Judaism Judaism observes the festival of
Simchat Torah, which includes dancing in synagogues. The
Hasidic movement, which dates from the 18th century, practices dancing in a religious context.
Christianity Some Christian traditions make use of
liturgical or
worship dance, but it has long been controversial within the church. A typical early Christian dance is the 2nd century AD circle dance in the
Acts of John which states that "Grace danceth. I would pipe: dance ye all. The whole world on high hath part in our dancing." Circle dance is used, in its more meditative form, in worship within religious traditions including the
Church of England. In northern Greece and southern Bulgaria, in the annual celebrations for
Saint Constantine and
Saint Helen, dancers perform the
Anastenaria, a
fire-walking ritual, as the climax of three days of processions, music, dancing, and animal sacrifice.
Hinduism Indian classical dances such as
Bharatanatyam,
Kathak,
Odissi, and
Mohiniattam can be traced to the Sanskrit text
Natya Shastra. They are a traditional drama-dance expression of religion, related to
Vaishnavism,
Shaivism,
Shaktism, pan-Hindu epics and the
Vedic literature. As a religious art, they are either performed inside the
sanctum of a Hindu temple, or near it.
Islam and Sufism Dance is unusual within Islam, but circle dance is used in the Islamic
Haḍra dances. In 2007, Sufi practices including ecstatic dance and the reciting of religious poetry were a focus for political resistance in Iran, reportedly
banned by
Shi'a clerics.
Syncretic The
syncretic Afro-American religious tradition Candomblé, practiced mainly in
Brazil, makes use of music and ecstatic dance in which worshippers become possessed by their own tutelary deities,
Orishas.
Spiritual and New Age , in a dance pose inspired by the Egyptian goddess
Isis. Photographed by
Otto Sarony, 1910. The
mystic and spiritual teacher
George Gurdjieff collected or authored a series of sacred dances, known as
Gurdjieff movements, and taught them to his students as part of what he considered the work of "self observation" and "self study". The
Dances of Universal Peace, created in the 1960s by North American Sufis, leading among whom was
Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti). The very first dance took place on 16 March 1968 in
San Francisco, California. It uses dancing, Sufi whirling, and singing of sacred phrases from a range different religions and spiritual traditions to raise consciousness and promote peace . From 1976, the ballet master and choreographer
Bernhard Wosien introduced circle dance at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland. He used both traditional dances and his own choreography to develop "group awareness". Wosien's approach was taken up by the dance teacher Anna Barton, both at Findhorn and across Europe in the 1980s, and this style of sacred dance spread around the world. ==In Western art==