JDSP 4 (1) pp.

23–41 Intellect Limited 2012

Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices

Volume 4 Number 1
© 2012 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jdsp.4.1.23_1

Dunja Njaradi
University of Chester

Trance in western theatrical

dance: Transformation,
repetition and skill learning

Abstract Keywords
This article will explore the links between sacred trance dances and the tradition of trance
western theatrical dance by looking at the dance practice of the Turkish contemporary ritual
dancer Ziya Azazi. The first part of the article will give an overview of theoretical anthropology
and methodological approaches to ritual trancing in sociocultural anthropology. The modern dance
second part will introduce several aspects of trancing in the tradition of western contemporary dance
theatrical dance by focusing on Azazi’s practice. Finally, the article will discuss the kinaesthesia
importance of interdisciplinarity in understanding trance, as well as its connections skill
to the growing scholarship on globalization, affect and community. affect
community

Either permanently as in initiation rites or temporarily as in aesthetic theatre

and trance dancing, performers – and sometimes spectators too – are changed
by the activity of performing (Schechner 1985: 4).
Since the 1980s, performance studies scholars, especially from the United
States, have been conducting ethnographic research on ritual performances
involving spirit possession, trance behaviour and shamanism. They have
observed ritual performances across the world and developed analytical
models drawn from theatre, drama studies and anthropology, to empha-
size various interconnections between performance behaviour and ritual
(see Schechner and Appel 1991). Dance studies did not develop a similar

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Dunja Njaradi

tradition, despite the fact that contemporary dance technique incorporated

principles and practices that focus on forces and flow of energy, transforma-
tion of time and space, and, more recently, the politics of spectatorship and
participation that have close analogies with ritual and sacred dances. This
article will focus on the practice of Turkish contemporary dancer Ziya Azazi
to investigate the close links between sacred trance dances and the world of
contemporary dance.
There is a rich and widespread terminological debate on trance, ecstasy
and spirit possession in anthropology (Lambek 1989), music (Rouget 1985) and
religious studies (Schmidt and Huskinson 2010). In this article I will use the
term ‘trance’ as defined by music scholar Judith Becker, ‘[…] as a state of mind
characterized by intense focus, the loss of the strong sense of the self and access
to types of knowledge and experience that are inaccessible in non-trance states’
(2004: 41). In clarifying my use of this term, I am also following Gilbert Rouget’s
more specific delineation between trance and ecstasy. Rouget links ecstasy with
immobility, solitude and silence, found, for instance, in mystical experiences of
Christian saints. Trance, in contrast, is associated with a public, often violent,
ritual accompanied by music, dancing and chanting (Rouget 1985: 6).
Since engaging in contemporary dance in the early 1990s, Azazi has
developed a successful international career working with directors such as Jan
Fabre, Koffi Koko and Yoshi Oida, and touring internationally as a company
dancer. In the late 1990s, Azazi began an independent study of the traditional
dance of the Sufis (Whirling Dervishes) and started a solo career by explor-
ing and interpreting this traditional form in his works Dervish in Progress
I and II and Azab. I met Azazi as a part of my Ph.D. research. I was inves-
tigating contemporary dance and globalization by looking at the living and
working patterns of four male dancers using methodologies developed within
anthropology and dance studies. Although spiritualism was not part of my
research agenda, working with and talking to Azazi revealed the extraordi-
narily spiritual ways in which he understood his dance practice as a direct
influence of his engagement with Sufism in general and whirling practice in
particular. Although he still considered himself a contemporary dancer and
would politely detach himself from the official interpretation of Islam, Azazi
maintained that the proper understanding of Sufi spirituality is essential in
understanding his dance practice. For instance, he often compared danc-
ers’ warming up and meditation, maintaining that the warm-up is a form
of prayer – thus pointing to the profound interconnections between physi-
cal aspects of dance (rehearsals, technique class and so on) and the spiritual
interpretation of the world.
Sufi whirling and its spiritual aspects have been part and parcel of the
modern dance tradition from the early twentieth century. Twentieth-century
avant-garde movements were very much interested in the ‘mystical Orient’,
and many art forms coming from the East were perceived not only as danger-
ous and transgressive in an erotic sense, but also as being ‘full of wisdom’ in
a spiritual sense (Said 2003; Desmond 1991). However, dervish dancing, as a
distinctive Oriental dance practice, was visible to westerners even before the
intensified interest in eastern philosophies that resulted in various New Age
movements during the 1960s (Barber 1986; Burt 1999). According to Barber
(1986), early modern Western European and American dancers had been
looking for many years to the Orient as a source of inspiration. In the 1920s,
their attention was called to the spinning of the Whirling Dervishes as ‘a hith-
erto unexplored dance form’ (Barber 1986). The avant-garde appeal of the

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 Trance in western theatrical dance

performance of spinning made dervish whirling relatively popular on stages 1. The Mawlawı- Sufi
order (Mawlawı-yah or
across America and Western Europe. For instance, modern dancer Mary Mevlevi, as it is known
Wigman was drawing on the whirling practice of the dervishes in her passion in Turkey) was founded
for alternative, spiritual art practices that gradually came to define her career in the thirteenth
century by the
(Santos Newhall 2009: 90). Consequently, in a relatively short ten-year period, followers of Rumi, the
there were four independent interpretations of Mevlevi1 dance, and each Muslim poet and Sufi
choreographer was claiming to be the first in the West to enact the ‘authentic’ mystic. The Mawlawı-
Sufis, also known as
form of this dance (Barber 1986). whirling dervishes,
However, unlike modern dance practitioners of the time, Azazi’s prac- gather for musical and
‘turning’ practices.
tice is aligned with contemporary Sufism in more than just symbolic ways, by
maintaining strong links with different dervish lodges around the world and 2. Sama- (audition):
‘denotes acts of
especially with Galata Mevlevi dervish lodge from Istanbul. He admitted that listening and bodily
the legitimacy of his practice of whirling has been challenged by the Galata practices associated
dervishes, who, although praising his dance skills, denied him the legitimacy with the achievement
over the interpretation of Sama-.2 Azazi was not discouraged, and insisted
of ecstatic states’
(Shannon 2004: 381).
that:

[…] it is not about how you do it, but why you do it. I arrived at this
conclusion when I visited different religious Sufi groups – I understood
that they all have their own ways, although they would all say that
theirs is the right one. It’s because they don’t have this global view. And
luckily for me, I had a chance to encounter many different views. As a
dancer, I visited different cultures and countries.
(Azazi 2008)

Azazi’s comfortable attitude in assigning himself a privileged position in

understanding different forms of spiritual devotion originates from at least two
standpoints. The first is simply connected to the nature of the dance profession.
Given the nature of their work, especially the recent changes in the regimen
of work (Bauer 2008; Kunst 2010), dancers represent paradigmatic examples of
highly mobile global citizens or a ‘massive individualistic globe-trotting labour
force’ (Bauer 2007). These aspects of dancers’ life and work patterns require
openness and extraordinary adaptability to difference and variety, and sensi-
bilities that, in Judith Hamera’s words, ‘form affective environments [that]
transform the sparseness of studios into home places’ (2007: 60).
The second is connected to the fact that contemporary dance, as an eclec-
tic style itself, incorporated different somatic practices that have their origin in
African and Asian traditions that are largely spiritual in nature, i.e. they profess
inextricable links between body practices and spiritual well-being (Eddy 2002).
However, Martha Eddy, when discussing the incorporation of these mind–body
practices into western theatrical dance, claims that their cultural and social
origin is usually erased, which ‘has encouraged a monocultural approach to
somatic pedagogy and the promotion of the field’ (Eddy 2002: 46).
Consequently, the connection between dance and spirituality in recent
dance and globalization literature is not related to theatrical dance, but to the
social dances such as club dancing and rave that have gained considerable
popularity since the mid-1980s. Fiona Buckland emphasizes ‘a powerful polit-
ical imagination’ of the self-transformative nature of social dancing in queer
clubbing (2002: 65). More importantly, a significant body of literature on rave
dance culture explicitly discusses dance in relation to spiritual world-making.
Originally developing as a response to Reagan’s and Thatcher’s conserva-
tism (Foster 2002), rave culture is today a global phenomenon that connects

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Dunja Njaradi

dance practice with the quest for spiritual fulfilment and community-building.
Although this article will not look at the rave culture in detail, the growing
literature on rave is important for the study of dance for two reasons.
First, it reintroduces the notion of trance, ecstasy and spiritualism
in dance research. As St John claims, ‘Optimistic or nostalgic, embrac-
ing pre – or post – Christian communities, post-rave pundits champion
“shamanic” state of consciousness engendered or “trance” states triggered
by the new ritual’ (2004: 4). Sommer (2001) offers a similar argument on
the underground/house music and dance parties, which cultivate an idea of
community based on the spiritual notion of ‘family’, or the ‘vibe’.
Second, and consequently, it finally reconnects ordinarily distinct fields
of dance studies and dance anthropology. In distinguishing dance studies
from dance anthropology, I am following Peterson Royce’s (2002) observa-
tion that dance studies, broadly, analyses dance as an art form, including
dance professionalization and dance criticism. Dance anthropology, again
broadly, perceives dance as an inextricable part of ‘[…] the unity we call
culture’ (Peterson Royce 2002: 18). However, the most significant differ-
ence is in the method of research – anthropologists use the long-term
participant-observation method, and this is the method I employed when
working with Azazi.
Therefore, although modern dance pioneers from Isadora Duncan to
Rudolf Laban explored the ecstatic, transformative nature of dance, making
implicit and explicit connections with dance rituals of the so-called primitive
societies of the time, dance studies and dance anthropology still do not wilfully
share a common field of research. However, dance practitioners frequently
discuss the transformative nature of dance in general and explore ecstatic
and trance-like states in particular. For instance, Keith Hennessy, dancer and
choreographer, teaches workshops for contemporary dancers called ‘Potential
shamanic action’ all over the world. In the workshop introduction, Hennessy
claims, ‘I have been studying ritual, both ancient and contemporary, for over
twenty years. I recognize the many continuations and disruptions between
religious practice and the Western concert stage’ (2011). This article will
address the question of spirituality and trance in western theatrical dance by
offering tentative answers as to why the question of trance and the spiritual is
still a challenging one, in both dance studies and anthropology of dance. The
article will also underline the importance of trance as a potential for under-
standing the sense of community and globalization.

Step 1: Dance as a transformative practice; trance in

western theatrical dance
I mean, to be honest, any performer whose concentration is very focused is in
a kind of state of trance (Stuart 2007: 133).
The idea that dance and theatre performance have a spiritual and transfor-
mational dimension is today discussed in dance studies literature and is often
firmly believed by many dance and theatre practitioners (Schechner 1985;
Buckland 2002). Rudolf Laban, one of the founders of the western modern
dance tradition, left numerous writings asserting the idea of dance as an
expression of divine power (Goodridge 1999). When discussing the spiritual
dimension of Laban’s work, Goodridge emphasizes the symbolic importance
of the circle for Laban’s explorations of space and rhythm. Goodridge claims
that Laban viewed the circle as the archetype of universal order prevalent in

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thinking about the cosmos of his time. In connection to this Goodridge adds,
‘We might be reminded here of the whirling Dervishes for whom circular
motion leads to a form of cosmic union’ (1999: 135). Curiously enough, as a
young man, Laban was actually inspired by Whirling Dervishes that he had
seen in Bosnia. Valerie Preston-Dunlop notes the following:

On one of his adolescent trips to the Balkans, [Laban] encountered the

Sufi brotherhood […] these were the dervish dancers whose prayers
were manifest in movement, in whirling until trance was induced […]
this magic of the dance, this power of movement over man, was deeply
impressive to the young Laban. He saw it as a conquest of the forces of
nature through dance. If this could apply to Balkan lay brothers, might
it be possible for ordinary men and women to transcend the mundane,
to find their own ecstasy in movement, not with cuts and thrusts but
simply through dancing?
(1998: 3)

Laban was thus a fervent believer in the power of pure dance and true move-
ment, which can transform lives. In the quote above, it is clear that Laban
was inspired by ritualistic, religious dancing; however, at the same time he
stripped dance bare of its religious meaning and ritual context and asserted
power in the movement itself. In his Choreutics (Laban 1966), Laban is more
specific about the transformative nature of pure movement. He explains that
when dancing, the dancer loses himself or herself in the movement and para-
doxically ‘[…] only when a part of the quality of movement is, or seems to be
unconscious do we speak of a natural or true expression’ (Laban 1966:49, my
emphasis). Could we conclude that the dancer needs to be partly in trance
if we speak of true and natural movement? Dee Reynolds in the Rhythmic
Subjects: Uses of Energy in the Dances of Mary Wigman, Martha Graham, and
Merce Cunningham (2007) delivers the most comprehensive study of the trans-
formative nature of dance in the practices of early twentieth-century modern
dancers. Reynolds focuses on the ‘close connections between uses of energy
in movement and the constitution of subjectivity in its socio-cultural context’
(2007: 3). For instance, Reynolds argues that ‘[f]or Laban, […] dancing moved
the subject through the liminal realm between conscious and unconscious.
Dance was not about performing steps, but about effecting radical changes
in the subject through movement’ (Reynolds 2007: 7). Reynolds’ research is
important insofar as it explicitly explores the transformative aspect of dance by
exploring and discussing uses of energy (breathing, rhythm) in the practices of
early modern dancers. Often, however, the very nature of these transforma-
tive aspects is left inexplicable in dance literature or is treated poetically and
metaphorically. For instance, Bond and Stinson’s research on young people’s
experience of dance found accounts of superordinary ‘[…] where young
people’s perceptions of “self” in dance contained numerous references to
reaching beyond to find different, better, whole, natural, or spiritual self […]’
(2000–2001: 73). However, these accounts are related to psychological and
social experiences and meanings of dance practice for young people, rather
than to the kinaesthetic nature of dance that might effect ‘radical changes
in subjectivity’ (Reynolds 2007). Dance scholar Judith Lynne Hanna, by
cross-examining vast dance ethnography literature, also concludes that dance
has universal superordinary functions where ‘[…] common ideas appearing
in the examples of symbolic action through dance [are] self-extension, loss of

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Dunja Njaradi

self in being [and] transcendence’ (1979: 126). Dance is thus a symbolic action
and plays out cultural and social expectations. For Hanna, the power of dance
is in its symbolic nature. On the opposite spectrum is the practice of dancer
and choreographer Meg Stuart. To Stuart, altered states of mind occurring in
dance are a matter of achievement through training and experimentation. In
an interview with Scott Delahunta, Stuart states:

I am in the desire to be possessed or to be a channel or to be a container

[sic] We have tried different approaches to this like ‘holotropic breath-
ing’, invented by Stanislav Grof, a scientist who did LSD research. He
developed this technique with breathing which basically means without
drugs you can achieve the equivalent of an altered state.
(2007: 132)

Further to Stuart’s practice, Anna Halprin, an influential postmod-

ern choreographer known for her participatory and egalitarian dances
(Halprin 1995; Ross 2004), claims that dance can only be transformative if it
deals with real-life issues, i.e., if it has a healing function. To her, dance is ‘[…]
not about the dancers and […] not an interpretation of a theme, it is real. And
by doing it you get to a different place with that issue, and in your life. The
dance changes the dancer’ (Halprin 1995: 14). In an interview with Richard
Schechner (Halprin 1995), Halprin admits that her dance practice does not find
understanding in the dance world (where she often receives the reaction ‘this is
therapy, not dance’), and consequently she feels much closer to theatre world
(especially the one Schechner himself advanced). By aligning her practice with
Schechner-style theatre, with its close ties to anthropology, Halprin actually
points to the large gap between dance studies (dealing with dance as a high art)
and dance anthropology (treating dance as a social ritual). As long as this gap
exists, I wish to argue, a full understanding and appreciation of the spiritual
and trance in professional dance cannot be achieved.

Step 2: Dance anthropology; dance as symbolic action and

trance anxiety
The aforementioned gap between dance studies research and dance anthro-
pology can be summarized as follows: to dance studies, traditionally, dance is
a superb elite art form; to dance anthropology dance it is a universal human
activity. Dance anthropology’s broad understanding of dance, however,
seemed to be generating more trouble for scholars rather than offering a
richer exploration of dance. As Lowell observes,

[…] the emerging field of dance ethnology has raised interesting

generic questions which are still being struggled over. Quite a while
ago it was noticed that the category of dance or ‘the dance’ is derived
from genre types relevant to […] Western social worlds, but perhaps
irrelevant elsewhere.
(1995: 223)

The further problem related to the anthropological study of dance is not

terminological but methodological. Shannon, for instance, claims that there are
inadequacies in the anthropological study of ritual, namely, these studies empha-
size the ‘element of belief (faith, doctrine, ideology, meaning) while neglecting

