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Insight on Contemporary Trance Dance
Ritual Ethnology and Spirituality
~~ By Ryan Giordano ~~
“[trance dancing]… a divine vessel for personal and global transformation through ceremony, dance, music, light, food and personal interaction.” -Robin Sylvan (1)
Throughout all of time, the human species has combined the sonic driving of rhythmic and repetitious drumbeats with ecstatic dance to induce trance states which facilitate a transition between ordinary reality and spiritual community. Inherent in the human condition, trance dancing directly relates to a person’s absolute being and conceptualization of the self. These trance dance rituals enable people with spiritual connectivity as well as define them culturally. Trance dancing exists as a tribal societal function which allows the participants to come together in dance and celebration for primary religious experience, spiritual growth, and community (Sylvan, Trance, 1). Trance dance theology is enacted in ritual, as it is displayed with careful consideration and specific intent. The trance dance ritual becomes a working part of the community and serves its function like a rite of passage or spiritual quest. Participating trance dancers embrace its cultural and communal aspects simultaneous with its profoundly spiritual and personally religious potential. The spiritual nature harnessed within the trance is expressed and sanctified through dance ritual. One can use the altered states of consciousness or trance generated by trance dancing to create a ritual container that directs the energies toward sacred goals: prayer, healing, vision, and divine guidance (CIIS).
Trance dancing has existed in most all cultures in some form or another. Focused, defined, and acted trance dance rituals are dominantly present in indigenous and tribal cultures, but have been observed within modern global culture as well. The integration of pre-existing trance dance practices with new methods of trance induction and musical expression creates a contemporary global concept of trance dancer spirituality. The existence of “primitive” trance dance ritual notions in modern society gives more credibility to understanding that trance dancing is inherent in the spirit and instinctive to humanity. Trance dancing in the modern sense transcends its traditional relevance and is highly “advanced”. Modern day trance dancing is reflective of the modern day regardless of its primitive origin, making it less defined by tradition and more by experience. The modern experience is extremely technological and operates under a digital guise of collective consciousness and modern cultural construction. Communities exist between modems and spiritual enlightenment is delivered through science and existential use of high-tech facilitation. Even though technology is strongly integrated, the use of it remains at a low level of reverence; the sense of modernity does not alienate the fundamental and animalistic human experience in trance dancing as much as it has in general modern culture. Our basic nature is the source of ultimate meaning and value in the purest form, but now it has become an “artifact” in modern cultural development (McKibben, 17).
Music and trance dance have continued to be a part of culture and religion throughout time and space. As music entered the modern age it began to reflect humanity’s exploration in science and technology, as did everything else. Shamans have been replaced by pharmacies, religion has been confronted by science, and drums have been synthesized. Tribal beats are now represented in electronic dance music. Electronic music flourished as a new genre of music, but also as a culturally defined and profoundly spiritual phenomenon. Globalization and technology are concurrent to the conception and divination of electronic music application in modern trance dance ritual. As technology and essentially electronic music, spreads around the world it infuses itself with existing indigenous cultural tradition, diverse trance induction, and musical inclination. The integration of pre-existing trance dance practices with new methods of trance induction and musical expression creates a contemporary global concept of trance dancer spirituality.
Modernity and advanced technology put constraint on the progression of the human species as communally cooperative and spiritually operative beings. Old and seemingly forgotten ideology expressed in trance dance ritual is revived and revitalized by new age spiritualists in counter-culture. Contemporary trance dance tribes enact a future-primal sense of traditional rituals with modern application. They fully embrace new technology and scientific theory, only it is applied in ways subservient to nature and deconstructive to the present constriction of modernity. The essence of trance dancing is brought alive by breaking down concepts of modernity, deconstructing preexisting habits and beliefs, and by surrendering unnatural ego facets. The human condition is then sowed with ancient methodology and germinated in traditional ideals. Aside from some ancient memory and cultural intuitiveness the modern sense of trance dancing is made from scratch in a cut and paste sort of fashion.
