Spring 2012 VOLUME 54 Number 1
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SACRED DANCE GUILD JOURNAL SPRING 2012 VOLUME 54 NUMBER 1 - The sunflower, a Dance Guild festival has person flower that has come to ally achieved something they had symbolize “hope”, will be previously thought impossible! - your guide around the Hope College is an ideal amazing Hope College campus for a sacred dance fes campus as you explore tival! Beautiful, green outdoor and experience many spaces with wonderful dance forms and facets of studios and other event areas, sacred dance at Festival a full service cafeteria that will - 2012! You will see our 3’ cater to all diets AND it is right in version of the sunflow the middle of the quaint town of er—made from recycled Holland, Michigan with its many water bottles—all over delightful shops and restaurants. the campus and this will be your indicator that sacred You will LOVE both the spaces and the places around this dance is happening at that place! And happen it will! venue! That is, IF you get a chance to leave the campus “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and during Festival! achieves the impossible” (anonymous). THIS is what we With the faculty and events that are on the schedule also will experience at Festival 2012 as we open ourselves already that may be just one of the challenges you’ll have to explore all that this Festival will offer. The invisible will to struggle with! That, and choosing between many of the be made visible through the dance, the intangible will workshops and classes that will be offered… Check out be felt throughout the week and, based on many, many the details in the rest of this journal! We HOPE you will comments, every person who has ever attended“Dancea Sacred a Worldjoin ofus!! Hope” A Sacred Dance Festival • July 24-29, 2012 Hope College, Holland, Michigan SACRED DANCE GUILD JOURNAL | SPRING 2012 A Letter from Your President by JoyBeth Lufty Board of Directors Officers, 2011-2012 As SDG goes spinning further into 2012 “Dancing The President: JoyBeth Lufty (ME, TX) Vice-President: Lisa Michaels (GA) Sacred, Moving The World” educating, resourcing, Treasurer/Secretary: Ann Pomeroy (NV) and networking Sacred Dance in all its forms, it Directors, 2011-2012 Programs: Wendy Morrell (ON, Canada), Mary Kamp (OH) remains challenged by two factors that could Public Relations: Elaine Sisler (MA) bring closure, within two years, to this 54 year Resources: Cherie Hill (CA) unique, needed more than ever, movement: the need for more “movers and Journal Coordinator: Elaine Sisler moneys.” We have to draw into our SDG The JOURNAL is the official publication of the Sacred Dance Guild, a non-profit international corporation, founded in 1958, global family, both the moneys and the people and providing members with information and opportunities for to do the work of all our programs and services we dancing the Sacred, moving the world. Reprints of articles in the Journal are by permission of the President only. The Online now offer… Directory is intended only for the use of Guild members in carrying out the activities and purposes of the Guild. Policy Statement: The Sacred Dance Guild recommends and encourages its members to list their SDG affiliation when presenting workshops and performances. However, the Guild Here’s what we need YOU to do. letterhead, logo and name are to be used only in connection with official Guild business and activities, as endorsed by a Local Network or Guild Executive Board. Official address: Sacred Dance It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3: Guild, 550 Ritchie Highway, #271, Severna Park, MD 21146. 1. SPREAD THE WORD about SDG through helping to promote and then COME DANCE the Sacred Dance Guild, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1043-5328. sacred with us at our Sacred Dance Festival 2012, Dance a World of Hope, July 24-29, at Hope Sacred Dance Guild Web Site: www.sacreddanceguild.org. College in Holland, Michigan. We need 150-200 to share this special time of transformation and Membership to the Sacred Dance Guild is available for the following rates: One-Year Membership (Domestic AND hope! Both this Journal issue and our website has all the information (including a sendable PR International, US Dollars) $50; One-Year Business Membership video) you need to let the world know who we are and what we do, as well as about our up and ($200); Two-Year Membership (Domestic AND International, US coming inspiring and activating Sacred Dance Festival. Send out to your world our electronic and Dollars) $80; One-Year Student and Senior (65+) Membership $35; One-Year Group Membership $90 and Life Membership printed brochure, press release, advertisement. $1000. Members receive: 2. VOLUNTEER to be on our Board of Directors or to take on some time limited projects such n Online Sacred Dance Guild Journal published twice a year as helping to find resources, writing for our Journal and website, coordinatingSD-GO programs, n Online Membership Directory with geographical and Local Networks, and Traveling Workshops. There