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the importance of the sensate body in ritual’ (2004: 382). Anthropologists were
successful in addressing symbolic, ideological, political and cultural aspects of
dance, but were less so in addressing extraordinary bodily experience of these
phenomena. Victor Turner, for instance, saw a ritual as a potentially subversive
bodily performance of embodied social order (1969). Either way, the body is a
vehicle for the social and cultural. By extension, dance is seen in similar ways.
Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu in the introduction to the Embodying Charisma:
Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (1998) are quite
aware of the common critiques of this approach to dance and ritual from some
more ‘body-aware’ scholars. Werbner and Basu summon common critique of
anthropological approaches to ritual embodiment as paying too much atten-
tion to social/ideological order inscribed in bodies, but neglecting lived embod-
ied experience (1998). They respond quite correctly that ‘although providing a
salutary reminder of our embodied nature, [these] writers cannot cope with the
fact that – beyond philosophical reflections – the moment of emotionally and
expressive is also the moment of dialogical and social communications, that is,
the moment of the cultural’ (Werbner and Basu 1998:9). Hanna offers a simi-
lar perspective when investigating dance as a form of expressing the divine in
religious rituals. Hanna suggests that, in these rituals, even seemingly frenzied
and spontaneous dance movements are culturally patterned, ‘whether through
tutorial instruction, schooling, or watching performers’ (1988: 284). Dance is
thus the moment of the cultural communication.
Anthropological dealings with trance or trance dances, however, proved to
be slightly more complicated. Unlike the celebratory approach to transforma-
tive movement in modern dance of the early twentieth century, anthropologi-
cal reflections of the time were imbued with doubt and anxiety. Quite simply,
when Laban was asserting his ‘pure’ dance as the free and liberating force
of individuals and societies, at the same time ‘anthropological research […]
suggested that dance – which had used to figure free, organic activity – was,
in fact, unfree because it involved no activity of will’ (Hewitt 2005: 43).
Therefore, it was precisely Laban’s partly non-conscious movement that was
labelled ‘unfree’ in anthropological dealings with dance of the time. However,
Hewitt explains that, to understand this paradox, we should note that at the
time, there was a philosophical redefinition of ‘will’. The understanding of the
human ‘will’ ‘[…] moved away from a rational voluntarism [as understood by
anthropologists] and toward a more irrational “life force” that man did not
control but that coursed through man and all of nature’ (2005: 43). If trance-like
qualities of dance were deemed unfree by anthropologists, early anthropo-
logical dealings with trance were marked with even greater anxieties – mostly
around the question as to whether or not trance was ‘real’ (Rony 2006; Albers
2008). For instance, when discussing early ethnographic film production on
Bali, Rony argues that what appeared to be problematic for anthropologists in
distinguishing ‘real’ from ‘fake’ trance was the fact that Balinese dancers were
exceptionally good actors. However, Rony also underlines the most extraordi-
narily problematic aspect of the anthropological approaches to trance:

[…] the amazing thing, that the people performing might actually be
experiencing a higher spiritual state is avoided, translated by the scien-
tific inscribing of the camera, the secretary, and the anthropologist, and
later edited into racialized, sexualized spectacle that is commonly known
as a classic ethnographic film.
(2006: 18)

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Dunja Njaradi

However, as I have discussed earlier in this article, the problem of whether

performers actually experience trance states is not exclusively anthropo-
logical, but underpins most of dance studies literature as well. In fact, more
recent postmodern anthropology has avoided the question of authenticity
altogether, focusing instead on spirit possession and trance as a ‘performing
mimetic relation to alterity’ (Taussig 1993) or as a ‘medium of communication’
(Crapanzano 1977). In addition, trance states have been explained by anthro-
pologists as being a result of nutritional deficiencies, social isolation, mental
disorders, sensory deprivation and so on. Either way, trance is a vehicle for
crafting implicit social and cultural knowledge.
Similarly, when dance research looks at the experimentation with trance
states in professional dance, such as in the example of choreographer
Meg Stuart, it is always translated into the language of development of and
experimentation within contemporary dance technique. Trancing is never
an end in itself, but is meaningful and of value only in terms of enriching
the existing corpus of contemporary dance technique. In fact, professional
dancers do not trance, but use trance to develop their practice and technical
proficiency. My work with Ziya Azazi shows quite the opposite: much as the
shaman of anthropological research, Azazi emphasizes both his contemporary
dance technique and Sufi whirling as vehicles for reaching the divine, rather
than vice versa. During the performance, Azazi ‘works’ towards achieving an
altered state of mind, much like Sufi mystics. The tremendous emotional and
physical impact of this practice is, for Azazi, vital in understanding himself,
the others, the divine – the world as such. Locating and interpreting Azazi’s
practice not only required bridging the gap between dance research and
anthropology, but also tackled the deeply contested question: is trance real?

Do dancers trance? – skill, technique or ‘losing

yourself’?
In one of our first interviews, I asked Azazi about his feelings when he
performs. I wanted to unpack the symbolic and emotional meanings negoti-
ated throughout his performance. I admit that I had expected to hear about the
philosophical underpinnings of Sufism. Surprisingly, Azazi’s account of what
happens when he performs was entirely ‘technical’, referring to biological and
chemical processes in his body:

[…] In a way, spinning is one of the most fundamentally simple activi-

ties in the universe. Because it is so simple, you fall into this repetition
and then your physical activity creates a chemical reaction in your body
and this chemical reaction creates overdoses of certain chemical and
hormones [sic]. This changes balance in your body and in your mind.
Your brain gets more blood, more oxygen […] and you start having
visions in your mind. These visions, of course, are partly your experi-
ences but partly unexpected… It just happens to you.
(2009)

Azazi’s account quite adamantly, and with ease, puts a full stop on the ques-
tion as to whether or not trance is real. To him trance ‘just happens’, and it
is a physiological fact as much as a philosophical concept. That said, despite
Azazi’s underlying relaxed, ‘just happens’ attitude, trance is anything but a
matter of chance. Through my research with Azazi I came to understand that

