Dance and religion

The signifi cance and role of religious dancing. Like the music that usually accompanies it, dance has had a very wide role in religion but has sometimes been regarded with suspicion for its intoxicating effect and its association with sensual feeling. In primal societies, dance frequently served the role of creating sacred times and places, dances being occasions of rich community activity when the gods were close and perhaps even possessing people while they danced. Shamans especially danced to create and express their ecstasy as their patron god danced through them (see SHAMANISM). Dance has been performed and interpreted in different ways. In HINDUISM, dance often expresses the nature and mythology of the gods. The great god SIVA is called "nataraja," king of the dance, and his repertoire of 108 dances enacts the stages of the world from creation to destruction. In SHINTO, sacred dance is more often seen as an offering to the gods for their entertainment. So is it also in China, though the solemn dance RITUALS of Confucian students and mandarins also powerfully express the traditions and cohesion of their class. In the more devotional wings of JUDAISM (HASIDISM) and ISLAM (SUFISM, the "whirling dervishes"), dance expresses religious ecstasy or at least uninhibited, loving PRAYER and fervor. In the Catholic traditions of CHRISTIANITY, folk dances have usually been tolerated as a part of the celebration of holidays like May Day or CHRISTMAS but have rarely had a part in formal WORSHIP itself. PROTESTANTISM has tended to reject dance altogether, or to regard it as purely secular. In recent times, however, there has been a move in some quarters to revive sacred dance, even performing decorous and expressive modern dances as parts of church or temple services. In Pentecostal circles, on the other hand, free and ecstatic dancing has increasingly arisen spontaneously as a sign of the Holy Spirit. Some of the new religions of Japan, like TENRIKYO and Odori Shukyo (the "Dancing Religion"), have made dance their central act of worship. In one form or another, dance seems sure to be a part of religion for a long time to come.