Trance in western theatrical dance: Transformation, repetition and skill learning (original) (raw)
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Transformation: An ecokinetic approach to the study of ritual dance
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, 2014
People move their bodily selves. Something happens. Those present, whether dancing or watching, are different than they were before. They perceive that difference in terms given by their religious tradition as healing or reconciliation; as communion with spirits or a revelation from ‘God’. Yet despite the frequency with which such transformations occur in human culture, they are notoriously difficult for scholars in either dance studies or religious studies to explain. This article introduces an ‘ecokinetic’ approach to studying transformation that reveals how and why bodily movement is effective in catalysing the kinds of experiences that participants claim occur. This approach to the study of religion and dance guides scholars to pay attention to patterns of bodily movement made by participants; imaginatively recreate the kinetic experience of making those movements; and discern the trajectories of thinking, feeling, and acting that these movement patterns open in those who perform them.
2007
Reflecting on his fieldwork among the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, Canadian anthropologist Michael Lambek questions why the West has a "blind spot" when it comes to the human activity of trance. Immersed in his subject's trance practices, he questions why such a fundamental aspect of the Malagasy culture, and many other cultures he has studied around the world, is absent from his own. This research addresses the West's preoccupation with trance in ethnographic research and simultaneous disinclination to attribute or situate trance within its own indigenous dance practices. From a Western perspective, the practice and application of research suggests a paradigm that locates trance according to an imperialist West/non-West agenda. If the accumulated knowledge and data about trance is a by-product of the colonialist project, then trance may be perceived as an attribute or characteristic of the Other. As a means of investigating this imbalance, I p...
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. ...
Stambali: Dissociative Possession and Trance in a Tunisian Healing Dance
This study investigated Stambali, a Tunisian trance-dance practiced in Israel as a healing and a demon exorcism ritual by Jewish-Tunisian immigrants. The authors observed the ritual and conducted semi-structured ethnographic interviews with key informants. Content analysis revealed that Stambali is practiced for prophylactic reasons (e.g. repelling the 'evil eye'), for the promotion of personal well-being, and as a form of crisis intervention. Crisis was often construed by our informants as the punitive action of demons, and the ritual aimed at appeasing them. Communication with the possessing demons was facilitated through a kinetic trance induction, produced by an ascending tempo of rhythmic music and a corresponding increased speed of the participant's movements of head and extremities. The experience was characterized by the emergence of dissociated eroticism and aggression, and terminated in a convulsive loss of consciousness. Stambali is discussed in terms of externalization and disowning of intrapsychic conflicts by oppressed women with few options for protest.
Trance Forms: A Theory of Performed States of Consciousness
2009
This study investigates forms of theatre/performance practice and training that can be seen to employ “trance” states or engage the concept of “states of consciousness” as performative practice. Trance is seen here as the result of sustained involvement with detailed information that is structurally organised, invoking imaginative and affective engagements, maintained as interactions between the performer, other performers, the environment and audience of the performance. Trance performance is viewed here through the conceptual lens of dramatic arts practice. Trance practice and performance, across cultural contexts, are analysed as social processes - as elements of power relations that influence the performer, audience and environment of the performance. This study will examine praxis that can be drawn from Stanislavski to Strasberg to Mike Leigh; from Artaud to Beckett and Grotowski; from the Balinese trance performance form Sanghyang Dedari to Channeling practitioners in the U.S. from the 1930s to 1990s; and from traditions of military training, performance violence, and rhetoric associated with the attacks of 9/11 in 2001 in the U.S. and its aftermath. MORE at http://www.scribd.com/doc/269736402/Trance-Forms-A-Theory-of-Performed-States-of-Consciousness
Dancing in the Fringe: Connections Forming An Evening of Experimental Middle Eastern Dance
2011
I am indebted to my Co-Chairs, Sally Ness and Linda Tomko, who tirelessly read through numerous drafts of my dissertation. Your strong guidance helped focus my research and lead me to become a better scholar. I am grateful to Marguerite Waller, Parama Roy, Anthea Kraut, and Derek Burrill for participating on my PhD committees. I would like to acknowledge the Department of Dance at University of California at Riverside for the financial support, scholarships, and teaching opportunities that helped me pursue my studies and research. Thank you to Amanda Hosch, Fred Hosch, and Maria Talamantes for reading through my dissertation. Your insights and feedback were invaluable. Special thanks to Anaheed, Claudia, Djahari, Elayssa, Jean, and Tatianna for graciously opening their lives and work to me. I appreciate your trust in me. I am indebted to you all for supporting me not only as a scholar, an artist, but also as a friend. I am also grateful of all my friends who have encouraged me along the way. Thanks to all the EEMED choreographers, performers, staff, and crew who have participated in EEMED over the years. I am forever indebted to Greg Osweiler. You have supported me in countless ways during my schooling and career in dance. I am grateful for your love and patience. Thank you.
Esoteric Dance and Spiritual Transformation: The Gurdjieff Movements
Publication from the Dance, Esotericism and the Avant-Gardes International Seminar, Museo Picasso Málaga, 2021 (in Spanish)
In the first half of the twentieth century several esoteric teachers developed dance forms intended to facilitate spiritual transformation. Anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner’s Eurythmy was devised in collaboration with his wife Marie von Sivers and Lory Maier-Smits in 1912. After World War I ended on 11 November 1918 Steiner sent a Eurythmy troupe on a European tour to reinvigorate the depleted culture and enrich exhausted souls. George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, the focus of this article, began teaching Movements (‘sacred dances’) in 1919 while in Tiflis (now Tblisi). Jeanne de Salzmann, a teacher of the Dalcroze method, introduced Gurdjieff to her eurhythmics class, and the first demonstration of the Movements was given on 22 June 1919 at the Tblisi Opera House. These dance techniques belong to a spiritual milieu that includes Peter Deunov, Rudolf von Laban and Steiner, and a secular milieu that includes Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, and Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe production of The Rite of Spring (1913) in Paris. This article analyses the transformative spiritual potential of Gurdjieff’s Movements and locates this body-based discipline in the context of his anthropological and soteriological teachings. Wim van Dullemen’s classification of Gurdjieff’s Movements, music, and writings as a Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’) is endorsed.