Trance Dance Research Articles

Ghãtu: Femininity and Indigenous Aesthetics

Ghãtu is a cultural capital that explores the esteem of femininity and Indigenous aesthetics. Despite its aesthetic value, the main theme is sati custom, the over-exploitation of females. This tribal festival does not only belong to Gurung or Magar. Its horizon is up to Tamang, Dura, Darai, Baram and Aryal Kshetri in central and mid-western Nepal. All of them observe with almost similar methods and rituals. Except for Aryal Kshetri, other Indigenous groups claim that it is their hereditical cultural activity. The slow-motion meditative trance dance and melodious verses of songs represent the aesthetic beauty of Nepali folk music and folklore. The study concerns why ethnic groups adopted Ghãtu and the significance of implications of this cultural activity. The ethnic groups adopted it for its zeal for music. The study's implication is to internalize this folk dance as a source of social integration, human relations, teamwork, music and folk literature, and a goldmine of cultural studies research works. Now, Ghãtu is a common cultural capital and a central stone of indigenous aesthetics and cultural studies. This study aims to project how this cultural activity represents a common cultural heritage like the Chhath festival. The findings of the study show that maintaining integral human relations is impossible until or unless society respects femininity and cultural values. So, culture, language, rites and rituals, and dresses are common, if the mass accepts it. Gender discrimination is another focal point, and there has not been research on how Ghãtu has been the archive and cultural heritage. The study employs document analysis and feminist theories.

Indigenous Shamanic Worldviews as Eco-cosmologies and Indigenous Knowledge Systems of Sustainability

Abstract This article discusses shamanic worldviews theoretically and empirically based on the author’s long-term comparative studies in rural regions of Odisha, India. It deals with local eco-cosmological worldviews expressed in trance traditions, interpreted by the author as expressions of contemporary shamanic worldviews and an indication of ways of transmission of indigenous knowledge. In this sense the comparative examples of shamanic traditions of nag bacca (snake children) and alekh gurumai (ritual specialists) in Odisha are examples of transformative healing through trance rituals based both on concepts of holy craziness and sacred play (baaya/kheelo) and on spirit possession rituals (boil), widely spread in cultures of orality. In shamanic worldviews, therianthropic transformations of animal human and ecological encounters are transmitted in a rich culture of orality expressed in songs, performances, and trance dances. In this indigenous knowledge transmission, visions and dreams are the most important expressions of shamanic imaginaries, realities, epistemologies, and ontologies, revealing imagined, dreamt, and lived experiences of local shamanic societies. In this way, the visual mental imagery experiences construe the inner and outer knowledge of shamanic life worlds and worldviews.

Automatic Corporeal Gesture in a Flash: A performative theory of process

My artistic practice and research explore automatic processes used throughout time that develop conceptual and physical aptitude in the performer; to transcend the status quo and experience alternative versions of embodied reality. In homage to Elvis Presley and the spirit of Rock and Roll, I define automatism as a process formulated as Automatic Corporeal Gesture in a Flash (ACG ) where I work to make art without fear from an inspirational sensation in my body. ACG is inspired, authentic action that I do in a creative act through some kind of plan or set of parameters to get a material result; it is automatic action through diffraction in an apparatus, to produce material with qualitative data that can be considered for its meaning after the performance. Like having a conversation with someone, this approach helps me to understand things as they are, learning about their qualities. In ACG I combine my vibration with the vibration of what inspires me. It is a relational act of co-agential meaning making. It is a performance process that uses perception and action intrepidly while in an apparatus to maintain corporeal balance, integrity and momentum during an event. Practising ACG changes qualities in material, which changes the way meaning is made from it. These changes are always particular to each event. Our senses are physical and extra-sensory. My imagination contains qualitative, empirical data. I am using my corporeal senses to perceive my imagination’s inspiration, as I would also use my other senses and their correlating extra-sensory capabilities to perceive the material world around me. The meditative groove of my ACG is a trance dance. Trance is maintaining the entrainment of one’s body to a frequency which focuses perceptive consciousness. How a piece is created carries discursive information. Qualities of the movement of the body and the marks it makes speaks about our corporeal condition as well as speaking of its perception of qualities through/of itself and its local and extra-local environments. I use ACG to learn about the qualities that experience has had in my body, and this knowledge increases my ability to be more responsible and accountable as a receiver and transmitter of discourse, which is the function of my relationality. ACG helps me to access my full body, and it allows me to coordinate and integrate all my other senses and their correlating extra aspects into my creative action. ACG is what keeps sparking the dynamic process in which I realize my creative potential, and where I can expand my abilities to perceive more of the qualities of life.

