Modern Association: A Study of Changing Local Groups in Papua & New Guinea . B. L. Abbi (original) (raw)
Related papers
Living Ritual Dance for Women: Journey out of Ancient Times
American Dance Therapy Association 27th Annual Conference Proceedings, 1992
This experiential workshop is based on simple folk dances, the living descendants of the primitive healing dance which is also the ancestor of dance/movement therapy. Along with creative improvisation and meditation on ancient images of woman, they provide a structure for a 'living ritual'. This helps us journey to the roots of healing dance and to the source of our empowerment as women. We are enabled to find a new context for our present-day questioning, and new hope for the future we imagine. Living Ritual Dance is a technique developed by Laura Shannon, out of many years of working with folk dance and creative ritual. It is also informed by the European Sacred/Circle Dance network, which for ten years has been a model for the experience of a more focused group consciousness in folk dance, and by dance/ movement therapy theory and methods. The simplest village folk dances are the ones which have survived the longest, and are considered by dance anthropologists to be the living descendants of the primitive therapeutic dance tradition which is also the ancestor of dance/movement therapy. Through them we can touch the source of dance as healing, communal expression, and receive new inspiration for our inner journey as well as our work in the modern world. Dance therapy is said to have its roots in primitive healing dance as it has been practised throughout history. Many authors in dance therapy literature including Leventhal, Levy, Bartenieff, Bernstein, Schmais, Hanna, Espenak and Blacking, acknowledge the historic use of dance as a therapeutic modality and an antecedent of present-day dance therapy. The early dance forms themselves have, for the most part, disappeared, but their influence is apparent in the ethnic and folk dance traditions descended from them: Lange tells us that "there is a visible connection between the art of the vanished 'primitive' cultures and those still existing" and that "these connections have lasted into contemporary times".
Dance and Symbol: The Goddess in the Dance
Neue Kreise Ziehen, 2015
A symbol is a nonverbal sign which encodes and transmits meaning on many levels simultaneously, also in our unconscious. One of the key symbols in the women's ritual dances I have been researching for thirty years is the symbol of the Goddess. In this article I describe how I found the Goddess, encoded in traditional dance, beginning with my first encounter with Sacred Dance at the Findhorn Community in 1985. Thereafter I sought to weave Sacred Dance together with international folk dance, Dance Movement Therapy, women's Middle Eastern dance, and women's spirituality circles. My research led me to traditional dances which were ancient and authentic; which encouraged women's empowerment; which had a ritual purpose, meaning they served an aim beyond the immediate moment; and which had a therapeutic quality, both in their original context and for dancers today. The interconnected symbols of the Tree of Life and the Goddess are encoded in the three- measure dance pattern and in the textile patterns made and worn by the dancers. This connection is deepened by research into archaeological finds, texts of dance songs, myths and legends, and folk customs which accompany the dances. All the clues lead back to early Goddess cultures identified by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, Riane Eisler, and others, which shared a common body of core values: community, sustainability, inclusiveness, empathy, creativity, and reverence for the earth. These values create a culture based on partnership, belonging and cooperation, rather than on hierarchy, domination and competition. The link to the ancient Goddess is important for us today because these are exactly the values we rediscover in the dance. As we practice the traditional dances over and over in the circle, so we bring them into being in our lives and our world. Dancers of all genders can activate the living symbol of God the Mother and the culture of partnership she represents, cultivating a community ethic based on cooperation, compassion and the golden rule, and to eventually foster a society of peace.
Generosity and Community: the Alternative Worldview of Women’s Ritual Dances, Part 2
feminismandreligion.com, 2019
Starhawk describes the work of her Reclaiming collective as the creation of ‘spaces of refuge from a harsh and often hostile world, safe places where people can heal and regenerate, renew our energies and learn new skills.’[i] These words also apply to the women’s traditional dances. One participant on my courses expresses it thus: ‘In the circle no-one is left out, no-one is ignored, all are held and included, all have their place, all are connected.’[ii]
Exhausting dances: Dancing and transgression in folklore and beyond
A Dance is the Devil's procession, and he that enters into a Dance, entreth into his possession. The Devil is the guide, the middle and the end of Dance" Fabritius (15 th c.) Three kilometres south of the village of St. Buryan, in Cornwall (UK), lays a stone circle called the Merry Maidens. It consists of nineteen granite megaliths, and even though it is neither the most impressive nor the most archaeologically important stone structure in the British Isles, the myth surrounding its birth is spectacular indeed. Robert Hunt, in his 19 th century collection of British myth and lore Popular Romances in the West of England, reveals the site's origin: "*Near the circle] are two granite pillars, named the Pipers. One Sabbath evening, some thoughtless maidens of the neighbouring village, instead of attending vespers, stayed into the field, and two evil spirits, assuming the guise of pipers, began to play some dance tunes. The young people yielded to the temptation; and forgetting the holy day, commenced dancing. The excitement increased and soon the music and the dance became extremely wild; when, lo! A flash of lighting from the clear sky transfixed them all, the tempters and the tempers, and there in stone they stand" 1 .
Caste and Equality in India, 2021
Chapter 8 depicts and analyses the festival of the local goddess, Rāmacaṇḍī. I suggest that we can identify potential cultural resources in the ritual that provide the foundations of people’s moral–ethical agency for overcoming the postcolonial predicament. The ritual goes through three phases: (a) the arrival of the goddess’s power from the forest into the fort-village through the tribal medium, which manifests the value of ontological equality; (b) the union of the divine power with the royal authority mediated by the brāhmaṇa priest, which affirms the value of hierarchy; and (c) the consumption of the product of the union in the form of sacrificial meat, which represents the value of the centrality of power. I argue that this ritual can be seen as an enactment of the sacrificial drama of regeneration, where the three values and social configurations of ‘equality’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘centrality’ unfold and interact to reproduce the community. The three phases of the ritual represent ‘revolving values’ which are legitimate, plural and multifaceted cultural resources utilised by the people to valorise their existence as well as their social practices. This chapter also analyses how the ritual form and the structure of patronage changed historically (‘ritual in history’) and how the ritual invokes historical memory in the form of myths, legends and family narratives (‘history in ritual’). The ritual can be said to be a representation of local history not in terms of linear transformation but of an accumulation of the past: tribals worshipping the goddess, the gradual migration of peasant-warriors and other caste members into the area, the chief challenging and being defeated by the medium/goddess, royal patronage of the goddess in the form of royal sacrifice, the introduction of the new rich as new patrons of the ritual during the colonial era etc. The entanglement of history and ritual enable the people to reflect upon their past and present. This has the effect of not only legitimising the status and power of the upper castes but also unsettling their hegemony by calling into question the prevailing practices. In the postcolonial situation, there is, on the one hand, the hegemonic attempt by the old and new elites to ritually assert the colonially constructed structure of status and power and, on the other hand, also the subaltern attempts to emphasise the importance of devotion and service, thus placing weight on ontological equality in the face of divine power. It is noteworthy that, in the ritual, there is an increasing number of people making offerings individually and approaching the medium/goddess directly on the hill outside the village. Also, the medium/goddess now enters every house, instead of a chosen few as in the past, to bless family members, particularly married women who cannot come out in public. These changes suggest that more emphasis is now placed on the devotion and service of individuals and direct ties and contact with the goddess. Here, we observe dilemma and contestation between the superalternate values of hierarchy and centrality and the subalternate value of ontological equality. In this way, the ritual not only leads to the reproduction of the structure of status and power, but also illustrates the potential of subaltern resistance against the hegemonic structure.