Trance dancing is not pertinent to the danced aspect of the ritual, but is distinctly characterized by it. Contemporary and ancient trance dances both incorporate much more into the experience as each are performed as events or multi-faceted rituals. Just the trance dance performance alone leaves the ritual incomplete. There is emphasis on communal order, performance, microcosmic ritual, and experiential reality. Trance dancing exists in duality as the trance is invoked in vision quests and theological conceptualism and is embodied by experience and physical movement of dance. Trance dancing, however, is neither more “trance” nor more “dance”. The concept is symbiotic as each interacts with and affects the other. Music and dance is a trance enabler as it is also a product of trance. It is a fluid fusion of human experience and spiritual connotation. Both assets can be measured and observed as a whole with the practice of ethnomusicology, the anthropological study of music’s interaction and connection with culture.
Every trance dance ritual has uniform similarities and universal modality, but each remains unique in specific tradition and culturally definitive history. Trance dancing theology is inherent to human condition and archetypal formulas, but is specialized and self-created in ritual expression. Cultures define themselves by their rituals as they act out personal life dramas and confront closed social matters. The sustainability of the self and the collective depends on these types of rituals. Trance dance ritual is a sort of social grooming that operates on multiple levels of inherent group structure. Cross-cultural comparisons are made with the use of ethnomusicology and it is found that many cultures share the same concepts of trance dance, but express them with amazing individuality and diversity.
Trances are states where one can confront fears, act out inner conflicts, and experience “catharsis” or emotional release (Bowen, 101). Community specific dramas are acted out within each unique “danced” trance ritual. One of the most dramatic rituals is performed by the women of Harasiddhi, south of Kathmandu. There they enact dramas to ensure the stability of their personal and communal universe, making the essential link between the microcosmic reality of village life and personal experience and the macrocosmic reality of elemental forces in the universe (Sardar). Linking these concepts is illustrated by the Mbuti people in the central Congo region. The Mbuti tribe directly links their ideology of Molimo, the sound and spirit of the forest, with the experience of sound and with a musical contraption, also referred to as Molimo. The direct association of spiritual belief with material culture and physical sensation is an elemental part of trance dance.
There is a saying in Africa that puts the cultural relation into perspective, it says “show me your dance and I’ll tell you where you’re from”. This saying puts relevance to specific community in trace dance performance. Many cultures keep there own cultural individuality and notoriety preserved with dance tradition, such as the Celtic and Swedish and Native American cultures. Specific dances, belly dancing for example, are turned into cultural icons. Other cultures have dance facilitation for more than just definitive purpose but also functional. Islamic Sufis are known and characterized by their “whirling Dervish dance” which inducts them into trance. Sufis wear unique clothing that flows through the air as they spin around. The dance form enables the Sufis to reach deep trance while simultaneously giving them character and applicable association with their spiritual/religious belief.
The Bible reveals religious connection and spiritual association with music in many of its stories. Music is used for exorcism of demons within Saul’s soul with the aide of David’s lyre (Rouget, 154). Trance dance is not only a spiritual pursuit and religious development; it is a spiritual mechanism or tool. It can be used to facilitate beliefs and theology, interconnecting it with whatever worldviews and ethos a group will have. While in trance a Christian may see God, a Buddhist may see Buddha, or a shaman may see a healing spirit, but a person without any spiritual orientation may see nothing at all. Trance mechanics however are tentative as religious people without having the specific spiritual application or unification of trance ritual.
Spiritual concepts don’t get any more fundamental than of the Earth. Earthly conceptualization of Pagans, Native Americans and the majority of indigenous groups are enacted in full and profound spiritual relation. Specifically formatted ritual, such as the Native American Sun Dance, has specific goals and purpose in its encompassing worldview influence. Manipulation of trance dance energy is favorable for Earthly causes and ceremonial intent and its ritual provides deep spiritual reverence and cultural function. Community and its rituals play a valuable role in the survival of man and the earth. As nature works on a cycle or on a “land pyramid” (Leopold, 214) the community of man must revolve around the same concepts and must utilize them by ritualize acts that tend to them. Modern day grooming of ecological and environmental unions is reflective in modern trance dance ritual. Trance Dancing rekindles a person’s relationship with nature and enacts natural divinity.
