Sun Dance

“ The ends of these cords are fastened to the center pole in the sun dance lodge, where these devotees dance and cry for power until they tear themselves free or fall in a swoon: I never made this sacrifice. I was afraid, for it is very holy. Yet many times have I given bits of my skin to Natos (the sun) as the scars upon my body show. These were not given in the sun dance, but when I was fasting alone in the hills.
A good and virtuous woman may often save the lives of her relatives by making a vow to take the tongues at the sun dance. ”

“ The moon to-night is like the sun
Through blossomed branches seen;
Come out with me, dear silent one,
And trip it on the green.
"Nay, Lad, go you within its light,
Nor stay to urge me so—
'Twas on another moonlit night
My heart broke long ago."
Oh loud and high the pipers play
To speed the dancers on;
Come out and be as glad as they,
Oh, little Silent one.
"Nay, Lad, where all your mates are met
Go you the selfsame way,
Another dance I would forget
Wherein I too was gay."
But here you sit long day by day
With those whose joys are done ”

“ In the worship of solar deities in various countries, it was customary to dance round the altar, as the stars dance round the sun. Even in Europe the popular belief that the sun dances on Easter Sunday has perhaps scarcely yet died out. To dance is to take part in the cosmic control of the world. Every sacred Dionysian dance is an imitation of the divine dance.
All religions, and not merely those of primitive character, have been at the outset, and sometimes throughout, in some measure saltatory. ”

“ A song of the sun dance is started by one of the candidates, and the others join him, one after another, until all are singing. Meanwhile the men who have been selected for the purpose redden their entire hands, and it devolves on them to dance without touching anything, such as the withes connected with the sun pole or the buffalo skulls; all that they are required to do is to extend their hands towards the sun, with the palms turned from them. ”

“ As they dance, they pray mentally, “Please pity me! Bring to pass all the things which I desire!”
INTRUSIVE DANCES.
§ 194. During the sun dance, other dances—intrusive dances, as Lynd terms them—are going on in the camp. Among these are the following: The Mandan dance, performed by the Ćaŋte ṭiŋza okolakićiye, or the Society of the Stout-hearted Ones; the Wakaŋ waćipi or mystery dance, the Peźi mignaka waćipi or the dance of those wearing grass in their belts, the ghost dance, the buffalo dance, and the Omaha kiyotag a-i, popularly called the grass dance. ”

“ A circular dance like the Breton one still survives among the peasantry in the Channel Islands, at least in Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark, being celebrated at weddings, but the revolution is now around a person instead of a stone, and to this person obeisance is paid. This tends to confirm our opinion that the dance is the survival of an ancient sun-dance, the central figure being typical of the sun deity himself, or Apollo ”

“ The sun has vanished and ere he rise again the rite of propitiation must be performed. The young girls are discovered going through the mazy evolutions of a ceremonial dance, the object of which is the choice by hazard of the destined victim. ”

“ In former times, the dreams of the weather dancers while sleeping in the booth were considered of special supernatural significance, since, it is said, they were en rapport with the sun. This rapport may account for what seems to be one of their chief functions—blessing the people. During the days they are in the booth, individuals come to them "to be prayed for." They come up and stand before the booth. The dancer takes black paint and paints their faces. ”

“ Now the dance commences, round and round the pole they go with various steps and motions, not graceful, but energetic and full of meaning. The dance is intended to represent, among other things, the course and movement of our planet around the sun. The chief and the dancers sing alternately:
“Take care how you step!” ”

“ A great deal of dancing is done between the entrance to the dancing lodge and the booth. At intervals during the day they stand before the booth and dance to the east and west: the drummers are now stationed on the south side of the booth where women also assemble for the singing. The dancing is chiefly an up and down movement produced by flexing the knees, the eyes are directed toward the sun and wing-like movements of the hands are made in the same direction. The dancers wear breechcloth and moccasins and usually a robe around the waist. ”

“ The sun was sometimes aided in this performance by a bowl of clear water, into which the youth must look and see the orb dance, as it would be dangerous to look directly on the sun while thus engaged. The religious dance of the ancient Druids is believed to exist in modern times in a round dance wherein the figures imitate the motions of the sun and moon. ”

“ She dances like the moonlight—light, languorous, aswoon.
Her face floats uplifted, a flower to the moon,
To the moon pale in heaven and the dawn coming slow,
And under her measure the ripples breathe low,
"The dancer, the dancer from ages ago!"
Oh, dance me no more! Witching dancer be gone! ”

“ Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the green. Youth and gayety and beauty—and in summer we are all young and gay and beautiful—mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil their faces there.
Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming exercise which they can adopt. ”

“ Long windows, open to the summer night, show a garden beyond, flooded with romantic moonshine, and at one of these stands a young girl, loth to break the reverie in which her thoughts are held. Her backward glance drinks in the beauty of the night, her pulses more than faintly stirred by the glamour of the dance so lately ended, her whole self thrilling to a potent magic but half understood. ”

“ When all dim heaven is trembling into stars.
THE PALE DANCER My heart's a still shore; all the golden sails are gone.
A pale, silver floor in the hugeness of dawn
My heart lies once more, and the little ripples beat
This small, idle tune, like the fall of elves' feet,
"Oh, come, airy dancer—come dance on us, Sweet!"
She comes like a breeze in the midnight of May.
The tumbling of the seas makes a tune far away.
She comes with closed eyes, with light footsteps she nears,
And she sings the low song that each lipping ripple hears.
"In love there is laughter, and after—come tears!" ”

