Exploring the beauty of tribal dance across the world
Pick any point in history on any land where humans roam and you will find dance. Nature has always had its rhythms and through dance we are reminded that we too are a part of Nature. Within each of us beats a rhythm so deeply rooted that even in the face of oppression, even after generations of conformity and self-denial, it lives on.
Tribes across the globe nurture this intrinsic rhythm and dance to celebrate, to mourn, to belong or simply to feel.
Dances once thought lost to history are now revived, such as Mexico’s moondance. Thousands of years old and rediscovered in the 1990s, women gather to dance under the light of the full moon, bathing in its energy and reconnecting with the healing force that is the Divine Feminine.
Whichever way you journey on from Mexico, you will continue to encounter the power of tribal dance.
Across the Americas
Travel north and you’ll find Native American tribes across the USA gathering in greater numbers every year at powwows. A coming together of community, powwows honour ancient traditions while also capturing the essence of today’s vibrant and evolving Native American culture. Social dances lie at the heart of the powwow, where men, women and children unite as they move to the beat of the drum in joyous celebration.
Travel south from Mexico and witness the empowerment of the Umbanda dancers of Brazil. Dressed in brightly coloured clothes they dance to communicate with the spirits of those who were oppressed and marginalised in life: slaves, Roma gypsies and indigenous tribes. Their dance speaks to the diversity of cultures past and present, with roots stretching across the ocean to Europe and Africa.
To the cradle of humanity and beyond
The abundance of tribal dance in Africa seems appropriate for the land from where humanity sprang forth. Travel south and you’ll find the San bushmen of the Kalahari shaking rhythmically to the chants and clapping of the San women, together channelling the healing power of the universe.
Go east and young men of the Maasai dance the adumu to mark their coming of age, each trying to jump higher as a sign of their burgeoning manhood. To the west, women of the Malinke people dance the Moribayassa to give thanks after overcoming adversity. Dressed in rags a woman dances around her village, followed by her fellow tribeswomen, finally and symbolically burying her rags as the dance ends.
In the throes of such impassioned dance, the line between conscious movement and trance-fuelled release is blurred. For the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey’s Mevlevi Sufis their intense spinning is meditative, a means to release themselves from the materialistic trappings of this world.
Transcendent, reverential, celebratory, empowering, tribal dance is all of these things at different moments across different lands. While the ancient tribes of Europe are now just a memory, the longing to belong and to dance is as strong today as in times past. And so new tribes are born, groups of people coming together to dance and be free.
In the UK Ecstatic Awakening Dance reignites our natural rhythms and gives us all the chance to be a part of a community again.
Find your tribe through Ecstatic Awakening Dance at the School of Ecstatic Movement.