Tending to the natural self and universal order, modern trance dance ritual is sometimes thought as neo-paganism. Contemporarily modern trance events fully embrace new technology and scientific theory, only it is applied in ways subservient to nature and deconstructive to the present constriction of modern technological development. The modern world as a whole is less and less nature orientation and more and more technologically perverse, but also posses counter cultural opposition in its trance dance community. Scientific establishment and technological embodiment has made the modern world condition deprived of traditional theology and orientated towards collective ideology. People brought up in the modern day have a loss of religious value and are technology driven away from service to natural fundamentals. Counter-cultural rites of passage in modernity are focused on earthly reconnection and technological rebellion. The need for release and natural freedom is inherent to the human condition and emphasized by modernity.
Modern day trance dancing is a traditional revitalization with new age application. Rituals are constructed out of all related trance dance cultural phenomena and are reconnected with advanced global networking and highly technological application. Synthesized elements of trance dance and new age idealism have created the essence of techno-shamanism. Contemporary trance dance ritual borrows from ancient and indigenous trance dance reverence and applies it to an inherent sense of modern modality. A sort of “hippy resurgence” characterizes the new age trance dancers, but much of the cultural distinction comes from Goa, India. Trance dance participation was ritualized and sanctified by the incorporation and fusion of traditional Indian beliefs with the spiritual dimensions of popular music culture. Traditional Indian iconography and shamanistic practices were integrated both intentionally and naturally in the modern expression of trance dance ideology. The aspects of counter-cultural organization and action are reinforced with the application of traditional trance dance elements.
Archetypes of the human experience are held sacred and idolized in modern trance dance society. Mysticism of inner journey in outer realms and out-of-body experience relates in direct and productive manner to the modern day counter-culture practitioners of trance dance. The influence of ideology and traditionalism from Goa is encapsulated in its introduction and application to the popular music scene. Multifaceted cultural and traditional integration produced spiritual significance and integrated secular notions with sacred symbolism and iconography. A trance dance ritual is a powerful experience initiated through intentional and specific reverence to aesthetic trance dance forces. Preexisting trance dance constructs are assimilated with revitalized sacred symbolic action and connotative iconography. Ritual mystification and sacred notions create a specialized manifestation of spirituality embodied action. Intentional development of ritual phenomena and incorporative trance facilitation is strong in the highly formulated and active spiritual community of today’s counter-culture.
Trance dance initiates form and manifest their own realities through the incorporation of explorative perception and constructed expression of worldviews. Trance dancers are self defined and collectively created; they establish themselves and create their own reality and perception in ways best described by Gary Zarhov:
Our reality is what we take to be true
What we take to be true comes from what we believe
What we believe come out of what we perceive
What we perceive is what we look for
What we look for is what we perceive
Our perception is what we believe
What we believe is what we take to be true
What we take as be true becomes our reality
Modern day trance dancing is a structured expression and display of embodied belief and manifest reality. Moreover, each person’s distinctive style of dance, with its vocabularies of characteristic gestures and movements, correlates to specific experiential states that they produce; making modern day counter-culture rituals not only an embodied religious experience, but also a danced religious experience (Sylvan, Trance, 11). Different than learning dance steps trance dancers rely on pure expression of internal journey and organized belief to construct their dance. Trance dancing is not really dancing, but rather absolute expression of spiritual belief and musical invocation’s effect on the human psyche. Bushmen of Africa express spiritual belief in “dances”. The Kung become inhabited by num energy which causes the body to flail and dance. The energy surfaces, enables trance, and can be manipulated and controlled by the spiritually gifted. Meditation and the experience of Zen can also be classified or exhibited in trance dance. Active meditation, such as “walking Zen”, Shivarea, or Yoga, reinforces the true sense of Zen. Zen refers to the mind without thought and a clear mind can be achieved through the performance of repetitious action, curbing sporadic mind chatter. Zen is achieved by dialing your twenty year old phone number or by dancing to rhythmic repetitious drum beats. The amount of control and experience of the trance dance effect characterizes the intensity levels of its rituals.
