This year Findhorn is offering a celebration of 30 years of Sacred Circle Dance in July.  It's a good time for this book from one of the most well-known Circle Dance teachers. I'm a newcomer to circle dance, only been dancing for 18 months, and this is just the book I wanted.  I've danced in groups with various levels of awareness of and work with the sacred side of dance, and it really excited me to read someone writing about the dancing in the way that I feel about it, passionate and sacred and energy-moving, fascinating and deeply personal, both honouring tradition and immediately demanding creativity.  I really feel it's not enough just to do the steps and enjoy the music, although after a day at work, it certainly feels pretty good!  But clearly there are Stories being told, Emotions being catalysed or catharted, Archetypes being passed on, Festivals and Stages of Life being celebrated, with both joy and grief.  AND there are party-dances, which truthfully and really should be danced only when drunk(!) and Jolly dances created to enjoy a passing fancy or a nice piece of music.  I don't feel satisfied to be told "just feel it".  So, I'm really happy to read that she feels it's time to talk about the meaning and the energies of the dancing. As well as the Findhorn story, and June's personal story, she writes about Symbols and Shapes found in the Dance, Rhythm, Mandalas and Labyrinths,  Consciousness and Form, Inner and Outer.  She talks about the Stillpoint of the Centre,  Lines and Circles, Diversity and "Variations",  how the energies affect groups, and how individuals can affect the energy in circles.  She has chapters on Magic, and on how the circle energy is a force for change in the larger world as well as for individuals. The standard  inclusion says, "No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without written permission from the author except in the case of quotations in articles and reviews."  This is a review, written expressly to encourage people to buy and read her book.  So I'm going to reproduce a few paragraphs at random which demonstrate why I think this book is SO important, right now  (and this is entirely and purely my own personal opinion, and nothing to do with anyone else in the Ipswich group).  Circle dancers will laugh at the use of the ubiquitous purple. ....  I strongly recommend buying this book, it's £9.99 from Amazon or  CounterCulture.  (This link will take you via June Watt's own web site which is  http://www.junewatts.com/) publ. Green Magic, 2006

 

"In recent years I have noticed a shift in the consciousness of the people who dance.  It used to be enough just to dance, now there is a hunger for more.  Initially I was extremely reluctant to talk about what I perceived was happening during a certain dance or what a step might mean, or even to mention energy.  .......Recently, though, whenever I mention symbolic meanings, or talk about what the energy is up to, everyone is alert....As we awaken, the days of acting in blind faith and accepting without understanding are numbered.  We have a need now to understand, to know what is happening to us, to be fully conscious...... .Our whole being - body, feelings, mind, soul and spirit - has the yearning to be awake and focussed. " "As we have seen, humanity has journeyed from a (matriarchal or feminine) circle consciousness, to a patriarchal (masculine) line consciousness and now circle consciousness is returning.  However, life spirals forward and upward, and there is, literally, no future in attempting to turn the clock back to recreate circle life as it  was pre-patriarchy, that is backward looking in a  non-productive sense, a denial of the Life Force, and ends anyway in a cul-de-sac.  Circle consciousness on its own is no longer sufficient, any more than exclusive focus on the feminine is sufficient or appropriate. William Blake speaks of the journey we make from innocence to experience and back to innocence.  But it is not a return to blind, ignorant innocence:from the experience gained we move to a wiser, more aware and consciously chosen innocence.  In other words we have experienced and absorbed the gifts of the masculine, we have experienced and integrated the gifts of the "line", which is the energy that gives perspective, and the ability and the responsibility to make choices.....There is no sense attempting to return to the undifferentiatied feminine, to the dreamlike tribal oneness of our ancestors,....what is needed now is to bring the circle and the line together. ...The image of the cross in the circle is an ancient symbol for the sun, the spirit, coming into matter, the earth."

"The circle is  the symbol for all things being equal: in a dancing circle each person is part of the whole.  As the feminine harmonises and draws things together, so does the circle, bringing people together into community." "One of my most thrilling dance experiences was in Athens watching a line of Pontic men from the shores of the Black Sea dance onto the stage ...It was electrifying.  They moved as one unit, they vibrated with passion, they were invincible, they embodied the pwerful essence of the masculine; the god had entered them, and was dancing them...   I remember ..Bernhard at Findhorn (teaching) a Tsamikos to men only...how exciting it was to watch the men shedding "nice" Englishness and come into their masculine power:.....part of reclaiming true human birthright is for men to have the space to explore with other men what is uniquely male, and for women to explore true femininity with other women." ...I would say that Sacred/Circle dance ...can be a social, sensual and spiritual experience, and can be, as for example in the Rom/Gypsy dances, a sexual one too.  A major healing factor in Sacred/Circle dance is that it glues separate pieces together again.  For example in the past I have very much needed the energy of the "male" dances such as Tsamikos.  They have played a big part in my healing and balancing and helped me to find and integrate my inner "masculine" strength."                                                                              Reviewed by Annie Toy.

Back to Homepage


editor:annietoy@tiscali.co.uk