“More Metal than Metal”: Preliminary Reflections on Imagined Genealogies

Réak is the Bandung subregional variant of the “horse trance dances”: a popular group of animist performances present throughout and outside Indonesia. During theevent, a trance master coordinates a series of spirit possessions with themusical accompaniment of a percussions and shawm ensemble. Like other artforms, including metal, réak is described as ramé(tangled/interesting/noisy) and kasar (coarse) due to its chaotic social ambiance and distorted, fast-paced music. Indeed,due to geographical proximity and the genre’s local relevance, réak is experiencing the influence ofextreme metal. Although most participants avoid hybridity, a conversation istaking place among participants, debating the aesthetic affinities between thegenres, generating a commentary stressing similarity and genealogy. Moreover, while metal bands invite réak troupes to open concerts, réak practitioners, often familiar with the metal community, appropriate the genre’s stylistic elements such as distorted electric guitars and “Metal Distortion” pedals.Despite réak’s and metal’s resistance to assimilation, stylistic musical and extra-musical cross-fertilisation generated a non-synthetic hybridisation that safeguards genre boundaries. The discussion will be useful in laying the foundation to problematise concepts of hybridity that classic analyses of genre do not grasp.

Marginal Identities and Bodies in North African Trance Dance: A Celebration of Madness

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between marginal identities, bodies, and the performance of madness in the North African trance dance. It casts light on festive rituals where the illnesses of the soul are manifested through corporeal expressions that variably combine the religious, the spiritual, the socio-cultural, and the psychological aspects. Rather than being stigmatized or pathologized, madness is celebrated to grant a legitimate space and voice to the disadvantaged and marginalized individuals. It is hence posited to produce a counter-discourse that symbolically speaks out against the dictates of formal discourses that control the lives of men and women and shape their identities. By applying a qualitative research method, this study involves observing subjects' corporeal performances in trance from a practice-based perspective. The descriptive analysis of the night of trance (the Lila) takes insights from social semiotics and the concept of the 'meta-sign' to account for the minimal details of madness and the corporeal signs into play. There are stages to follow and intricate bodily moments that would drive the observer of madness to where the order of society comes to a standstill. However, the focus of interest is to assess the readiness of women and men to play other than their normative sociocultural roles in society. The varying dramatic scenes with musical melodies, colors, spirits, litanies, and personifications are overwhelmingly loaded with the passion to celebrate and the desire to transcend time and space. The participants are voluntarily involved in trance as an outlet for their collective endeavor to exteriorize their own mental anxieties and whims. Their sole intention is to defy the prevailing ideologies and the pressures their bodies suffer from. Dancing for them embodies the psychiatric that helps the patients to be dispossessed and hopefully be cured. These observed rites of trance are found to be intentionally performed to relieve individuals from different types of alienation suffered in a 21st century modern world that marginalizes, downgrades, and chains them to the rigidity of disciplinary powers.