“ The music swelling into a rapturous tumult preludes the choral climax, wherein the dancers, raising their delicate feet, and curving their arms and fingers in seemingly impossible flexures, sway like withes of willow, and agitate all the muscles of the body like the fluttering of leaves in a soft breeze. Their eyes glow as with an inner light; the soft brown complexion, the rosy lips half parted, the heaving bosom, and the waving arms, as they float round and round in wild eddies of dance, impart to them the aspect of fair young fiends. ”

“ A Dance at Sunset expresses the close of a beautiful day. One sees in it, one feels in it the decline of the heat of the day; in the foreground are some shepherds and shepherdesses dancing by the side of their flocks. ”

“ It is love in human shape: now he hovers above the sleeping figure, caressing: now he is dancing just in front of the window. And we dare not breathe lest by so doing the air is stirred to drive him back into the moving shapes outside. But he rises on the arms of the wind, he crouches beside the girl. She falls into his arms and the love dream of a ballroom is realized. The music of the night has entered the room, languid music like water which these two spill as they dance to and fro, until, our eyes being opened, we can see as well as hear music. ”

“ From the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their cloaks, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and to implicate other strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze that was subtly rushing upon them, through them ”

“ But I saw--knew, rather, as if I had always known it, sweet as summer rain, and close in me as love--that the whole Earth with all her myriad expressions of life moved to this primal rhythm as of some divine dancing."
"Dancing?" I asked, puzzled.
"Rhythmical movement call it then," he replied. "To share the life of the Earth is to dance and sing in a huge abundant joy! And the nearer to her great heart, the more natural and spontaneous the impulse--the instinctive dancing of primitive races, of savages and children, still artless and untamed ”

“ Movements may have an intrinsic grace and beauty, as words that utter no meaning may possess a splendour of sound. But the dance is to movement what language is to words: it implies selection and co-ordination for the purpose of expressing something—in this case the very essence of the sentimental emotions which the vibrant music of the strings evokes. Never was the ecstasy of the valse so irresistibly expressed. Leaping, swaying, its whole being abandoned to the intoxicating rhythm, the dancing phantom seems to draw the very power which animates it from the music’s throbbing pulse. ”

“ To keep them right in their steps they repeat to themselves the words of the song belonging to the dance. In Maewo, Aurora, clapping of hands plays a great part in common dancing and singing. In Lepers' Island, when a hundred or more men dance and sing round a drum or drums in a bue, 'the earth shakes under their feet, and the land resounds about them;' and indeed it is no wonder that such dances give excitement and delight. The favourite time for dancing is a moonlight night, if the dance is the chief thing in view; the dancing and drumming of the common feast goes on in daytime. ”

“ The spectator never wearied of watching the transformations of these tissues of living light, which showed in successive visions the dreamy dancer, moving languidly in a chaos of figured draperies—in a rainbow of brilliant colors or a sea of vivid flames. ”

“ Another pedestal is being occupied by Show Off and Serpenta, who are dancing a betrothal. In graceful pose and gesture, his movements are an epic poem in majesty and solid grandeur, hers the duplicate shadow of his, with interlacing quicksteps. An ice dance on the ice, the feet not raised off. The complication of steps is insidious to the eye in their noiseless turns. Noiseless? rising on the air is a melody, that grows and lessens, produced by the swift slipping. Ending in smooth tone as true love ought. ”

“ Through this human medium, the movement of all nature runs also through us, is transmitted to us from the dancer. We feel the movement of light intermingled with the thought of whiteness. It is a prayer, this dance, each movement reaches in long undulations to the heavens and becomes a part of the eternal rhythm of the spheres.”
Fifteen years ago a creed of interpreting qualities in the manner above indicated, by means of dancing, was quite as alien to the United States as was the Greek costume that left the legs uncovered and the feet unshod. ”

“ Like the designs of the Esthonian national dress, the figures of their primitive and simple folk-dances have a tendency of128 never-ending lines. The colors, white, black and red—the symbols of red blood, white light and black earth—suggest dreamy, melancholy, but determined traits of a semi-Oriental race. Dance here is not a sport, not an amusement, not a medium of love-making, not a social function, but a magic motion to influence the great powers of Nature, and a semi-mythologic ceremony for the purpose of future joy and happiness. ”

“ What a rhythm’s here! One would say the body lay asleep and the dance escaped from the hair tips, the bleached fuzz that covers back and belly, shoulders, neck and forehead. The dance is diamantine over the sleeper who seems not to breathe! One would say heat over the end of a roadway that turns down hill. Cesa!
One may write music and music but who will dance to it? The dance escapes but the music, the music—projects a dance over itself which the feet follow lazily if at all. So a dance is a thing in itself. ”

“ A festive dance strikes a tuneful trip,—a menuet it surely is, with all the ancient festal charm, vibrant with tune and spring, though still we do not escape the source of the first pervading theme. Out of the midst of the dance sings slyly an enchanting phrase, much like a secret love-romance. Now to the light continuing dance is joined a strange companion,—the heroic melody in its earlier majestic pace. Is it the poet in serious meditation at the feast apart from the joyous abandon, or do we see him laurel-crowned, a centre of the festival, while the gay dancers flit about him in homage? ”

“ On two sides of this dancing circle the women stand in line, painted all over with soot. When the men’s deep song is ended, they chant the same melody with thin, shrill voices. Once in a while they join in the dance, taking a turn with some one man, then disappearing; they are all much excited; only a few old hags stand apart, who are past worldly pleasures, and have known such feasts for many, many years. ”