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Native American Dance and Dancing | A resource on Native American Dance |  | Native American Dance
Native American dance is unlike most other dances in the world. It is not only a way to have fun, but spiritual in itself. Dance can be a form of prayer, a way of expressing joy or grief, and a method of becoming closer with man and nature. The dance also can have healing powers, not only on the dancer, but on people that the dancer is close to, or dancing for.
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| We recommend this article: Native American Dance and Dancing - 1, and also this: Native American Dance and Dancing - 2. |
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| | Resources on Native American Dance |  |  |  | Native American Dance The American Native dance is an act of “Conscious Offering” to our ancestors. It is a prayer done through the body and an act of respect to the traditions of our grandfathers.
In this Native Dance, men and women move simulating the movements of planets, creating the necessary energy to produce liberations, purifications, bliss and surrender. This is a physical-devotional path which together with the understanding of this practice, achieves a direct connection with the Divine Source…
There are different kinds of dances in America (North and South), one can find healing dances, warrior dances, initiation dances, worship dances and ceremonial dances, like sundance and moondance. This dances can be done individually or done collectively depending on the purpose.
The American Native Dance do not use coreographic movements, because you are not looking for visual beauty. In its heart, movements are based in becoming in touch with the spirits of animals, elements, deities or different processes of nature, like rain or sowing seasons.
There is also a spontaneous part of the dance in which each person brings out his emotions while the guide Baton of the dance changes from hand to hand.
There are dances to liberate energy and others to charge the dancer with Divine Energy.
Walking into a Dance is a ceremony of consciousness, and that is why each dancer gets prepared wearing special clothes and ornaments in his head and feet. All participants wear a ribbon in the forehead as a sign of respect to the Divine Spirit, which is being evoked.
Every dancer brings with him instruments and offerings of fruits and sacred objects, which are being placed in the altar.
This Dance that we will share together in the Oneness Festival is based in the Mexhica tradition.
With all my respect and deepest grattitude to the Mexhica Dance!
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| ARTICLES RELATED TO Native American Dance and Dancing | |
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New Age Spirituality
Dictionary on
Ghost Dance
Ghost Dance A new religious movement among Native Americans of the western United States. The Ghost Dance had two distinct phases, both of which originated in the visions of a Paiute shaman living in western Nevada. The Ghost Dance of 1870: Wodziwob (d. ca. 1872), the prophet of the 1870 dance, proclaimed that the world would soon be destroyed, then renewed; the dead would be brought back to life and game animals restored. He instructed his followers to dance a nocturnal circle dance. This dance was similar to both older Paiute traditions and an earlier regional movement, the Plateau Prophet Dance, but it addressed very present conditions of deprivation resulting from white incursions into tribal territories. It spread to California, Oregon, and Idaho but, with the death of Wodziwob and the nonfulfillment of his prophecies, died out within a few years. The Shoshone and Bannock of Fort Hall, Idaho, however, continued to perform the Ghost Dance at least intermittently up to 1890. The Ghost Dance of 1890: Wovoka (ca. 1856-1932), a Paiute Native American prophet, inaugurated the Ghost Dance of 1890 on the basis of a vision he had received during a total eclipse of the sun. His message was in direct continuity with the 1870 dance: there was to be an immanent renewal of the world in which dead Native Americans would be resurrected and the living would no longer be subject to sickness and old age, game animals would be restored to their former abundance, and the old way of life would once more flourish. Euro-Americans, by this time firmly in control, would be eliminated by supernatural means, such as a flood or earthquake. It is uncertain whether Wovoka announced a specific date for these events, but many expected them in the spring of 1891. Wovoka's message also contained ethical admonitions (e. g. , members of different tribes should live in peace with each other; they should cooperate with, not war against, the whites). In anticipation of the great event and to speed its arrival, Wovoka instructed his followers to perform circle dances periodically. They did so in large numbers, and (especially among Plains tribes) dancers often fell into trances, subsequently reporting that they had visited the spirit world and spoken with dead relatives, who were living a life like the one that had flourished before the coming of the whites. The 1890 dance spread mainly eastward along the length of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. In some tribes (e. g. , Paiute, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Pawnee) acceptance was almost unanimous; in others (like the Sioux) only segments of the population became believers. No Pueblo (except at Taos) or Navajo accepted it, the latter because of a culturally conditioned aversion to ghosts. As news of the Paiute prophet Wovoka began to spread, tribes sent delegations to the Walker Lake Reservation in western Nevada to see him. They returned with versions of his teachings that were sometimes shaped by the particular needs of their tribe. Among the Pawnee, the dance provided the basis for an important cultural renewal, for the visions of the dancers made possible the revival of old ceremonial activities that had fallen into disuse because knowledge of their correct performance had been lost. The Sioux, who had a number of current grievances against the government (e. g. , loss of