Cerita on Calonarang Dance Drama

Cerita on <i>Calonarang</i> Dance Drama

Durkheim’s totemic principle, shamanism and Southern African San religions

The study reappraised Emile Durkheim’s totemic principle in relation to the origins of religion and culture, using, amongst others, speech act theory and recent southern African epistemologies, especially David Lewis-Williams’ theory of shamanism, potency and altered states of consciousness. The study was text-based, qualitative and interpretive, and used key texts from anthropology, archaeology, history of religion, sociology and philosophy. It outlined Durkheim’s theory of the totemic principle and critiqued it, using performativity, cognitive neuroscience and southern African ethnography. Durkheim’s sociological reduction of God and religion to society and his dismissal of individual psychological experience were criticised. Lewis-Williams’ shamanism, both as a general theory and with particular reference to the San, was explored as an alternative to Durkheim’s totemism, animals playing a central but different function in each system. Although his understanding of performativity and sociopolitical relations in religion was inchoate, Durkheim helped demystify religion and establish social constructionism. He overestimated collective affect and sentiments and underestimated the role played by individual altered states of consciousness in the origin of religion.Contribution: The study critically evaluates Durkheim’s reduction of religion to society using current concepts of performativity, Matthias Guenther’s New Animism and David Lewis-Williams’ revised shamanism, particularly its ideas of trance dance, potency and altered states of consciousness, and posits shamanism rather than totemism as the probable origin of religion.

“The Fourth Language for all Females”: Women's Subversive Bodies in Assia Djebar's Fantasia, an Algerian Calcavade

This article aims to illustrate the dialogic significance of the trance dance, a discursive scene of women's bodily expressions, in the Algerian feminist postcolonial novelist and film director, Assia Djebar's Fantasia (1985). While Djebar's literary oeuvre has been subject to enormous critical readings, this essay focuses on Djebar's representation of the female body as a medium of subversive expression in the ritualistic trance dance. Following the critical lines of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and postmodern and postcolonial feminism, we contend that the trance scene is an uncanny, subjective space of women's collective voices that undermine patriarchal authority. Women's movement into the domestic sphere of the Harem is a retreat into the semiotic, imaginary order and an escape from the symbolic order that deprives women from their bodies and their expressions. Thus, we propose that the trance privileges the matriarch's body/signs over the phallocentric system of Arab, benign patriarchy, her unconscious over social consciousness, irrationality over rationality, the ritual over the real, and ultimately the feminine over the masculine. The dissident practice of periodic dancing gives a space for dancers to claim dramatic authority and agency over their bodies, that is, to empower themselves socially and psychologically despite the patriarchal constraints lurking over them.

Psychological Effects of Rhythmic Entrainment and Trance Experience: A Review

Synchronization to music is a basic ability for humans and the key component of synchronization is to entrain a particular rhythm. EEG studies show that when we synchronize with a rhythm, our brain waves also synchronize. From this view, trance can be a state of consciousness that is a result of rhythmic entrainment of brain waves. It is known that Shamans perform a ceremony with drums and experience trance for centuries. Although using rhythm to mediate trance goes back to Shamanism, it is also a part of different cultures. Trance experience continues its existence with psychedelic trance dance in the West and also with dhikr and Sama in the East world. If we define the term of “trance” as “a state of wajd”, experiences of Shaman rituals, psychedelic dance and dhikr are similar, because of using rhythm as a mediator. In this review, comparison of the trance experiences shows that the psychological effects of rhythmic entrainment point to a fundamental mechanism beyond cultural differences. Keywords Rhythmic entrainment, synchronization, trance

A matter of diversity? Identifying past hunter-gatherer aggregation camps through data driven analyses of rock art sites

During the last decades, ethnographic observations taught hunter-gatherer archaeologists to incorporate social phenomena into their interpretative models of land uses, including rock art. Although ethnographic analogies always allow only a rough approximation to the past, strategies such as the (seasonal) aggregation and dispersion of San groups, and related exchange systems, have become an integral part of the interpretation of variability in the spatial organisation of sites and the excavated material culture. Regardless of a long-standing dispute about its potential meaning, one widely accepted explanation for making rock art is that it was part of the social contexts of past hunter-gatherer aggregation events. While motifs such as the jointly performed trance dance seem to support this view, methods to identify aggregation and dispersion events within rock art on a larger scale are poorly developed. The objective of this paper is to better understand the organisation of the rock art sites at the Dâureb in Namibia using GIS and computational archaeology in the light of hunter-gatherer aggregation and dispersion strategies.

