Neolithic Ritual: Circle Dance



Link: Circle Dance
Class - 2018

The students were exposed to their first experience with ritual dance, a type of dance that evokes movement metaphors, gestural symbols and conscious trance as essential components of nonverbal communication. 

Using an ancestral Neolithic dance as a reference, the Taino's areito, the class was organized around the idea of a circular formation, moving counterclockwise, with a steady forward and backward step that resembled the movement of the hurricane. 

They connected with each other by making eye contact, holding hands and being part of the same circle, or as someone mentioned, the same cycle of life.  

The group accompanied its own dance with their own voices by layering vowel sounds that created a harmonious common and unified voice, otherwise described as a cacophony of sounds. 

Movement and voice became one performative unit as they swung their arms up an down, singing and dancing to the rhythm of their stomping feet.

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 17, 2018 at 7:37 PM

    This lesson was a turning point for our class because it allowed us to truly become comfortable with one another since we all had to participate in a ritual dance that made us all feel silly as first. This shared discomfort actually brought us closer together. This would be a great exercise for many groups or classrooms as an icebreaker - perhaps sharing your own name could be incorporated into dance as to really get to know each other during the activity.

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