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trance is a skill, a learned and rehearsed technique that most persuasively 3. A perhaps more
extreme view on the
challenges, rearranges and remodels the basic natural chemical balances in physiological nature
the human body. Gilbert Rouget (1985) when writing on differences in trance of trance comes from
behaviour emphasizes that unlike some trancing behaviour that is induced by Jeremy Narby (1998),
who, for instance,
psychological means, dervish dikhr is mainly induced by physiological means. asserts that the
Consequently, ‘[…] the sama- of the Mevlevi (the “whirling dervishes”) is char- shaman’s visions
acterized by the fact that dance is not a result of trance but in fact its cause. The during trance come
from the shaman’s
trance is therefore the result of the adept’s own action’ (Rouget 1985: 286). communication with
In Sufi whirling, the trance is achieved through repetition, endless his or her own DNA.
Narby suggests that
turning that fundamentally challenges the bases of balance and gravity ‘[…] once someone taps
and brings about ‘changes in the individual’s physiological equilibrium’ into his/her DNA, it can
(Rouget 1985: 301). Azazi reveals how, at the beginning of his whirling then communicate
across organisms,
practice, he had to challenge everything he had learned as a contemporary across species – even
dancer. For instance, tours or pirouettes in ballet have strict rules concerning across the boundary
balance and gravity. Execution of the turn must be quick, surgically precise between animal and
planet […]’ (Ascott
(incoming arm adding the impetus) – with eyes wide open and fixed on a 2004: 144).
particular spot in the space (see Espinoza 1976). In contrast, the ‘rules’ of
whirling include head turning together with the body usually at a slower
pace – with eyes closed or open but not focused on a fixed spot in space.
For ballet and contemporary dancers who have been learning to master the
‘proper’ and ‘safe’ turning practice for years, the undoing of this habitual skill
is extremely challenging. To turn like dervishes, dancers should start spin-
ning like children again – with arms wide open and a gaze that follows the
full journey of the body. When reflecting on this challenge, Azazi revealed
how, in the beginning, spinning made him vomit and also highly sensitive
and emotional at all times: ‘I used to cry a lot […] It was not easy to go
against your body […] against its chemical reactions […] You have to learn
to control and master them. This is very hard as you almost break your body,
you change your blood’ (2009).3 This is also where the moment of faith and
Sufi philosophy comes in. In order to persist in achieving this ‘biological
transcendence’ (Werbner and Basu 1998), the amount of self-control and
spiritual reasoning is enormous. In this sense, Sufi whirling could be better
understood as an ethical practice as much as a mystic, ecstatic experience.
This is also noted by Silverstein, who observed a Naqshbandi Sufi order in
Turkey. Silverstein concludes that Sufism in this form is mainly an ethical
practice, and thus ‘[…] our focus should not be on something called “mysti-
cal experience” but rather a disciplinary practice […]’ (2007: 42). Even the
more trance-like Sufi rituals mainly establish one intensity of movement (it
can be very slow) and then by repetition go to the state of trance. Similarly,
the importance of the training process in relation to trance is also highlighted
as early as in Schumann’s account of Mary Wigman’s spinning practice:

For seven minutes she spun round and round on the same spot with
heroic energy, intensifying the concentric circle with a whirling spiral
of her arms and hands. The spectators were drawn as if by hypnotic
power into the very vortex of dance. That Wigman in this barbaric dance
relied not on inspiration but on technique is borne out by the words of her
pupils who told me that after strenuous discipline over a period of three
months they were able to approximate her whirlpool dance for only
three minutes. When they complained she said: ‘What is three months?
Work for three years and try again’.
(Schumann 1917, cited in Reynolds 2007: 71, emphasis added)

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Dunja Njaradi

Evidently, although Wigman herself emphasized the mystical origin of move-

ment in her writings, the quote above emphasizes technique and durability in
acquiring the skill. However, simple and repetitive movement emphasized by
Sufi whirling or in Azazi’s words ‘simple activity in the universe’ had a special
place in theatre anthropology (Schechner 1985) and postmodern dance as
well (Copeland 1983). Richard Schechner, when writing about intensity of
performance, emphasized trance-like qualities of the repetitive movement:

Performances like Dean’s, Brown’s and the dervishes’ do not rise to a

climax; the accumulation-repetition lifts performers, and often specta-
tors too, into ecstatic trance […] Several times I’ve organized ‘all-night
dances’ to show the power of accumulation and repetition. Groups from
eight to twenty-five persons danced […] from four to eight hours […]
Each time I’ve participated in this kind of dance I’ve had, and others too
have had, a trancelike experience, an experience of total flow where for
varying periods the sense of me as an individual, the amount of time
passing, the awareness of the environment I was in […] were abolished.
(1985: 11)

Roger Copeland (1983), in contrast, asserts that movement repetition can have
completely different meanings and affective qualities. Copeland uses the dance
practice of Yvonne Rainer and Laura Dean to emphasize these differences:

Perhaps the simplest way to distinguish Dean from the original Judsonites
is to contrast her interest in repetition and duration with that of someone
like Rainer. ‘Repetition,’ wrote Rainer, ‘can serve to enforce the discrete-
ness of a movement, objectify it, make it more objectlike […] literally
making the material easier to see.’ But in Dean’s case, the function of
relentless repetition is not to clarify, but to hypnotize. Indeed, repetition
in Dean’s work leads inexorably to the act of spinning, with its tendency
to evoke, if not literal trance, then at least a sensation that the distance
between spectator and spectacle is in a state of continual fluctuation.
(1983: 35)

