Yakut Ritual Dance “Pattern”: concepts of life and death

Abstract

This article reviews the Yakut ritual dance called “Pattern” which is connected to archaic funeral rite and to the concepts of life and death intrinsic to Yakut culture. The purpose of this article is to find in this dance symbolic and image-bearing elements indicating major concepts in the Yakut consciousness — concepts of life and death; to show the exceptional value and significance of “life” constant in ethnos consciousness; to address the Yakut ritual dance “Pattern” as one of the ways to display life in dance images; and, analysing the meaning of dance structure and choreography, to demonstrate transformation of “death” into a new quality, a symbol of “life”. The present study reveals the meaning of ritual movements by which death “changes into” life. The methodological basis of the article consists of the analysis of bibliographic sources on Yakut ritual dance. The content and meaning of the dance movements are identical to the worldviews of the ancient Turkish people and their concepts of life and death.