DANCE

Dance is a kind of language that reveals a person’s reality, behavior, and character towards God. It also helps give important messages about religions, especially their practices which lie in its feelings, emotional and symbolic capacity to create moods. “It is a game, an art and a ritual.” In a very special way, dance creates a sacred time and place between me and the divine one. It not only takes place at times of particular importance such as at the changes of seasons, but creates a new human time which is a rhythm; a rhythm which humanizes time. It also creates a holy place, again not only because it takes place at a holy well, river bank or sacred tree, but because the dance itself creates a special pattern of space in which the ritual activity occurs. While dancing, change is taking place in a person’s body as well as the mind. Through it a person becomes human. Dance deals with the basic forms of human experience, space, time and out of the direct control of these two elements, creates a totally humanized atmosphere.

Religious dance can range from spontaneous individual movement to highly formalized symbolic movements that appear in ritual and ceremony as part of structured religious services. Devotional dance is a part of many systems of belief about creation, the universe, nature, and the mystery of human existence. To qualify as a dance, movement must embody significant symbolic, healthy, or decorative aesthetic values. Dance can be thought of as a unique form of expression that includes movements, emotions and symbols.

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