History Of Celestial Dance

INTRODUCTION Ever since the early days of humanity and recorded history, we know that humans have watched the sky and analyzed and recorded the movement of the various celestial bodies within it. Many of these early civilizations saw the movements within the sky as a celestial dance and were reproducing them in their own way as various dances. Song and dance is a traditional way for populations to teach and pass down important information to younger generations. Astronomy plays an important role in these teachings as early humans heavily relied on the information provided by the moon and the stars to not only keep a calendar but also navigate on land and sea. By incorporating important key moments into songs and dances, these populations

All these elements were combined together to create an impressive teaching tool allowing people to acquire the skills they needed to survive.

COSMIC DANCES The movement of the celestial bodies themselves, such as the stars and the moon, and the way they interact with each other, in an observable way; have long been referred to as a cosmic dance. It is documented that, in classical antiquity, the vault of the sky was even called “the dance floor of the stars”. The sun was the most important “dancing” celestial body and special dances, based on its movements, have been performed by many civilizations across the globe. However, there is another form of “Cosmic Dance”, and those are the ones performed by humans, based on the celestial bodies. These dances can vary in their level of accuracy with some being very close imitations of the actual movement of the constellations, while others are much more abstract and used more to tell a story rather than replicate an actual celestial movement.

THE TORRES STRAIT

This dance is unique and unlike traditional dances as it involves a tall pole with a rotating platform. Four dancers attach themselves to it and then jump off the platform. During their fall, they rotate around the pole in representation of the rotation of the stars around the celestial axis. Furthermore, the dancers traditionally each make thirteen full revolutions around this symbolic axis to represent the Aztec time cycle. Forms of cosmic dancing can be traces all the way back to 5th century medieval times, where Clerics, in Gothic cathedrals, performed ritual dances over floor labyrinths. These labyrinth are believed to have represented the path of the various celestial bodies, while the movement of the dances representing the movement of the sun and moon. These show that at the very least, these civilizations had some knowledge, or perhaps awareness, of astronomy and the movement of the stars and planets.