Intense ritual and rites of passage become deeply sacred and culturally profound. In the modern day, techno-shamanistic and community significant organization unifies people globally, yet tribally and all encompassing, yet uniquely characterized. The communal operation of trance dancers exists in a substructure of the counter-cultural organization. The specific action of trance dance and counter-culture is relative to theories of Victor Turner and ‘communitas’. Communitas is a Latin noun referring to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community (wikipedia.org). Communitas uses concepts of unstructured community in relation to trance dancer’s separation from traditional community and structural norms. Trance dance ritual reinforces and enables great social equality, solidarity, and togetherness. The concept of communitas is best characterized by expressive liminality in stages of separation, expansion of consciousness, and rebirth or reincorporation.
Trance dancer’s experience of communitas is incredibly diverse, openly accepting, and universally transferable. Communitas is used to distinguish the modality of social relationship from an area of common living and association. Turner distinguishes the different aspects and variety of it between existential or spontaneous, normative, and ideological communitas (Turner, 132). Modern day trance dance rituals are all inclusive as they relate to transient personal experience of togetherness, organization into permanent social systems, and application to utopian social models. The ritual exhibits strong notions of liminality and transitional society. The assembly and performance of trance dance ritual is very much focused on communal liminality and contextualized ritual.
One modern trance dance ritual in particular, Interfuse, has deeply significant and profound characteristics of communitas. Interfuse is a gathering of tribal trance dancers or “burners” where initiates experience a sort of rite of passage or intentional organization of communitas orientation. It is a yearly, four day camping oriented event held in Missouri that upholds the ideals of the Burning Man Festival (extreme communitas). The event for some is a pilgrimage and for all an intense tribal gathering, but specifically, Interfuse is classified as a Midwest Regional Burn. The Midwest Regional Burn of Interfuse is highly contextualized by trance dance ritual, but remains similar to other Regional Burns and Trance Dance Events held throughout the world every year which incorporate ritualized space and personal cultural expression. Other tribal groups with trance dance rituals of the same sense among the Midwest are the Chilluminati of Chicago (Sacred Earth), Audiognomes of Wisconsin (Inhabited), Trance Psyndicate of Illinois (Earth Dance), Mindoutpsyde “Psyowa” (Voodoo Therapy), Vesuvius of Missouri (Fire/UV Performance), Esoteric Gen of Arkansas (Aum Festival), and. The organizers of Interfuse, the Midwest Burners describe their regional burn ritual by these definitions (midwestburners.com):
• An event created solely by the actions and participation of those who attend. It's your party - evolved and propelled by the creative energies of everyone there.
• A social experiment in temporary community. Many "first timers" are caught unprepared for the pervasive feelings of openness and togetherness that often accompany a Regional Burn.
• One of the few places you'll ever find where people give freely to one another without thought of profit or return. This is called a Gift Economy. Vending and commercialism are not allowed.
• A time when people come together to express radical creativity in all its' forms.
• A place of freedom, strangeness and amazement, radical art, music, dance, performance, and spontaneity.
Interfuse or Regional Burns are characterized by the main event or ceremonial burning of an effigy. Following a fire poi procession; fire spinners, drummers and other performance artists build collective energies of participants to a fever pitch. An enormous effigy, commonly a human effigy or “man”, is animated as it is burned in a highly emotional and personally relevant nature. There is no meaning assigned to the burn, save that all things are temporary, although Interfuse has different themes each year; last year was archaic imagination and this year was the afterlife. It's completely subjective; each person comes away with their own personal meaning. Interfuse also is culturally as well as ritually distinct. Interfuse participants enable elements of communitas with specialized clothing and style, expressive performance, and unique social communication and experience. Archetypal and specific roles are played out initiates experience the effect of trance dance ritual. The Midwest Burners distinguish certain roles of earth guardians, Inter-rangers, crisis prevention specialists, performers and performance safeties, fire spirits, and medics within their structural characterization.
At Interfuse, a temporary city-community is built with tents, domes, art and deco, light, dance, fire and music in the wilderness. Diversity and natural harmony is celebrated continuously from Thursday through Sunday morning. At the end of it all the city is dismantled and left with no trace. Traditionally in modern trance dancing, rituals are held in an assortment of different venues, such as empty warehouses, hidden farms, churches, community centers, and your mom’s basement. Venues for these kinds of rituals are usually unstable, sporadic, unpredictable, and unsustainable. Sometimes illegal, the assembly of venues resembles the formation of temporary autonomous zones, or TAZs. Peter Lamborn Wilson, AKA Hakim Bey, describes the formation of TAZs as counter-cultural resistance operating without settlement. The anti-structural composition of communitas and the characteristic operation of specific trance dance ritual are accentuated by TAZ formation. Trance dancer TAZs are constructed for temporary clandestine operation of festivities; forming ritualized space and anti-structural embodiment. TAZs put a communitas in action and characterize trance dance ritual.