Jathilan Horse Dance: Spirit Possesion Beliefs and Practices in The Present-day Java

Jathilan is one of the names for traditional Javanese trance dance which takes its roots in the most archaic levels of local culture but remains very popular nowadays. It is also described as a horse dance for the horse effigies made of woven bamboo are the hallmark props used by the performers. Horse dance is a part of the folk culture, still untouched by institutionalization or commodification; it can be performed for both ritual and entertainment purposes. Trance is its main attraction, though through the lens of local beliefs it is interpreted in terms of spirit possession thus it is understood that spirits can enter performers’ bodies and fulfill their needs while being manifest in material world, but also allow the dancers to perform various feats demonstrating invulnerability to physical harm (like eating glass, walking over hot coals, being whipped or even ran over by a motorcycle).The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough description of how trance in jathilan is performed and understood, based on existing literature, practitioners’ first-hand accounts and numerous performances observed and documented; but also to consider it in the wider context of Javanese beliefs and practices involving spirits, possession, and exorcism, which persist alongside with Islam.

Drugs as part of the psychedelic trance dance party

Abstract The aim of our paper is to analyze the position the psychedelic trance subculture takes on drug use and whether it applies to prescriptive regulatory systems on drug-taking. A qualitative field research strategy was adopted with the use of semi-structured interviews and participant observations. Actors at three levels of participation in the subculture (experts, long-term participants and newcomers to psychedelic trance parties) were interviewed. The results showed that the subculture distinguishes between tolerated and non-tolerated drugs. This distinction is different from the mainstream paradigm. The subculture also has unwritten rules relating to the behavior expected of an intoxicatedperson. However, there is only limited potential for the subculture to enforce these standards and recognition that this represents a threat. Psychedelic trance stands out from other dance scenes in the use of specific drugs—hallucinogens—that dominate and inform its culture.

Choreographing the Disabled Body: Performing Vulnerability and Political Change in the Work of Tamar Borer

