Shaker

Shaker:
What has become known as Sacred Circle Dance (a collection of traditional and not so traditional dances) is a grass roots phenomenon which is spreading rather rapidly. It has become especially interesting for facilitators of dance therapy, of womens circles, of mens circles and for people who enjoy cultivating the energy of community and of the earth relationships.

All facilitators have their own flavor and approach. Some teachers lead circles emphasizing the joy and play of the Dance. Others use the dance in men's' or women's' circles to enhance the experience beyond the merely mental. Still others will stir the Dance as a way of jelling the sense of community.

Rowen:
History of Sacred Circle Dance
Sacred/Circle Dance includes many of the same dances enjoyed by the folk dancers, but our emphasis is a bit different. The whole Sacred/Circle Dance movement really began with an extraordinary Bavarian Dance Master named Bernhard Wosien. A prominent dancer and choreographer with the Berlin Ballet for 50 years, Professor Wosien had a great love for the traditional folklore and and dances of Europe, and studied for many years with a master of the ritual, symbolic and esoteric aspects of these dances. In 1976, seeking a repository for his vast knowledge of traditional dance, Professor Wosien, together with his daughter, Gabriele, came to the Findhorn Foundation, an international spiritual community in Scotland. A Sacred Dance group was formed among community members to learn what Professor Wosien called the "Heilige Tanz", or Sacred Dance. As dancers went out from Findhorn, the Sacred Dance went with them, and within a few years there were groups all over the UK and Western Europe, enthusiastically carrying on Bernhard Wosienís work. Since the term "Sacred Dance" was easily confused with liturgical and other religious forms of dance, many groups changed it to Circle Dance, but it may be found under either name. In time it took root in North America as well, and in 1990 the first week-long Circle Dance Camp in New England drew participants from all over the US, as well as Canada, the Bahamas and England.

Dancing in Circles
Once upon a time, they say, we danced our lives through - as we worked, played, ate, slept, fought, and loved. We danced to petition and appease the gods, to help the sun rise, the rivers flow, and the plants grow and thrive. By dancing we understood our power and our place in the universe, and through dance we transmitted this understanding to the next generation. We danced to celebrate lifeís rites of passage, from birth to death; through the dance we attuned to and imitated the rhythms, cycles and the awe-inspiring process of nature, and we danced to express our joy, fear, grief and hope. According to Bernhard and Maria Gabrielle Wosien, "Dancing has always been an imitation of the divine mystery in manifestation." To live was to dance.

Most importantly we danced together. We danced in a circle, the very symbol of unity and wholeness. Our circles created a sacred space, a Temenos, within which we created and recreated our cosmos and our realities. Outside was chaos and the unknown - within the circle was order, power and community.

Then came the rise of cities and trade, suppression of "pagan" forms of celebration and worship and the ravages of industrialism. We lost touch with our earth and our communal unity. Our dance became more purely social; the circle became opposing lines and squares, then broke into couples, until recently we see the ultimate in dissociation - dancing alone, unaware of the whole and isolated from one another. The circle of the dance was broken, but the need for it remained deep in our psyches, in the places where we remember our wholeness.

Circle Dance and the "New Age"
In October of 1976 the energy of the sacred circle dance re-emerged in a new form for a New Age. The Findhorn Community in Scotland held a conference on European Spiritual Renewal, and among the invited guests were Professor Bernhard Wosien, Dance Master from Munich, and his daughter, Maria Gabrielle, who shared with the community their living knowledge of the sacred dance traditions of the West. Bernhard, although a classical dancer by profession, had studied the traditional European dances and their meaning and significance with a master who embodied a tradition transmitted through a line of teachers tracing directly back to Pythagoras. Bernhard had his own school in Munich, but for years he had been looking for a place where the spiritual essence of dance could be appreciated and where tradition could be absorbed and used as the foundation for new creations. In Findhorn he found his place, and over the years until his death in 1987, he returned again and again to share his knowledge and Being with the Sacred Dance group which was formed to receive it.

What is it that draws so many people back to Sacred/Circle Dancing at this particular time? It is no news to us that the spiral energy is spinning faster, bringing outworn fear-based and destructive patterns to an end and initiating new, more conscious, love and community based forms and structures of relationship and activity. In this time of transition we need to move harmoniously together into the new consciousness, using the best of the wisdom traditions to ground us as we explore and experiment with creative expression of the New. Under the Seventh Ray energies, ceremony and ritual, celebration and festival become increasingly important as shapers of new consciousness, and the Sacred/Circle dance is a vehicle marvelously and flexibly suited to this purpose. Dancing the old dances, or employing the traditional dance steps and patterns as an alphabet and a grammar to create new ones, there is no limit to the group rituals that can be created or the healing and celebrating uses to which it can be adapted.

John Bear:
There was a time when we danced our lives through; to celebrate the cycles of earth and moon; to celebrate the cycles of our lives; to create community. In the Sacred Circle Dance program, we invite you to join us to renew this sense of sacred community among the glorious trees and mountains of the Sierra.

Sacred Circle Dance is a program for dancers and non-dancers alike. Every dance chosen is simple, and always includes repetitive step sequences. These dances are drawn from the folk traditions of many cultures including Celtic, Balkan, Gypsy, Greek, and more. Each dance is taught first -- so that no partner or special skills of any kind are needed. The Sacred Circle Dance community in California is an active one. We invite you to join us and get caught up in the movements and rhythms of the world..

Ray Price:
Sacred Circle Dance originated out of the Findhorn Community on the north coast
of Scotland. German dance master Bernard Wosien had collected many hundreds of
circle dances from various European countries. He took them to Findhorn where he
began to teach them to a group of devotees who would eventually disseminate them
out to a wider world. Sacred Circle Dances reflect what it is to be alive.
There are birth dances, death dances, dances to celebrate nature and all manner
of other human endeavor. They originate in many communities from Greece,
Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to Brittany, Israel and Native America. In the 1980's
Sacred Circle Dance spread quickly throughout the British Isles and beyond.

Judy King:
Do we need to wonder why there is such enthusiasm now for something which runs contrary to our fast-paced, lonely and competitive way of life?
When you barely know the people next door, what is the attraction of community dancing?

Contra dancers can tell you and so can square dancers and international folk dancers.
Dancing together creates community wordlessly and fast. What circle dance has that these other forms of folk dance do not, is a conscious focus on group awareness and on personal transformation.

We see our dancing as a moving meditation which embraces the wholeness of body, mind and spirit in the context of loving community, by using the rhythms of the natural world and the steps of ancient peoples, and - most importantly - with the sense of the sacred that was so much a part of their lives and which has almost no place in ours. The dance repertoire draws on the rich traditional dances of the Balkans, Greece, Israel, Romania and Russia as well as the modern choreographies to all kinds of music from around the world - including contemporary music.

Mara:
Ancient codes of prayer and meaning are embedded in the music and dance of our ancestors. With that belief Prof. Bernhard Wosien, a ballet master with a special love of folk tradition, founded the modern Circle Dance movement at Findhorn, Forres, Scotland, in 1976.

There is untold power in the circle, in a group of people holding hands and moving together in harmony to rhythms passed down through the centuries. Circle Dance is a continuous link with the folk traditions, feelings and beliefs of the past. You don't have to be a trained dancer - just enter with an open heart. Anyone can participate in this outpouring of spirit and joy.