Embodiment of culture and ritual within trance dancing is of experiential liminality. A liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy where one's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new (wikipedia.com). Liminality agreeably occurs in the second or middle stage of communitas, but characterizes the whole experience. Liminality of social context de-emphasizes class and releases one from social pressure or constriction of modernity. TAZs are states of liminality that are arguably either anti-structural, hyper-structural, or both. The liminal zone is inhabited by people in liminal states in ways of personal experience as well as group structure. People experience liminality in experience of altered states and trance, but also people can be liminal as an adolescent or a transsexual.
Experience of liminality happens in preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages. First one is separated from their normal community and distinguishable through special dress, material culture, or physical expression. Next, they go into an inbetween state that has no real association with their normal community where they experience true freedom. The last stage the person reincorporates themselves back into their normal community and has confirmation of the experience, sometimes as rehabilitation. The process one undergoes through these stages and at Interfuse all happens in liminal concepts of time. Liminal time is expressed by special sanctified dates or ceremonial functionality, similar to pilgrimages and experience of all night and morning musical sets within trance dance ritual.
Liminality is socially characteristic, but also occurs in spiritual and transitional conscious inaction. States of liminality of one’s conscious are hypnagogic experiences of threshold consciousness. In hypnagogia, a person may seem fully awake, but has brainwaves of someone in deep slumber; similar to the concept of a penumbra area of shadows. Altered states of consciousness and naturally altered or drug induced perception engage liminal consciousness in trance dance ritual. Spiritual liminality occurs in ritual contexts and trance association. Liminal states only are spiritual if the person experiencing them defines it that way. Even without spiritual connotation, trance dancers experience states of communitas, temporary autonomous zone structure, and liminality with reverence to harmony, ritual intent, and utopian society. It can be argued that trance dancing is circumstantially defined by its counter-cultural operations, is ritualistic by default, and spiritually exempt; these kinds of perceptions align trance dancing with secular and sacred ideology.
Trance dancing is much more than just tribal and social ritual, but is specialized in notions of ancient and indigenous tradition and new-age science which empower the trance dance’s spiritually inclined aspects of ritual. Modern day trance dancers, such as Interfuse initiates go beyond counter-cultural ritualism in how they seek spiritual significance within an intentional orientation and sacred construct; they produce religious formation out of pre-existing countercultural identity. When this counter-cultural action is used in sacred context and is given spiritual ideology it becomes something much more than a counter-cultural phenomena, it becomes a fully functional religious experience. Trance dancers elaborate and enable material culture, Mantras, iconography, and ritualize experience of trance inaction. Experience is sacred or secular simply by the beliefs of the person having the experience. One person’s peak dance-floor experience might simply be seen as having a good time at a party, while another’s might be a spiritual connection to the divine (Sylvan, Trance, 10). A popular music concert can also be perceived as church event. Trance dancers enforce church-like structure by incorporating opening and closing ceremonies (Aums), emphasis on development and ritual sanctity (workshopping and alters), and shared worldview and spiritual commonality (modern trance dance).
Trance dance rituals provide makeshift temporary communities in which its members are initiated through powerful encounters with the sacred (Sylvan, Trance, 102). The existence of defined trance dance ritualism however is tentative as religious without having a specific spiritual application. Attached spiritual meaning and use of sacred objects and ideology both factor in to the profoundly spiritual and religious distinction of trance dancing. The cut and paste borrowing of preexisting trance dance rituals created in the modern day proves to be less about sustaining tradition, but more about qualitative meaning and the nature of experience (Sylvan, Trance, 11). Symbolism is found through the use of cultural material rather than in its objectivity. Alters created in trance dance rituals are fully functional and deeply sacred. Modern trance dance has emerged as a highly applicable, profoundly spiritual, religiously organized phenomenon. New-age religion resembles less of religious tradition and more of culturally spiritual transformation and embodied experience.