Choreographing the Disabled Body: Performing Vulnerability and Political Change in the Work of Tamar Borer Ilana Szobel (bio) With the most powerful tool we have as human beings—the imagination—we produce change, healing and transformation of both our mind and physical condition.1 –Tamar Borer The Israeli-Jewish performance artist Tamar Borer, born in 1965, was trained in many different forms of dance in institutions worldwide. She studied classical ballet at the American Ballet Theatre in New York, modern dance at the Rina Sheinfeld Dance Theatre (where she performed for seven years), authentic Balinese dance in Indonesia, and trance dance in Mexico. In 1992, she traveled to Japan to study with Kazuo Ohno, the well-known and skilled founder of Butoh-soul dance. More than two decades after this formative encounter, Borer remains one of the most innovative and influential Butoh performers and teachers, not just in Israel but worldwide.2 She has been invited as an esteemed guest to a variety of dance festivals across the globe and has won many awards and prizes, including the first prize at the Gvanim beMahol (Shades in Dance) Competition for First Independent Work (1988), the Distinguished Artist Award from ballet master Albert Gaubier’s Foundation (1996), and the Buchman Hyman Fund’s Promising Artist Award (1997).3 Borer choreographs and performs solo, duets, and ensemble productions throughout the world. Despite her worldwide presence, her studio is located in Tel Aviv, and the vast majority of her noteworthy performances and collaborations take place in Israel. Her performances raise questions and concerns about Israeli subjectivity—particularly in relation to the Israeli– Palestinian conflict. In this context, while creating a home-grown as well as transnational artistic venue for addressing the political situation in which Israel is embroiled, Borer’s work functions not just as a productive point of departure for social critique and change, but most pointedly as an invitation to a kind of social self-reflection for contemporary Israelis. [End Page 55] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Piano Forte. Photographed by Tamar Lem (2013), courtesy of Tamar Borer. In 1990, Borer was involved in a car accident that left her paralyzed in both legs. This life-changing experience prompted a continued exploration of her body and sense of embodiment, alongside her physical training, creative expression, teaching, and professional performances. Her remarkable talent and dedication won her the Willie and Celia Trump Medal of Mercy and Equality Award (Ot Hachesed) in 2002, “for serving as a role-model for growth and empowerment in the face of disability.”4 Experiencing dance in a new way enabled—and forced—Borer to critically examine both her capabilities as well as her own limitations, and it prompted her to encounter dance and performance through her unique body and self. This process is shared by many professional artists, but as Western dance traditionally idealizes and privileges the able and “capable” body—the Apollonian robust and stable body5—the integration of a disabled body into contemporary Israeli dance resulted in radical redefinitions of physical expression and grace by disrupting and challenging the cultures that have evolved around dance. In understanding Borer’s work as a physically disabled dancer, I examine the implications of disability and embodiment, focusing on the artistic and aesthetic in Israeli society. Thus, I am interested in questions such as: What does it mean to address the political arena from the position of the disabled occupier? In what ways do the visual markers of “limited” mobility, such as walkers, wheelchairs, or canes, affect sociopolitical concepts such as [End Page 56] control, agency, and authority? And, in a broader sense, how can the physical, emotional, social, and existential perspectives of the non-Apollonian frame challenge Israeli perceptions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict?6 My study examines the nexus of disability and performance, which introduces us to new perceptions of bodies, agency, and space, and invites us to rethink our personal, collective, and national stability. This rethinking of what constitutes stability challenges our conceptualization of the Zionist movement in general, and of the Israeli occupation in particular. Politicizing the Disabled Body From its inception, the Zionist movement has created a conceptual connection between...

Jathilan Horse Dance: Spirit Possession Beliefs and Practices in The Present-Day Java

Jathilan is one of the names for traditional Javanese trance dance which takes its roots in the most archaic levels of local culture but remains very popular nowadays. It is also described as a horse dance for the horse effigies made of woven bamboo are the hallmark props used by the performers. Horse dance is a part of the folk culture, still untouched by institutionalization or commodification; it can be performed for both ritual and entertainment purposes. Trance is its main attraction, though through the lens of local beliefs it is interpreted in terms of spirit possession thus it is understood that spirits can enter performers’ bodies and fulfill their needs while being manifest in material world, but also allow the dancers to perform various feats demonstrating invulnerability to physical harm (like eating glass, walking over hot coals, being whipped or even run over by a motorcycle).The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough description of how trance in jathilan is performed and understood, based on existing literature, practitioners’ first-hand accounts and numerous performances observed and documented; but also to consider it in the wider context of Javanese beliefs and practices involving spirits, possession, and exorcism, which persist alongside with Islam.

The Evolution of Human Dance: Courtship, Rites of Passage, Trance, Calendrical Ceremonies and the Professional Dancer

A model of five major chronological phases is suggested for the history of human dance. These phases did not replace one another, but accumulated as successive layers. The earliest phase is associated with courtship, thus explaining the potent role of dance in sexual desire and seduction. The second phase is associated with the appearance of modern human behaviour and the earliest burials, which were rites of passage that involved the first communal dances. The third phase is associated with the appearance of hybrid human-animal figurines that point to altered states of consciousness and aspirations to change reality; this is when trance dance, shamanism, magic and religion came in. The fourth phase is connected with the beginning of agriculture in Neolithic villages, which was coordinated by elaborate calendrical ceremonies. The fifth and final phase is associated with urban societies, economic complexity and specialization; well-trained professional dancers now performed acrobatic body movements and elaborate choreography for the enjoyment of others. The history of dance thus reflects the history of human rituals and religion.

