ABSTRACT
The dance has long been recognized as having religious significance. Choreographer, dancer, contemporary of Isadora Duncan and teacher of well-known modern dancers such as Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis was of the first of the modern twentieth-century dancers to explore dance innovation. The dancer is a traveller on a journey and the ‘way’ is through movement and contemplation of the Divine. Possession trance is intimately connected to dance, but dance or movement is also highly relevant to other altered states that assist in healing, or in feelings of oneness with the Divine. The enactment of myth in sacred dance provides an opportunity, for the participants as well as the audience, to have a deep part of the psyche stirred and can lead to ‘glimpses of eternity. The dancer sang the religious songs, externalizing her feelings with facial expressions, and danced using stylized movements.