Spiritual experience is focused on energies and sensation instead of doctrine and worship among today’s trance dancers. Meditation is favored over prayer and belief is acted instead of preached. Observation of trance dance spirituality is observed in how “the white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus, but the Indian goes into his tipi and talks to Jesus” (La Barre, 166). The active utilization of trance dance energy and applied theological awareness is characteristic to religious functionality of highly spiritual degree and ritual context. The emphasis of trance provides a gateway to religious construct and spiritual development. Trance induction can be performed with the facilitation of music, dance, meditation, associative experience, dramatic bodily acts, and drug ingestion. Religious function is served by trance induction due to its highly experiential applications of spiritual concepts adherent to trance itself. Trance enables theoretic journey and characteristic “trips” of sacred context.
Common in most all cultures, spiritual awakening and trance induction is sometimes aided with psychotropic plants and psychoactive drugs. Drug induced trances differ from self-aided natural trance, but yield similar results; although drug-aided genuine spiritual experience is sometimes thought to be “just the drugs”. Drug facilitation has distractive external effects and other serious adherent risks to pure trance conceptualization in addition to threats to mental and physiological health. Drug use without ritualized connotation, developmental intention, or spiritual association does not have any value as trance modality. Although seen as heresy, attempts to research peyote were conducted, but produced flawed results because the experiments were performed outside of the ritual setting (Slotkin, 51). Spiritual application of drug use can be classified as entheogen practition, from the Greek meaning of “bringing the God within” (Sylvan, Trance, 21). The drug MDMA or ecstasy has association with Greek roots of ecstasis, or being outside of oneself. Maenad and Bacchae trance dancers of ancient Greece were known as ‘the raving ones’, describing their application of estactic trance. Sufi tradition relates to Allah (God) by reaching ecstatic states through trance. Direct relation with divinity and God is characteristic to ecstatic states and developmental trance; closely associated with ritualized use of psychoactive herbs and drugs.
The trance experience is ultimately controlled by the self, but is guided by music and dance, DJs and performers, peers and community, ideology, and spiritual orientation. The relationship between the guides and the self is very symbiotic. Similar to pastors, guides can lead the self to different emotional, liminal, spiritual and physical realms. Benevolent, neutral and malevolent trances may be induced (intentionally, spontaneously and/or accidentally) by different methods and the different aspects (wikipedia.org). Trance experience is classified by auditory, kinesthetic, visually driving, olfactory, and gustatory factors. Each particular aspect is engaged by the multifaceted ritual and incorporative spirituality of trance dance. Trance is facilitated by the collective ritual of trance dancing and not only through dance methodology. Aspects of trance are accessed and facilitated by the ritual as a whole.
Trance in dance ritual is centered around auditory experience. Trance is enabled by brain and chakra stimulating polyrhythmic music. Dedicative styles and technology serve the auditory advancement of traditional sonic trance. Popular electronic music has evolved into many different sub-genres and styles, but an overall phenomenon of a modern mode of trance has remained consistent within its spectrum. Sacred distinction is made in secular existence of electronic music by the genres Psy-trance and Goa-trance. Trance is conducive in their 4/4 drum rhythms, fast tempos, and rise-peak structure. Sonic healing and musical effect on brainwaves is researched and accredited by popular belief and even recognized by the New York Times Science Section. Rhythmic sound has profound effect on brain activity and development. PSY and GOA Trance styles of music are intrinsic to modern day trance dance facilitation. “PSY” has become sort of a spiritual icon, similar to other mantras such as PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect).
Other auditory aspects include anthropological analysis, application, and utilization of linguistics. Communication and the use of linguistics is emphasized in trance dance ritual and formulated by its specific construct. Social grooming is carried out in the ritual as well as objective development and language use. Lyrical communication is absent within the music with exception to cultural and ritual associative use of “samples”. The universal connection through modern day trance music allows it to break language barriers and enable extra-lingual communication. The music has linguistic capability without the use of words and transcends the use for them entirely in its induction of trance. Extra-lingual assets are invoked by musical communication through shared experience and effect. Totality of experience is summed up with one word phrases; “tripping” for example describes an extensive experience with multi-associative property. Other communication is distinguished and characterized by application of certain ritual aspects, such as rambling gut-spilling speech and analytic effects of drugs-aided speech, Mantras and symbolic wording, and vocal adjustments to ritual conditions.
