Sacred Circle Dance – Feminism and Religion

My life’s work with traditional women’s circle dances of Eastern Europe and the Near East has been a natural interweaving of feminism, activism and Goddess spirituality. I would like to share how I came to discover these dances and their potential as tools for healing and transformation.

Circles of women dancing with joined hands appear in rock art, pottery shards, vases and frescoes going back thousands of years¹, showing that ritual dance was a primary means of women’s worship. I believe that existing women’s circle dance traditions of the Balkans are direct descendants of these rituals. In their expression of values of partnership, sustainability, and peace, they are living links to the matrifocal Goddess culture of Old Europe as articulated by Marija Gimbutas.²

garfinkle2 — Tell Halaf, Iraq, ca, 5000-4000 BCE (Garfinkel)

Incorporating symbols of the Goddess in her many guises, these women’s ritual dances are deeply spiritual. They are feminist in the way they provide women with a place of power, not ‘power-over’ but ‘power-from-within.’³ They are an activist practice because the qualities they embody – connection, inclusiveness, balance, empathy, and mutuality – are the principles of a Partnership society, as proposed by Riane Eisler;⁴ or in Carol Lee Flinders’ term, a society of Belonging.⁵ Each dance circle is an opportunity to practice being in community in a respectful and cooperative way, which can offer a profound source of healing.⁶

How did I come to these women’s dances? As a child I was convinced of certain truths: that nature is holy, that God is also female, and that instead of hurting one another, people should celebrate together with music and dance. These longings led me to the rich folk dance traditions of the American melting pot, women’s Middle Eastern Dance circles, and the women’s spirituality network. Around the same time, in the early 1980s, I encountered the meditative communal dance practice known as Sacred Dance. Together with my university training in Intercultural Studies and Dance Movement Therapy, these different streams helped shape the path of my life. Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances: Secret Language of the Goddess by Laura Shannon”

Since 1985, I have been researching Balkan folk dances and teaching them in women’s circles all over the world. Common symbols in dance patterns, textile motifs and archaeological artifacts from southeastern Europe have remained the same from ancient times to the present, which leads me to suggest that the dances may be descended from ritual practices dating back to Neolithic times. In my view, these patterns serve as a symbolic language, expressing reverence for the cycle of life. Emphasizing connectedness and continuity, homecoming and support, women’s ritual dances can rekindle ancient values of sustainability, empathy and equality, and provide an antidote to the alienation of self which is epidemic in the western world. In nearly thirty years of teaching, I have found that women all over the world respond to these dances as valuable tools for healing and self-discovery. Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances and My Journey to Healing by Laura Shannon”