(Clearwisdom.net)
Part I.
In the early period of human civilization, even before poetry and painting became mature, dance performances, wherein humans moved their bodies in accord with rhythm, had already achieved the realm of perfection. In front of bonfires, ancient people moved their sturdy bodies and "danced in accord with the drum beats, to reach or be close to the divine beings." Dance, being one mankind's earliest games, let people go beyond the state where their bodies were merely used as the tools for work. Dancing let them attain another realm -- man became true man. In the art of dance, the moving parts of the human body are the prime art objects. Dances manifested within the person who either moves or stands still. The body's movements remind us that a living person is performing. The essential nature in the aesthetics of the art of dance portrays the existence of humans as living beings.
Anthropology studies tell us that in prehistory, dance was part of people's worshiping rituals to communicate with the heavens. Through the medium of the dancing shaman, man could interact with divine beings, and through worshiping and respecting gods, man could acquire the gods' protection. In India, dancing and music are considered gifts passed down by gods for mankind. People obtain dance inspirations from the mural paintings and the statues of gods in the temples. In China, it was said that Nuwa [a god who is believed to have created the Chinese race] gave people the Sheng [a musical instrument] to let them express their feelings in a way similar to birds. Jiu Ge [Nine Songs] is a set of short poems attributed to Qu Yuan (ca. 340 BC - 278 BC, a Chinese patriot poet from the southern State of Chu during the Warring States Periods); his works were published in the Chu Ci [Songs of Chu, sometimes Songs of the South]. It records that during the worship ceremonies, the shaman represented the communication between man and god through song and dance. "Man of Xiang," "Lady of Xiang," and "Zhao Si Ming" [all three are parts of the "Nine Songs"] expressed people's nostalgia and admiration for divine beings. The dances are presented to the divine beings.
The book Zang Wen Wu Pu [a book that recorded Tibetan dances] said that the dancers' bodies echoed the myriad things on the earth, beings like eagles or fish or lions, while the dancers danced majestically and heroically. The analogy "Brave lions swing their green manes as if they were burning in fire" is a vivid description of the dance. A Tibetan folk song says, "Dance in the infinitely broad and immense sky" and "Dance like unshakable high mountains." It also depicts, in poetic language, the rhythm of the Zhuo Dance as "being fast like lighting in the evening sky." The hand gestures are also endowed with profound meanings: the two hands, when conjoined as a lotus flower, move like the lotus flower in full bloom, with its petals spinning in layers, and make people imagine incomparably beautiful images.
Ancient dances are mankind's dialogs between the heavens, earth, and divine beings. Nature is expressed in the eternal dances of the universe. In Lie Zi [Book of Master Lie Zi, by Lie Yukou, around the time of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (770-221 BC)], the text in the chapter "Tang Wen" ["The Questions of Tang"] said, "When a Qin (a stringed musical instrument) is played, the birds dance and the fish jump." Before mankind lost its inborn instincts, during a dance, people could move their bodies gracefully in space; they used their perfect bodies to imitate the wind moving and the staid mountains. They also took the sky and divine beings' paradises as immense stage backdrops. Dances with such movements can create space that is infinitely broad, which is not limited by physical space. With the dancers' pious attitudes, the ancient dances' meanings could reach infinity and open the doors to the heavens.
The relationship between ancient dances and worship has encompassed the human history of dance. What prompts people to move their bodies to dance, first of all, is the urging from their inborn nature. The divine side of human bodies reveals itself in dancing. Dance comes from the origins of life, and it is the natural flow of the life-spring. Therefore, dance has its special place in religious ceremonies, which direct people to the metaphysical world.