reservation lands, cuts in rations), altered Wovoka's message in the direction of greater hostility toward the whites. Delegates like Short Bull and Kicking Bear advocated the use of "ghost shirts" (special garments that were supposed to make the wearer invulnerable to bullets) and spoke of the possibility of armed conflict with the government soldiers. During 1890, newspapers around the country carried often sensational stories about the "messiah craze" (Wovoka was often called the "Indian messiah") and the possibility of renewed warfare with the Sioux. Violence did erupt in December: during an attempt to arrest him, Chief Sitting Bull was shot to death, and Chief Big Foot and almost three hundred of his band were massacred by the cavalry at Wounded Knee. These events were more the result of government blunders than of a Sioux outbreak. Following the violence among the Sioux and the failure of the expected transformations the next spring, the popularity of the dance began to fade. However, it did not die out altogether. Wovoka remained active, but shifted his message in the direction of ethical admonitions. As late as 1896 some Kiowa were still dancing, and one of the early Northern Cheyenne delegates, Porcupine, led a brief revival of the dance in 1900. The movement continued elsewhere in a more substantive way. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Fred Robinson, an Assiniboin who had been instructed in the Ghost Dance by Kicking Bear and had corresponded with Wovoka, brought the dance to a small community of Sioux living in Saskatchewan. Combined with a traditional Medicine Feast, apocalyptic elements disappeared and the themes of ethical admonition and community solidarity predominated. Among the Wind River Shoshone (Wyoming), the Ghost Dance apparently combined with an earlier ceremony (the Father Dance) of thanksgiving to God for food. As a result, the annual renewal of nature took on a cosmic dimension: shamans reported dreams in which they saw the dead assembled in heaven waiting to return to earth at some unspecified time in the future. The people on earth anticipated this event and performed a dance thought to imitate that of the dead. In both these places the Ghost Dance continued to be performed into the 1950s. In the 1970s the dance was revived by the activist American Indian Movement. Even among persons and groups who no longer practice it, knowledge of the Ghost Dance has not died out and lessons are still derived from it. Thus ca. 1970 the Sioux medicine man Lame Deer reinterpreted an old Ghost Dance song about straightening arrows and killing and butchering buffalo to mean that individuals must live upright lives in order to help bring about a new earth.
(See also: Ghost Dance , New Age
Spirituality, Body
Mind and Soul)
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 |  |  | Native American Dance and Dancing:
Alternative
Health Dictionary on Paneurhythmy
Paneurhythmy: sacred circle dance created by Beinsa Douno, a Bulgarian mystic of the early twentieth century. It has individual and universal healing properties and nourishes the auric field. According to proponents, the word paneurhythmy is partially interpretable as cosmic core or cosmic essence.
(See
also: Paneurhythmy ,
Body
Mind and Soul, Alternative Health, Alternative Health Dictionary)
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 |  |  | Native American Dance and Dancing: Krishna's Ras Leela is Not an Orgy
The ras leela - the frenzied and uninhibited dance of the gopi s with Krishna - never becomes an orgy. Why? The obvious answer would be that Krishna is divinity; he is immaculate. But the reasons are more philosophical than theological. The dance symbolises the soul's unceasing struggle to break clear of the constraints of the body, to make contact with the supra-reality it sees out there. This intensely private struggle is an abstraction, but so compulsively felt by the soul straining within the body as to become an obsession. The indulgence of any obsession is a behind-the-scene, secret activity, for it has undertones of guilt.
(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond,
Body Mind and Soul)
Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Krishna's Ras Leela is Not an Orgy |
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 |  |  | Native American Dance and Dancing: Lohri Celebrates the Spirit of Life
The festival of Lohri marks the beginning of the end of winter and the coming of spring and the new year. The fires lit at night, the hand-warming, the song and dance and the coming together of an otherwise atomised community, are only some of the features of this festival. The Lohri of north India coincides with Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Samkranti in Bengal, Magha Bihu in Assam, Tai Pongal in Kerala, all celebrated on the auspicious day of Makar Sankranti .
(See also: Lohri , Indian Festivals,
Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and
Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)
Read more here: » Lohri: Lohri Celebrates the Spirit of Life |
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 |  |  | Native American Dance and Dancing: Gratitude - A Simple Yet Powerful Tool
The fourteenth century Native American Iroquois Constitution opens with a prayer of gratitude. It offers thanks "to the earth where men dwell; to streams of water, springs and lakes; to the maize and fruits and medicinal herbs; to the sun and moon, wind and thunder... and to the great creator, the source of life". Gratitude is one of the first principles of spiritual well-being. Blessings abound in the life of each of us, and a keener appreciation of the same unlocks the secrets of the universe. In opening our hearts wide to render thanks we automatically create the space in our consciousness for greater grace to flow in. A thankful heart is an open heart and is thus, open to receiving. Meister Eckhart, the German mystic observed, "If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice."
(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond,
Body Mind and Soul)
Read more here: » Love and Happiness: Gratitude - A Simple Yet Powerful Tool |
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