are many tasks that need your energy and leadership listings printed n Calendar of Events online with regional, national, and expertise. We cannot exist without an active Board of Directors, and especially without a international activities President, yet we are still having such a difficult time filling these volunteer positions and getting n Membership in Local Networks with community events and activities all the work done. If you can’t help to do the daily work of SDG, then help us to find donors n Reduced fees at the International Festival held biennially in and grants that can provide funding for our dynamic programs and the paid Executive Director different locations within the United States n position that we need in the best of ways. Reduced fees at Guild workshops and those of reciprocal organizations n Opportunity to be listed as a resource in the Online 3. After years of updating/modernizing SDG’s systems and experimenting with the best ways to Resource Library n Ability to sign up for email reminders for events listed on work with this unique volunteer-based global nonprofit, we have updated our BYLAWS and need SDG Event Calendars everyone of YOU to register your approval. It’s easy: just go to HOT NEWS’s—IT’S BYLAW n And many more opportunities to “Dance the Sacred, Move the World” through our interactive website AMENDMENT TIME—VOTE NOW!!!! It’s up to us all, each and everyone, to put our time, energy and yes, money, where our hearts Membership orders should go to: are in order to keep SDG dancing past 2012 and continuing to be a light of HOPE in the world Sacred Dance Guild, 550 Ritchie Highway, #271 Severna Park, MD 21146. today… Deadlines for the JOURNAL: September 15 and March 15. Articles accepted with 500 words or less. Local Network and membership news, letters and color “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. photographs should be sent by deadline dates to: journal@ sacreddanceguild.org It is about learning to dance in the rain.” --Anonymous -2- Historic Notes by Toní Intravaia In This Issue Dance a World of Hope! ............................ 1 President’s Letter ...................................... 2 Board of Directors ..................................... 2 From the Sacred Dance Guild Newsletter Fall 1975, Volume 19, Number 1 The Significance of Religion in the Dance by Wincie Ann Carruth Historic Notes by Toní Intravaia ................. 3 Dance a World of Hope Poster ................. 4 It is necessary to formulate a definition of religion. Havelock Ellis says that the quintessential core of religion is the act of finding our emotional relationship to the world conceived as a whole. The religious Sacred Dance Gives the Sole .................... 5 experience exists, according to Hoffdling, in the relation between reality and value in the effort to conserve Festival Registration Information ................ 6 value. Religious feeling is almost always accompanied by certain muscular responses, the folding of the Body Prayer: Dancing with Your Whole hands, the bowing of the head, closing of the eyes, and by all external signs of mental and emotional Being concentration. Dancing as a means of manifesting a religious emotion is a natural phenomenon, whatever by JoyBeth Lufty ..................................... 7 may be the precise meaning or application to the particular occasion. These feelings or experiences burst Persian Dance - In Perspective forth in song and in dance, so that ever since the beginning of civilization, the dance has been a persistent by Shahrzad Khorsandi ............................. 8 form of expressing religious feeling. Karen’s Dress Primitive man felt that he could bring pressure to bear on spiritual powers by use of suitable dances. So in every part of the world there are intermediaries who learn the will of the spirit through an ecstatic by Mary Kamp ........................................ 10 condition secured from wild dances. A savage does not preach his religion, he dances it. Dancing was the Hope Sacred Dance Ministry .................. 10 primitive expression of religion, and religion had no other expression than the movement of a dance. Out of these religious dances the arts of mankind have developed. The Power of Sacred Dance by Kathryn Mihelick ................................. 11 The Greeks, who worshipped gods of anthropomorphic form, used the dance as an expression of devotion to these gods, and as an expression of their profound philosophy of life. In all the stages of Culture Fest 2012 ................................... 12 the development of religion the dance has been used to express the religious feelings of the people. It Transformation and Hope has offered to religion a medium through which to express this feeling. Religion, on the other hand, has by Linda Graham .................................... 14 influenced the form of the dance used in the worship of spirits, many gods, anthropomorphic gods, and a Supreme Being, offering them opportunity of expressing feeling through rhythmic movements.” Memories from Festival 2010 .................