The Buddhist scriptures have frequently described that the Buddha used singing and dancing to expound his Dharma to enlighten human beings. In "Huayan Sutra" ["Avatamsaka Sutra" or "flower garland sutra"], the Buddha encouraged all the Bodhisattvas to learn the skills of singing and dancing for convenience in saving the sentient beings. In "Fahua Sutra" ["Saddharmapundarika Sutra" or "the Wonderful Dharma Lotus Flower Sutra"], the gods used flowers and music to encourage the Great Universal Wisdom Excellent Buddha to succeed in his cultivation. According to "Beihua Sutra" ["Compassionate Lotus Sutra"], after Buddha finished expounding his Dharma, the beings from different worlds of Yuje ["the Realm of Sensory Desires"] sang and danced to express their enjoyment after hearing Dharma. The divine beings used their spectacular and wondrous dances to show the Dharma's infinite immenseness and instill compassion into the living beings' minds. They used silence to declare the profoundness of Dharma that could not be told with words.
In the Tang Dynasty dances, Pu Sa Man Dance, Tian Zhu Dance, Su He Xiang Dance and others showed the influence of the dances from Buddhist religion. These diverse dances have enriched the Buddhist ceremonies and rituals. The book of Luoyang Qie Lan Ji (or The Monasteries of Luoyang) recorded the grand occasion of playing music and performing dances during the Buddhist festivals and ceremonies in the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589 AD): "The heavenly flying maidens and music-playing ladies performed as if they were in clouds," and, "Dancers moved gracefully with their long sleeves, and the musical instruments produced lovely sounds; the wonders were beyond description." Buddhist music and dances were brought into Japan through India, the western regions [of China], and China. In Japan, Buddhist music and dances were combined with Buddhist rituals and formed a special kind of Buddhist music and dance. Even up to the present time in Japan, during religious rituals, the tradition still exists that the monks kneel to chant the Buddhist scriptures and repent their sins. During these rituals, dancing girls performed slowly and gracefully on the center of the stage.
Even in the Judeo/Christian tradition in which the importance of human physical bodies is downplayed, dancing is also used to depict people responding to God's instructions. The Book of Psalms says, "Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp." Also, in the Biblical Book of Samuel, "And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod." It is a universal phenomenon that humans use what they truly own, that is, their bodies, to dance to express their gratitude to the gods for the blessing they have received. Theologian Ralph A. Cram has proposed the concept of "Sacred Dance," "Dancing can be deemed sacred, and it has become an art in theology..."
In the 21st century, because contemporary dances have followed deviated aesthetics, and also because modern people's views of the human body are quite different from that of the ancient peoples, it is hard for the modern people to understand mystical dances that can spiritually and physically connect mankind with divine beings and nature. Mankind in the Tang Dynasty had completely different views than modern people have of the human body and of the relationship between mankind and space. How the body moves or stands still in space, what's the corresponding radian formed between the neck and chest, and how much the degree of bend should be when the waist tips over and the dancer spins his or her body -- all these are filled with mystery. People can easily overlook the fact that bodily movements constitute humans' daily lives. The way one moves one's body in space can give ample hints of the person's attitudes toward his or her own body and toward life. Here, the art of the dance has reached the philosophical realm.
The modern philosopher Suzanne K. Langer has stated her essential opinion about dance: "In a land that is controlled by various mysterious forces, the first kind of images created must have been those of the dynamic dancing performances. The first materialistic representation of essential human nature must also have been the dancing image. Therefore, dance can be said to be the first genuine art created by mankind." (paraphrase) Instead of using colorants, marble stones, and words, dance uses living human bodies to convey messages from life. When a human body becomes the carrier of the art and moves in space, the body has gone beyond the body itself and conveys a message to remote places. The movement has covered the physical body, and broken through the physical boundary of this body; the body is endowed with a significance that is beyond observable vision and beyond verbal description.
"Dancing is a language without speaking. While the body moves without speaking a word, it can convey profound meanings that are beyond the description of words. The dancing postures, which carry sacred meanings, direct people to the truth beyond the dance." (Quoted by Priest Edmund Ryden). The human bodies create their own time-spaces through their movements and lead the audience toward another dimension. Dance movements reveal to us the mystery that is beyond the phenomena in our present dimension.
(To be continued)