As important as auditory, kinesthetic aspects have deep reverence in trance dance ritual as embodied and danced activity. Motion and gestures in trance express its profoundly experiential effect relative to modern trance dance ritual. Physical contact (massages) and sensual grooming (hugs) also play important roles in kinesthetic ritual. Bodily invocation and physical sensation define kinesthetic trance and are heightened in drug induced trances. Many entheogens, especially ecstasy, produce dramatic sensuous effects and bodily affliction. Body-highs of all modes are expressed as both embodied and out-of-body experience. Astral projection, sleep deprivation and effects from fasting, “tripping”, and disassociative reality are all associations of out of body experience while embodied experience relates to dancing and energy production/opening of Chakras, Yoga/Shivarea, active meditation, and bio-cultural implication of trance dance ritual. Spiritual practice of Tantra heavily relates to the body’s place in trance. Other interrelationships are expressed in action, like looking at what you are hearing or observing actions and performance.
Visually driven trance states are heavily incorporated with the whole trance dance experience and ritual, similar to vision quests. Distinctive clothing (or nudity), performance, iconographic implication, and artistic emphasis strengthen the interrelation of visual components. UV deco and tapestries along with computer visual displays on large projection screens are arranged in sacred context. The art work is infused with sacred geometry like in Buddhist Dagyab and fractal design reflects association with natural composure and specific manipulation and facilitation of the perceptive mind in trance. The human body has near-perfect symmetry and economies of expression through fractal geometry that are quite evident in the structure of the circulatory system, for example, or the nervous system. Just look at a drawing of veins and arteries and you'll notice the fractal patterns of geometry -- the same patterns you'll see drawn in the underside of a leaf, by the way (Adams). Association with nature is ingrained in fractal design, made up of readily identifiable patterns that are connected through a sort of biological artistry. Artists such as Alex Grey and Luke Brown distinguish this design of nature and trance visualization in their artwork.
Yantras also have profound application in trance danced ritual as in advanced phases it is possible to attain union with God by the geometric visualization of a Yantra. A Yantra is like a microcosmic picture of the macrocosm which causes onlookers to have simultaneous inner and outer focus. Iconography of this matter is explored in complexly distinctive forms as well as in simple terms of focalized energy and intense concentration in dots, or bindus, and perspective use. The focus through visual sense strongly connects the mind and trance to perceptional visualization and the design of reality. Visual modality of trance is also inducted with use of strobe lights, black lights, and ambient lighting which alter perceptions and reality. Black lights and UV colors strengthen liminal states with visual environment. Visual association and light patterns have direct interrelation with brain function in ways of hypnotic induction, hallucinate reality, and emotional sensation. Visual components relate with the brain, just as olfactory stimulation has deep association with brain function, such as memory.
Olfactory trance has relevant application in trance dance in some ways unique to its ritual. Borrowed notions of traditional trance dance and ideology are enacted through the burning of incense and sage. Pheromone understanding and Aromatherapy practice in a sense is incorporated with invigorated olfactory stimulation and psyche manipulation using connection between memory and smell. The essence of Marijuana use is also encapsulated in its smell to anyone familiar to its effects. Other ritualistic application of smell is conceptualized with association and application of modernly specific stimulating properties, Vick’s Vapor Rub for example. People engaged in trance dance ritual have heightened senses and reverence of smell just as they do the other seven senses (ESP and collective sense being the extra two). Sense of smell is enhanced by some drugs as well sanctified through olfactory sensitivity.
