Religious Scholar

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.*

Sydney Carter’s lyrical hymn, The Lord of the Dance, resonates with the traditions of many world religions regarding the nexus of spirituality and motion. Shiva Nataraj is the dancing form of one of the persons of Hinduism’s Trinity. The Mitzvah Tantz is a mystical ritual of Hasidic Judaism, while Mevlevi Muslims express union with the divine in the famous dance of the whirling dervishes. The Sioux Ghost Dance, the dances of African-American Pentecostal churches, Tibetan sacred dance—these and many other forms throughout the world express a connection between spirituality and the art of movement.

Dance may be used as a formal part of liturgical worship; as a prayer; an expression of the dancer’s or community’s spirituality; a tool to know God. In the 1970s, with the publication of mass-market books such as The Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao of Physics, it became popular to speak of the entire cosmos as a dance or process rather than a thing or object. Spiritual dance reflects harmony with the processes of nature seen in galaxies and subatomic physics, in patterns of bird migration and the flutter of a hydra’s tentacles. When performed alone, in a group, or witnessed rather than performed, dance connects the believer to an Idea that permeates all nature and reaches out and into the unseen.

What is observed in spiritual dance is only part of the picture. The dancer and believing witnesses know that dizziness and other biological phenomena are only a small part of the out-of-body experience that this bodily activity creates. Dance immerses us in the rhythms and cycles of life. At the same time, it releases us from them into the deep field of mystical knowledge. Evelyn Underhill wrote that mysticism is the art of union with reality. How reassuring to know that, throughout all time and cultures, those who value knowledge and understanding actively celebrate union with reality through the Lord of the Dance.

* Copyright 1963 Stainer & Bell Ltd. London, England