Afro-Iranians through the Lens of Documentarists

Afro-Iranians through the Lens of Documentarists

The “trance dance” of the Ju/’hoan Bushmen (San) of Southern Africa: implications for hypnotic means of healing

Within the perspective of the history of hypnosis, the healing dance of the Kalahari Bushmen (San) is regarded as special kind of kinetic trance that uses focused emotional intensity inside music and dance to initiate movement automatisms for healing. We demonstrate how the Bushman way of healing introduces new distinctions, metaphors, and strategies for the understanding and practice of hypnotically oriented forms of therapy. We propose that the Bushman form of trance, one that utilizes the arousal and amplification of emotions, improvised sounds, and spontaneous movement, suggests a unique form of healing trance and hypnotic induction. The Bushman dance relies less on purposeful induction through direct or indirect verbal and nonverbal suggestion and entrainment, and more on the amplification of emotion and song. These help awaken spontaneous movement that goes past choreographed dance. In short, the so-called trance dance of the Ju’/hoan Bushmen of southern Africa is primarily concerned with waking up strong positive feelings through rhythm and song, bringing forth a spontaneous vibration in the body, and sharing or passing this vibration to others. We discuss how this brings forth the experience of crossing over from the everyday reality of distinguishing, languaging mind (what the Bushmen call second creation) into the highly charged, ecstatic experience of transformation in which all of creation is experientially felt rather than named (called first creation).

Lyrics in The Dolalak Dance Purworejo Central Java as a Form of Islamic Folk Songs

Dolalak dance is highly dependent on the power of the song lyrics, so it can be called a lyrical dance. The dancers will not be able to do perfect dance moventents only by musical accompaniment; the displacement and combination of dance movements are characterized by lyrics that accompany the songs. Thus, song lyrics have a very dominant role in the arrangement of the dance movements. Dolalak dance has approximately 64 types of movements. A one-night staging, as an illustration, usually begins with 13 types of movements, followed by a trance dance, and ends with 7 types of movements as the closing. Song lyrics in the Dolalak dance are mostly influenced by the nuances of Islamic teachings. This is proven by the presence of a lot of words and/ or terms in the song lyrics which are very close to the. Arabic words in Islamic teachings. More interestingly, as a form of folk songs used in the performance of traditional Javanese arts, the Arabic words are widely adapted to the speech or pronunciation of the local language, especially the Javanese one. As a result, the origin and meaning of certain words or terms in the lyrics are difficult to trace. However, it is understandable since sometimes words in the song lyrics are preferred to adjust particular sounds.

TARI KERAWUHAN DI BALI : SANGHYANG DEDARI SEBUAH KAJIAN SOSIAL

Dance kerawuhan (trance dance) is one of permorming art for the ritual event who stile a life in Bali. Sanghyang Dedari dance for its example, and used by Balinese society to ritual dance. Now that ritual art changed to be performance for tourisme.Key word: trance, wali, Sanghyang Dedari.

Tsutsube Music as practised by the Basarwa (San) of Botswana

ABSTRACTThis study examines the use of Tsutsube music among the Basarwa (San) of Botswana during their societal rituals. The research intends to look at the appearance of the antelope called (Phofu) eland as the Basarwa’s most spiritual animal and the music performed. Basarwa of Botswana Tsutsube music is performed in four ritualistic stages, namely, boys’ first kill, girls’ puberty, marriage and trance (healing) dance. Different purposes served by these rituals and their musical genres are discussed. Participants included Basarwa, who originate from Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve but who now reside in Kaudwane village in Kweneng West District of Botswana. Other groups also participated during the 2010 Western Kgalagadi Annual Cultural Festival held in Kang village. Data were mainly collected by the researchers through consecutively conducted oral interviews as well as practical observations of performing groups. Documented information repositories such as the internet, journal articles and books were also used in conducting this research.