Ecstatic dance
More recently, it has been compared to dancing in raves and in club culture, the anthropologist Michael J. Winkelman and the musicologist Rupert Till finding in these forms elements of ritual, spirituality, and healing.
[2][3] The religious historian Mircea Eliade stated that shamans use dance, repetitive music, fasting, and hallucinogenic drugs to induce ecstasy.
[7][8] The mythical female followers of Dionysus, including bacchants and thyai as well as maenads, were said to have sought the "wild delirium" of possession by the god so they could "get out of themselves", which was called "ekstasis".
[9] The male counterparts of the Maenads were the Korybantes (Ancient Greek: Κορύβαντες), armed and crested ecstatic dancers who worshipped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing.
[8] Oesterley compares this to Apuleius's account in his 2nd century The Golden Ass 8:27–28 of the ecstatic dance of the priests of the Syrian goddess, in which "they began to howl all out of tune and hurl themselves hither and thither as though they were mad.
They made a thousand gest[ure]s with their feet and their heads; they would bend down their necks, and spin round so that their hair flew out at a circle; they would bite their own flesh; finally, everyone took his two-edged weapon and wounded his arms in divers[e] places.
"[8] Oesterley notes also that Heliodorus of Emesa recorded in his 3rd century Aethiopica 4:16ff that sailors from Tyre performed a dance worshipping their god Herakles, to the "quick music" of flutes, hopping, jumping up, "limping along on the ground, and then turning with the whole body, spinning around like men possessed.
"[8] A variety of religions and other traditions, founded at different times but still practised around the world today, make use of ecstatic dance.
[40] The science and environment journalist Christine Ottery, writing for the British newspaper The Guardian in 2011, suggested that "ecstatic dancing has an image problem",[41] but that it "encompasses everything from large global movements such as 5Rhythms and Biodanza to local drum'n'dance meet-ups".
[41] However, there are other styles that have been developed in North America, too, including the Ecstatic Dance Community founded in 2000 by Bodhi Tara at Kalani Honua in Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii who then passed it on to DJ Max Fathom and influenced by Carol Marashi's 1994 Body Choir in Austin, Texas.
[46] Nettl stated further that ecstatic dance was both religious and erotic, giving examples from ancient Greece, medieval Christianity and Sufism.
"[48] The philosopher Gediminas Karoblis states that in early cultures, ecstatic dance was linked to religious ritual, releasing the dancer from the egocentric self, undoing self-consciousness and connecting to the absolute.
He considers that the trance of the whirling dervishes is genuinely ecstatic as it glorifies God, whereas shamanistic dance is not, being instead magical, as it is intended to induce effects in the world.
[14] The psychoanalyst Mary Jo Spencer used the image of the ecstatic dancer (a Maenad) depicted in the Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii when explaining the appearance of the dance as a symbol for the psyche.
[50] The anthropologist Michael J. Winkelman suggests that shamanism and modern raves share structures including social ritual and the use of dance and music for bonding, for communication of emotions, and for their effects on consciousness and personal healing.
