Sacred dance

Its connection with the human body and fertility has caused it to be forbidden by some religions; for example, some branches of Christianity and Islam have prohibited dancing.

[1] The theologian W. O. E. Oesterley proposed in 1923 that sacred dance had several purposes, the most important being to honour supernatural powers; the other purposes were to "show off" before the powers; to unite the dancer with a supernatural power, as in the dances for the Greek goddesses Demeter and Persephone;[2] making the body suitable as a temporary dwelling-place for the deity, by dancing ecstatically to unconsciousness; making crops grow, or helping or encouraging the deity to make them grow, as with Ariadne's Dance as described in the Iliad;[3][4] consecrating a victim for sacrifice (as with the Israelites circling the altar, or the Sarawak Kayans circling a sacrificial pig); paying homage to the deity present for an initiation ceremony; helping warriors to victory in battle, and appeasing the spirits of the enemy killed in battle; averting the dangers associated with marriage, at a wedding ceremony; and at a funeral or mourning ceremony, purposes such as driving away the malevolent ghost of the dead person, or preventing the ghost from leaving the grave, or frightening off any evil spirits attracted by the corpse, or temporarily and invisibly bringing the dead person back to join in the dance, or simply honouring the dead person.

[16] The Hittites are shown in a sacred processional dance in a c. 1200 BCrock inscription at the sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, near their city of Hattusa, in Cappadocia.

[9] Lewis Farnell, an anthropologist, observed that sacred dance has an "extraordinary uniformity" among indigenous peoples all over the world, something that he found so striking that it suggested either "belief in an ultimately identical tradition, or, perhaps more reasonably, the psychologic theory that ... [humans] at the same stage of development respond with the same ... religious act to the same stimuli" from the environment.

[27][28][29] Indian classical dances such as Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Odissi, and Mohiniattam can be traced to the Sanskrit text Natya Shastra.

[30][31] They are a traditional drama-dance expression of religion,[32] related to Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, pan-Hindu epics and the Vedic literature.

[26] In the tradition of the Mevlevi Order founded by Rumi, ecstatic Sufi whirling is practised by devotees as a form of active meditation within the Sama (worship ceremony).

[36][37] In 2007, Sufi practices including ecstatic dance and the reciting of religious poetry were a focus for political resistance in Iran, reportedly banned by Shi'a clerics.

[38] The syncretic Afro-American religious tradition Candomblé, practiced mainly in Brazil, makes use of music and ecstatic dance in which worshippers become possessed by their own tutelary deities, Orishas.

It uses dancing, Sufi whirling, and singing of sacred phrases from a range different religions and spiritual traditions to raise consciousness and promote peace .