Copeland juxtaposes Rainer’s and Dean’s work as the two phases of postmod-
ern dance. Dean’s post-Judson choreography, although it uses mathematically
precise movement, allows the interruption of a highly personal. For example,
Copeland explains that ‘Dean’s mathematics, her concept of “number,” is
mystical and Pythagorian, whereas Childs sees shape and number in wholly
secular terms’ (Copeland 1983: 35). Although post-Judson choreography
steadily allowed private, personal rites to interrupt public aesthetic perform-
ance (Lassiter 1985: 124), the idea of trance as both personal ritual and virtu-
osic skill suitable for public display was still far off. From an anthropological
point of view, Beattie explains why the idea of trance as a skill that requires
training is rarely employed in anthropological research:

If at least sometimes mediumship is an act, it follows that like drama it

has to be learnt. As an aspiring actor attends drama school, so a medium,
through initiation, has to learn to be possessed – or to appear to be so.
This aspect of mediumship has been a little neglected by ethnographers,
because it is usually a trade secret.
(1977: 5, emphasis original)

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 Trance in western theatrical dance

Despite these difficulties, anthropologists and religious studies scholars 4. Rouget observes
similarly about
increasingly have begun to appreciate the importance of skill learning in the ceremony of
assessing spirit possession, trance and other ecstatic practices. For instance, dervish dhikr: ‘[a]
in a volume dedicated to the trance and spirit possession in modern socie- few observations
[…] have sufficiently
ties (Schmidt and Huskinson 2010), Sarah Goldingay compares actors and demonstrated that the
mediums as performers ‘to highlight the connections in their practices of dhikr, which usually
embodied communication’ (2010: 208). Goldingay describes a complex range leads to trance, can
also not lead to it,
of vocabulary and practice at the interface where spirituality meets acting and that, moreover,
profession. By interviewing one actor and one medium, she underlines that the manifestations of
trance are variable’
in both their professions there is an insistence on self-development that takes (1985: 301).
the form of embodied, ‘imaginative and non-ordinary conscious skill train-
ing’ (Goldingay 2010: 207, emphasis added). Similarly, Lowell in his research
on Capoeira also emphasizes the importance of skill learning in any ecstatic
mode of communication. He claims that:

[…] even in the ecstatic mode of engagement with the world there is a
more or less subliminal awareness of accommodations and movements
the body is making in carrying out a task […] in the process of acquir-
ing a skill this kind of body awareness is heightened, as one focuses on
building into the body the routines necessary to incorporate that skill.
(Lowell 1995: 229)

Making the final point about the links between trance/ecstasy and skill
acquisition, Lowell concludes that skill learning is a mediating process that links
‘relatively embodied and relatively disembodied states’ (Lowell 1995: 229).
I wish to argue that the crux of watching trance dance for the spectator lies
in exactly this ambiguity between ‘embodied and disembodied’ (Lowell 1995);
between controlled (learned, mastered) and uncontrolled (unknown); and/or
between fake and real of anthropological research. This boundary between
trance as a skill and trance as mystical experience implies that the practice of
achieving trance is of utmost importance in understanding the phenomenon
as such. Azazi, for instance, reveals how his battle with gravity and balance is
ongoing as there are always special preparations for each performance, which
include meditation and breathing exercises. Nevertheless, sometimes trance
simply does not happen.4
What I mean to emphasize with respect to trance as a skill is that
it greatly differs from other possible ways of achieving altered states of
mind. First, it does not account for trance states induced by neurological or
psycho-pathological disorders. Although visions and extraordinary physi-
cal sensations might occur, the nature of these trances is completely beyond
human control and is involuntary. Second, it does not include drug-induced
trance states, for example rave dance culture where trance appearance is
controlled (insofar as one chooses when and where exactly to take drugs) and
is completely voluntary. My research refers to trance as partly voluntary and
partly involuntary; partly controlled and partly uncontrolled skill. The empha-
sis is also on the process of skill acquisition, which, as such, does not relate to
the above-described notions of trance.
This is also where I start asking questions about the relationship
between trance dance and the community and resistance. The ‘community’
of dancers/performers and spectators, after Victor Turner’s seminal work on
communitas, defined as a set of unstructured and temporal relationships based
on shared ritual experience (Turner 1969), is an important aspect of dance

33
Dunja Njaradi

and performance research that gained particular momentum in the ‘globaliza-

tion’ of dance studies. The ‘community’ in this sense is an important aspect of
research on social dancing in general and rave and club culture in particular.
For instance, Saldanha rightfully notes that ‘[f]or most commentators, rave
and club culture embodies one of the few sites in contemporary society where
the cultural industry, patriarchy, bureaucracy, Oedipal family, heterosexism,
surveillance, and the patterns of community and traditional morality are effec-
tively resisted’ (Saldanha 2004: 273; see also Foster 2002; D’Andrea 2007;
Buckland 2002). Although I tend to agree with the idea that rave dance
might create an immediate ‘fugitive sense of community’ (Foster 2002)
and/or ‘ecstatic communities of feeling’’(St John 2004), I am doubtful as to the
long-term resistance and deep-rooted community-building effects that rave
and club culture imply. Rave dance might pull bodies close, ‘helping them
to find a common groove, to move as one’ (Foster 2002), but this immedi-
ate sense of community might not have everlasting effects. Something else
is interesting here from the perspective of dance research. In order to ‘feel
the groove’ all bodies in rave have to move, to trance; in short, rave excludes
spectatorship. My question is whether there can be a sense of change, of
possibility and empowerment, for those who do not trance but listen to and
watch dance. This is an important question for dance studies as it tackles the
meanings of community implied in dance audience/spectatorship. The notion
of kinaesthesia developed within dance studies has led to some significant
advances in studying dance audiences and spectatorship. The next section of
this article will explore the significance of kinaesthetic empathy for the study
and understanding of trance.

