Dancing Bodies, Soaring Souls: Exploring

Spirituality in Dances across Cultures

by

Shreelina Ghosh
ghoshsh2@msu.edu

Spirituality is interwoven into the fabric of Indian culture and that is evident in its

artistic expressions. In Odissi, the body of the dancer is considered a temple, and the

deity is taken to be residing within. Through the practice of the dance, the dancer

attempts to create a relationship between the moving body and the soul that internalizes

spirituality. The dancers wear a chuda or a white cone on

the head to indicate the conical structure on top of the

Orissan temples (See Fig.1).

As an artiste, I experience and acknowledge the

communication of the performing body with the inner

Fig. 1: Odissi Dance

spiritual self, with is externalized in the Rasas. What an artist feels inside him or her

during the act of performing dance or theatre is called bhaava. What an artist expresses in

front of the audience or the emotion that the audience shares with the artist in the course

of the performance is called Rasa. For instance, when the heroine waits for the lover, she

feels Rati bhaava in her. Her dance movements will therefore express Shringar Rasa.

Rasa is the feeling that the audience shares with the artist. Without the presence of the

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audience, rasa will not gain fulfillment, it will remain a bhaava or just the emotional

state of the artiste's mind that fails to touch the audience. This relationship shows the

body and the mind during the performance of dance.

To the Odissi dancer, spirituality is not only important in the process of

performing but also in the way that it is learned. Originally, the practices and traditions of

the ancient Odissi dance were seldom textually documented. What is known about the

origins of the dance was mostly transmitted orally by the Guru to disciple, thus

preserving the sacred art in living memory. Traditionally, Odissi has been taught by

Gurus (masters); it is a demanding art that takes years of training and focuses on precise

and meaningful movements in which the body, presence, and aesthetics play are central

to its performance and learning. The knowledge of the art is handed down from

generation to generation by the Guru. Guru is derived from the Sanskrit root [gŗ], which

means, “to praise or invoke.” In the word Guru, gu signifies darkness, 'darkness', and ru

signifies 'the one who destroys’. Guru is not only the one that instills knowledge, but the

one who destroys darkness and provides the student with light to unfold truth, knowledge

and wisdom. Guru is considered to be the human form of abstract divinity that helps in

illuminating one’s knowledge and helping one realize God just as the Guru himself has

realized. Odissi dance, has survived through the generations of the Guru-Shishya

parampara or master-student tradition. Learning in the Guru-Shishya method involves

complete surrendering to the Guru and absorbing the knowledge of the Guru in one’s

self.

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 Dance is an important part of the

African-American community in the United

States (See Fig.2). When I first experienced

this dance, the two qualities of the dance that

struck me were aggressiveness and

exaggerated eroticism. This interest led me to

delve further into the nature of African-

American dance and its relationship with the

historical trauma of slavery and violence.

African-American dances are performed with

Fig. 2: African-American Soul Dance a dual purpose. One is to communicate

meanings with expressive gestures. The other purpose involves internalizing spirituality

to achieve a state of purity. This duality is described in Lepecki’s collection on African-

American rhetoric of performative practice. Thomas F. DeFrantz, in a powerful chapter,

“The Black Beat Made Visible: Hip Hop Dance and Body Power”, reveals the essence of

spirituality of African-American dance and the dual transcripts of “public” and “private”

meaning of black social dance (See Fig.3). The outwardly entertaining transcript has a

secretly derisive rhetoric that is intriguing (Lepecki 64).

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 According to Roger D.

Abrahams, “Black power in social dance

is a sacred holding, a trust of rhythmic

legibility and cultural responsibility... In

this model, the forces that drive the

Fig. 3: African-American Hip Hop Dance

dance are intangible, and power in the dance is attained by aligning ourselves with the

submerged rhythmic and linguistic potentials of the beat. Working in the service of a

communal conversation with others, the dancer creates dialogue by making the beat

visible and shaping its accents into coherent phraseology. Ironically, the body creates the

movement, but the body as a physical

entity disappears in the midst of its

own statements” (72). This is

reflective of the African spiritual

dances that are performed to bold

drumbeats. Modern African-American

Figure 4: African Heritage dance

dances bear influences that are historically and culturally significant and intrigue (See

Fig.4).

The connection of the spiritual and the social is not weak or casual. It is but a

manifestation of spiritual strength that is displayed with the rhetoric of anger and

intimidation, thereby creating a “bifurcation” with the audience (73). This might be the

way in which the dancer acknowledges the objectification of his/her black body.

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Spirituality is thus defined beyond the concept of a God in a religious sense. It denotes a

positive inner strength, also otherwise understood as God in some cultures.

“If spirituality is accessed by good dancing, religiosity may, then, be the

unspoken subject and source of the dancer’s action, its root.” The motion and the

meaning of the expression abstractifies the material body and its presence is in the

expression of the spirituality alone. Body moves as it dances in order to achieve a certain

goal. The purpose of the dance or the aspiration of the dancer is to reach that state of

perfect purity, “of expressing the self by manipulating basic movement utterances”.

(Lepecki 75)

The performative practice known as Stomp dance is practiced in Cherokee Nation

in Oklahoma, in central United States (See Fig.5). Stomp dance is an esoteric spiritual

dance that is practiced as a religious community event. Like African-American and

Indian classical dance, this dance is a bearer of sacred memory of the Cherokee

spirituality. The spiritual element of this practice is considered “sacred and private”,

which is one reason the community refused to publish the information and digitize the

dance for anyone beyond the Cherokee community (Cushman, Ghosh). The dancers place

a great deal of importance to adornment, or aharya. The bodies reflect the traditional

memories of indigenous identity. The dance is codified like Indian classical dances,

which means that it adheres to set patterns of movement that hold spiritual and

emblematic significances.

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 A sacred fire is built around which men and women dance. People outside the

Fig. 5: Native-American Stomp dance

community are invited to experience the performance as onlookers. “Video and cameras

are forbidden on the oldest stomp grounds”, so is digitization of sacred texts and dance

performances in any way. According to Cushman, the practice of this dance symbolizes

and enacts the “harmonic relationships between men, women, children, and the universe”

(Cushman, Ghosh).

It is interesting to locate these moments and events across cultures where the body

and the soul integrate in an artistic expression. The possibilities of these are sometimes

internalized and private, often concealed within other messages. It is the profound

implication of a divine relationship between Radha and Krishna that underlies the

symbolist portrayal in the choreography of yadhunandhana chandana sisira-tharENa

karENa payOdharE. Spirituality and erotic sensuousness are juxtaposed uniquely in the

dance. A similar message is invoked in an African-American dance. At other times,

spirituality is expressed openly in the performance, as an invocation of a deity or a

prayer. The connection of the practice to spirituality in some dances is obvious and clear.

The spiritual layer of dance elevates it towards an aspiration of a goal that is higher than

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the more immediate aesthetic goal. This aspiration is integral to several cultures across

the world and this association helps us understand the common grounds of art.

References:

Cushman, E., Ghosh, S., “The Mediator of Cultural Memory: Digital Preservation in the

Cases of Classical Indian Dance and the Cherokee Stomp Dance”. Journal of

Popular Culture. Forthcoming.

Defrantz, T. F. Dancing many drums: Excavations in African American dance.

University of Wisconsin Press. Madison: 2001.

Foucault, Michel. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Luther H.

Martin, Huck Gutman, and Partick H. Hutton, Eds. Amherst, MA: 1988.

Lepecki, André, ed. Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on dance and performance

theory. Wesleyan University Press. Middletown: 2004

Note: The images used in this article have been assessed as being in the public domain and are used

according to their licenses.