Ecstatic dance is a form of dance in which the dancers, sometimes without the need to follow specific steps, abandon themselves to the rhythm and move freely as the music takes them, leading to trance and a feeling of ecstasy.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,149 |
The Ecstatic dance serves as a form of meditation, helping people to cope with stress and to attain serenity.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,150 |
Ecstatic dance has been practised throughout human history, including in classical times by the maenads, followers of the wine-god Dionysus.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,151 |
Ecstatic dance suggests that this might have been intended to awaken the god's pity and hence answer the people's prayers.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,152 |
Ecstatic dance's been gliding along the surface doing his standard repertoire of flowing moves, when suddenly something shifts inside of him.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,153 |
Ecstatic dance disappears in the dance until all that's left of him is a mop of bleached-white hair.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,154 |
Nettl stated further that ecstatic dance was both religious and erotic, giving examples from ancient Greece, medieval Christianity and Sufism.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,155 |
Philosopher Gediminas Karoblis states that in early cultures, ecstatic dance was linked to religious ritual, releasing the dancer from the egocentric self, undoing self-consciousness and connecting to the absolute.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,156 |
Ecstatic dance considers that the trance of the whirling dervishes is genuinely ecstatic as it glorifies God, whereas shamanistic dance is not, being instead magical, as it is intended to induce effects in the world.
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,157 |
Ecstatic dance's described in the fresco "a nude woman with a flowing scarf turning in a contained but ecstatic dance, much like the description of the dervishes: she does not dance in ecstasy; she is the dance".
| FactSnippet No. 1,222,158 |