Step 3: Feeling with kinaesthesia, trance and the meaning

of community

Trance Dance
Objective: To create a communal rhythm flow between everyone,
performers and audience. Abolition of resistance through moving into
trance-like state. Separating the ‘mind’ (intellect attention) from the
‘body’ (feelings awareness).
Score: Adopt and repeat basic steps with up-down rhythm. Use drum-
ming as unifying element. Flow with other movements […] vocal-
ize breath […] merge with other sounds […] allow ‘myth’ to happen
through the creation of this moving community.
(Halprin 1995: 128)

The idea of community based on ethnic, social or gender markers is a signifi-

cant and deeply contested issue within globalization studies. It is, however,
equally challenging for dance studies as well. It has been increasingly argued
that the affective and embodied ‘work’ of dance can shed some light on the
embodied aspects of participation within ethnic, national or global communi-
ties (Martin 2004; Hamera 2007; Scolieri 2008).
For instance, recently the political and ethical potential of dance practice
and dance pedagogy have become important considerations for both dance
practitioners and dance scholars (Lewis 2007; Mowitt 2008; Peter 2005).
Dance scholars have certainly explored the possibilities of thinking about

34
 Trance in western theatrical dance

dancing bodies by following the ideas of philosopher Deleuze, by which affec-

tive faculties of human body are seen as a perfect tool for creating imma-
nent democracy based on the embodied nature of ethic (Briginshaw and Burt
2009). Ramsay Burt and Valerie Briginshaw edited the volume Writing Dancing
Together (Briginshaw and Burt 2009), in which they give voice to topics related
to the ethics of dance performance and dance creation, but they also raised
the question of the ethic of writing (about) dance as a collaborative process.
Within the US field of dance studies, it was Randy Martin (1998) who force-
fully connected dance with the political, developing the idea of dance as a
reflective bodily practice that can serve as a model for the political mobiliza-
tion of bodies. Along the same lines, theorist Bojana Kunst claims that the
main characteristic of contemporary cultural and economic relations is the
so-called economy of proximity, which means ‘[…] a shift from the autonomy
and dynamism of movement to the broader social and cultural distribution
of bodies’ (Kunst 2010: 85). In the choreographic score above, it is evident
that Halprin attempted through rhythm and patterned movement to induce a
sense of community. This exercise is also, evidently, an exercise in trance. Dee
Reynolds grounds the creation of ‘a particular type of (temporary) community,
[in] a greater or lesser degree of shared inculturated kinaesthetic experience’
(Reynolds 2007), i.e., in the energy-sharing during the performance. Along
the same lines, Buckland theorizes the connection between the kinaesthetic
experience of dance and the creation of queer communities by asserting that

[i]n improvised social dancing, participation broadly produced two

kinespheres – of the individual and the group. The negotiation of these
two kinespheres in relation to music and in relation to others in the
group suggested how the choreography of individuals to each other and
to the group negotiated physicality and sociality of queer lifeworlds.
(2002: 94)

The notion and significance of kinaesthesia in defining the creation of and

participation within communities are rapidly gaining attention from both
dance scholars and neuroscientists. Santos Newhall shows how recent studies
of brain chemistry suggest that ‘the human being is “hardwired” for the unify-
ing and transcendent experiences found in ritual, whether a rock concert or
deep meditation’ (2009: 98). Alexander defined ‘kinaesthetic sense’ in the early
twentieth century, claiming that every physical, emotional and mental state
is translated into muscular tension (Goodridge 1999). Along the same lines,
psychologist Sherrington defined a ‘sixth sense’ as kinaesthetic sense ‘rooted
in body’s tendons, muscles, ligaments, joints, organs, glands and vessels’
(Sieben 2007: 138). This sense gives humans a feeling for themselves. Early
twentieth-century dancers explored the kinaesthetic nature of dance and its
relation to spectatorship by attempting to transform a passive audience into
‘inner participants’ (Reynolds 2007). Early twentieth-century dance scholar
John Martin saw the human faculty of ‘inner mimicry’ as a base for under-
standing participation in movement. ‘Inner mimicry’ refers to the combina-
tion of emotional and motor responses to movement that are ‘registered by
our movement-sense receptors’ (Martin 1965: 53), which appeal to humans’
‘inherent sense of motion’ (Anderson 1974). Recently, however, kinaesthesia
has had a different treatment in dance studies literature that moves away from
the scientific bases of kinaesthetic empathy towards cultural perceptions of the
same. Susan Foster in her Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance

