Finally, the feathers symbolize the power all these gods hold. The smoke from the pipe is spread in all directions connecting all the realms and once the participants smoke the pipe they also are part of the universe, in the presence of the gods. All the events starting from the purification to the connection of the mind, body and soul, with the gods, the participants make their way to the final part of the ritual, the Sun Dance. Pure young girls are to cut down a cottonwood tree chosen by male elders. The
Bharata Natyam versus Yoruba Dance “Religion may exist without dance: but dance cannot exist without religion.” (La Meri) Kelley Sleiman Intro to World Dance and Culture Throughout history, dance has been a form of natural self-expression. It has become an unbroken line of human interaction. Dance has been used to define cultures, communicate emotion and bring people closer to the spiritual world. While Hindu dance is an important religious art form for the people of South India, it is just as versatile to the Yoruba people of Nigeria. Bharata Natyam of India has become the most common classical dance-drama of India.
Hilary Sheets Anth 242 Dr. Buchman 26 March 2014 Write-Up #21 For write-up 20 I decided to read Katherine A. Dettwyler’s ethnography Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, and I read the article that Jacob sent out to the class. In chapter four of Dancing Skeletons, Dettwyler wrote about how Malians like to joke with one another and love to laugh at themselves and other people. “More than anything else, Malians like to laugh—at themselves, at each other, certainly at toubabs…at the ludicrous world in which they find themselves living—and I liked to make them laugh” (40). This observation also exists in the ethnography Monique and the Mango Rains. The author of Monique and the Mango Rains is Kris Holloway; she studied people who lived in a Malian village.
He is truly being inspired from a more simple and humble beginning in the West Indies when he strips down his dancers in “From Before” to just the bare essentials. Garth Fagan is clearly expressing culture through dance as his choreography draws upon African and West Indian roots for inspiration. He expresses context by stripping down his performers to very bare costumes and thus taking African dance and applying it in a unconventional situation. Tradition, I feel ties into culture in this case and is expressed by the preservation throughout the performance of many of the same movements used in African dance. Garth Fagan expresses value by although changing the context of African dance he has preserved the
The families and children in this story show a life of strength and courage, and through music and dance anything is possible. These families have lost everything parents, sisters, and brothers and their homes, through the brutality of the rebels which call themselves The Lord’s Resistance Army. But one thing they couldn’t take away from the Acholi Tribe was their strength and courage. The War Dance tells the story from the eyes of three very brave children (Nancy, Dominick and Rose). Three Children who have seen and experienced more than most could ever live through, and through their music and dance these children show the world anything is possible.
African Dance is important to Africa to show many cultural differences in musical and movement styles. These dances must be viewed in close connection with African music, as many African languages have no word to define music. They mostly dance in tribes or worshiping gods. These dances teach social patterns and values and help people work, mature, praise or criticize members of the community while celebrating festivals and funerals, competing, reciting history, proverbs and poetry, and to encounter gods. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_dance ) Traditional African Dance mostly used the African voice instead of the more current drums and other instruments.
October: the Purple Month in Peru In the 1600s an Afro-Peruvian Slave at the Pachacamilla plantation in Lima, paint on a rouge adobe wall, the crucifixion of Jesus “the Black Christ.” In 1655 the city lay in ruins from an earthquake. This fragile wall somehow remained intact, since the painting survived another terrible earthquake in 1687. The people began to carry an image on October 18th in a procession around the city. Later the Black Christ was named Patron Saint of Lima and given the name “the Lord of Miracles.” Today in October we still continue celebrating this wonderful religious procession, with the streets dressed in purple and special public events all month. `This religious procession is visited for more than one million people and celebrates more than 350 years of traditions.
At this time, the dancing masters roamed the countryside to teach the privileged children, who could pay for the lessons, how to Irish Dance. These dancing masters were usually a flamboyant, colorful male who would stay at farmers’ houses for a week; teaching the village children how to dance in the barn and develop self-control. Irish Dance involves very rigid precise steps. For a dancing master to be staying in your town, this would definitely be something to boast about. One of the first references to Irish Dance was in a letter written to Queen Elizabeth by Sir Henry Sydney saying that, “they are very beautiful, magnificently dressed and first class dancers” (Farrall).
These roles all come together to tell a story, to celebrate, to uplift, inspire, and to recognize events that take place in their culture. The Indians believed that dances were rooted in places, animals, weather and spirits. No other form of communication with the spirit world was as adequate or complete compared to dance (Medicine of the Brave). There were dance rituals acknowledging changes in the human life cycle-birth, puberry marriage and death-as well as seasonal change in nature. There were dances to welcome strangers, to create ceremonial friendship, to bring good luck in times of war and hunting, to cure illness and to make peace.
Johana Lyon Religion 232 Dr. Spights 3/18/2015 The Dance Inheritance Dance to Africa is like water for the crops. A necessity. Dance has always been a major part of the African culture and continues to thrive on. Being spoken on will be how the Dance Inheritance is incorporated in Kwanzaa, How it was implemented in the King Celebration and lastly, in the Praise House service. Dance is also one of the oldest major art forms there is.