35
Dunja Njaradi

(Foster 2010) investigates changing definitions of choreography, kinaesthe-

sia and empathy from the 1700s to present-day neurophysiology based on
the discovery of mirror neurons to challenge the assumptions of the natural
or spontaneous connection between the dancing body and the viewer’s body.
Foster is seeking to demonstrate that ‘what is often experienced as unmedi-
ated is, in fact, carefully constructed’ (2010: 2). Foster elaborates how both the
dancer’s performance and viewer’s rapport are ‘[…] shaped by common and
prevailing senses of the body and subjectivity in a given social moment as well
as by the unique circumstances of watching a particular dance’ (Foster 2010: 2).
Similarly, Michael Gard claims that the notion of kinaesthesia is not adequate
to fully address the sensation of pleasure that dancers feel when moving. He
concludes that the experience and pleasure of dancing cannot be divorced from
the socially mediated circulation of meanings about dance (Gard 2006).
In contrast to these tendencies, the recent discovery of mirror neurons
by neuroscientists ‘[…] has launched a spate of scientific investigations’
(Berrol 2006: 302). Studies on mirror neurons have revealed that the identical
sets of neurons in the cortex can be activated both when one sees an action
and when one performs that action. This area of research is mostly applied in
dance/movement therapy connected to investigating emotions, empathy and
intersubjectivity (McGarry and Russo 2011). Neuroscience has also gained
significance in recent studies of music, especially in terms of understanding the
performer/audience relation and the meaning of community. In an article on
religious music festivals, anthropologist Deborah Kapchan theorizes what she
calls ‘the promise of sonic translation’, which is ‘the trust in the ultimate trans-
latability of aural (as opposed to textual) codes’ (Kapchan 2008). Festivals of
sacred music, to Kapchan, create transnational communities of affect. Judith
Becker in her extraordinary study of music listening and trance introduces the
term ‘deep listening’ to mark out the ways in which music spectators who do not
possess the knowledge and/or skill to play music might deeply engage in sens-
ing the music by becoming deep listeners. Becker thus explains that in her own
definition, ‘deep listeners is a descriptive term for persons who are profoundly
moved, perhaps even to tears, by simply listening to a piece of music’ (2004: 2).
To Becker, deep listening in western societies is similar to trance in societies
where trance is less marginalized. Becker thus concludes that ‘[d]eep listening
is a kind of secular trancing, divorced from religious practice but often carrying
religious sentiments such as feelings of transcendence or a sense of commun-
ion with a power beyond oneself’ (2004: 2). Becker’s conclusions are important,
and perhaps challenging to dance studies because they imply that traditionally
seated, non-participatory, ‘passive’ audience can, in fact, be deeply involved on
many sensory levels in the dance onstage. In short, an audience can trance by
remaining seated in chairs. This is an important point to make as there is a
growing literature in dance that suggests that only by breaking with and chal-
lenging traditional ‘proscenium arch’ relations between performers and audi-
ence can we achieve a more democratic community based on shared sensations
and values. Similarly, many dance practitioners share a belief that only a direct
‘hands-on’ approach in the audience/performer relationship can create a truly
democratic dance practice. In a way, this idea originates from the extraordi-
nary work of the Judson Church dancers who practically explored the rela-
tions between the body, embodiment and democracy by using different modes
of audience participation. More recently, theatre scholar James Thompson
discussed ‘the potential political grounds for community-based and participatory
performance […]’ (2009: 160), and, similarly, dancer and choreographer

36
 Trance in western theatrical dance

Felix Ruckert argued for the profound transformative nature of participation

in dance (2007). To Ruckert, participation in dance is ‘more than mere enter-
tainment, it can change lives’ (2007: 225). Audience participation in this sense
includes dancing with, touching and sensing with a performer. Judith Becker’s
research on deep listening and trance and the research on mirror neurons, as I
have suggested, partly contradict this belief, as they do not ground a commu-
nity solely in the cultural understanding of democracy and value of sharing, but
also look at the pioneering neurological research.
Therefore, following Becker (1994, 2004) and neurophysiology, we might
also hear and sense movement ‘with our skin’, muscles, joints, tendons, etc.,
even if we are seated in the audience. As Boenisch argues, traditionally seated
audience are ‘[…] converted into virtually-wired sensors, plug-ins to the mise
en scene […] Instead of begetting a performance, the public lives it, through
“skin, brain and hair”’ (Boenisch 2004, cited in Fabius 2009).
The idea of lived or embodied sensation closely resembles recently
emerging theories of affect (Thrift 2007; Massumi 2002; Campbell and
Rew 1999) in philosophy and performance studies where affect refers to
embodied responses that are not a ‘field of a particular communicative content
[…] but rather of capacity and intensity’ (Thompson 2009: 119). Affect gener-
ally refers to the bodily capacity to affect and be affected, or, more specifically,
affect ‘[…] takes the form of an increase or decrease in the ability of the body
and mind alike to act’ (Thrift 2004: 62). In this sense, affect is not an emotion,
as emotion is a historically developed cultural construct (Campbell and Rew
1999), although it can trigger emotional responses. Therefore, as far as affect
‘does not allude to any values beyond intrinsic feeling of intensity that it can
trigger’ (Gumbrecht 2004, cited in Thompson 2009: 126), it is profoundly
apolitical. If we, correspondingly, read trance within the ‘field of capacity and
intensity’ without edifying political values, then ‘the will’ to achieve skill at
mastering trance is a political practice par excellence. In Azazi’s practice, it
presupposes not only hard work in trying to achieve ‘biological transcend-
ence’ (Werbner and Basu 1998), but also implies miniscule ethical question-
ing involving the meanings and political potentialities of (dance) community.
Along the same lines, Santos Newhall suggests that the dual nature of ritual,
its unifying and transformational capacities, has increasing importance in a
globalized world: ‘These dual roles of building a community by moving people
together and making space for the professional dancers as shaman or priest-
ess emerge again and again’ (2009: 99). Trance would also never be an easy
topic to write about because ‘[t]rancing is like pain, challenging to an objectiv-
ist epistemology’ (Becker 2004: 2). However, trance within or outside western
theatrical dance should be, along with the growing literature on affect, central
to the understanding of our globalized information- and image-based society,
despite the lack of theoretical and cultural vocabulary specific to it.

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Suggested citation
Njaradi, D. (2012), ‘Trance in western theatrical dance: Transformation, repeti-
tion and skill learning’, Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 4: 1, pp. 23–41,
doi: 10.1386/jdsp.4.1.23_1

Contributor details
Dunja Njaradi (Ph.D. Theatre Studies) is a theatre and dance studies scholar
working within several interdisciplinary affiliations: physical theatre, dance
anthropology and contemporary dance. He is currently a postdoctoral research
fellow in the Department of Performing Arts, University of Chester, UK.
Contact: Faculty of Arts and Media, University of Chester, Kingsway CKW155,
CH2 2LB, UK.
E-mail: d.njaradi@chester.ac.uk
Web address: www.ziya-azazi.com

Dunja Njaradi has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

41
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