Lastly, trance is inclusive to gustatory principle among many different levels. The process of digestion and ingestion is greatly affected by dance methods and ritual circumstance. Biological characterization and bio-cultural evolution can be observed in specifically chosen sustenance and ritualized consumption such as serotonin/melatonin rich bananas and figs, chai tea, Energy drinks, fruits, and candy. One gustatory driver is consumption of energetically stimulating sustenance and another is ingestion of trance enabling drugs. The ingestion of drugs, however, is often overemphasized and wrongly empowered in greater gustatory application in trance. In the shadow of ingestion, gestation has major responsibility for and relevance to energy production and utilization. Even the removal of gustatory drivers also enables modes of trance in fasting conceptualization and ritualized or spiritual dieting. Additionally, the eating and tasting experience is facilitated by ritualistic behavior in how Interfuse initiates share and enjoy their food, eating in a socially grooming fashion of ritual context.
Ritual applications of trance are not always religious, but are commonly spiritual. Trance is spiritually significant because it interacts on levels of human conscious and constructed reality. The phenomenon surrounding trance ideology does not necessarily have merit of religion until it has some sort of association with spiritual or intense ritual context; which is expressed in trance dance, especially in a modern world. Counter-cultural reality and action transmit trance ideology through a ritualistic collection of trance aspects and modality. Traditionally rebellious and religiously lost, modern day trance dancers experience religiosity in a dysfunctional manner and yet still produce absolutely profound spiritual retention and unique communalistic constructs. Roughly put, the [ritual] consists of: an attitude of openness, sharing, empathy and playfulness; intense, unselfconscious dancing; a collective altered state of consciousness, thanks to the combined effects of specific rhythms, lights and psychedelic drugs; and, at its height, a melding of group feeling and energy into an ecstatic, orgasmic release that feels nothing less than spiritual or religious--albeit in a form that has little resemblance to any type of spirituality or religion we are familiar with (Keehn). Religion in the new age begins incorporates less relevance to religious tradition and more of cultural and spiritual transformation and experience. The experience of intensive trance dance rituals and communal transients of counter-cultural affiliation takes form of reconstituted and reinvented religious expression. Absent religious tradition is made up for by extremely incorporative, specialized, and applicable distinctions in modern trance dance ritual.
The practice of contemporary trance dancing, despite its global union and profound creation has threats to its cultural sustainability and religious sanctity. Sustainability of tribal formation is affected by individualistic/disconnected locality; trance dancers are mainly connected digitally through the use of cell phones and internet due to modern pressures. Cultural experience by tribes is somewhat weakened in small scale non-ritualized sociality, but especially strong in large scale ritually social interaction. Ritually absent cultural action is more so than not, spiritually invalid and religiously frivolous. The sociological prevalence and secular majority may cause religious imbalance and deconstruction of the sacred. Modern day cultural phenomena, especially trance dancing rituals, are also at high risk of commercialization, complete unrecognizable transformation, and self-destruction. Cultural opposition and resistance also determine trance dancing’s operational potential in ways of political influence, discriminative ideology, unethical action, and invasive control. Modern authoritative figures tend to perceive trance dancing as a non-ritualized, non-sanctioned, communally destructive gathering of rebellious drug-addicts (RAVE act premises). Religious sanctity in modern trance dancing is dependant on spiritual integration, ritualistic application, and intentional development, but is often unappreciated, misunderstood, and ignored. Trance dancing has to enable trance in order to be defined by spiritual expression in addition to social communalization, so exploring and establishing more aspects of trance and its utilization will strengthen both religious sanctity and cultural sustainability.
The single most influential and distinguishable factor of modern trance dance ritual is its modernity. Trance dance ritual has never before been so advanced in technological integration or so globally universal; neither has it been so socially complex. The pressure and motivation of the new age and the collection of informative discovery make modernity strong and uniquely defined in character and spiritual potential. Never more has our world needed action in the ideological sense of trance dancing. Trance dance ritual has extreme importance in the modern day because popular cultural is so deconstructive, imbalanced, insubordinate to nature, and spiritually as well as religiously devoid. Trance dance ritual balances the modern world and applies focus to global development without completely deconstructing or rejecting modern nature. Socially and communally strengthening, physically and mentally healthy, technologically and naturally developmental, personally and spiritually meaningful, culturally and religiously defining trance dance ritual positively and productively affects human evolution which may very well be the salvation and for the people of the modern world.
Works Cited
Adams, Mike. “The Discovery of DNA Variability, Holographic Blueprints and the Symphony of Life”. NewsTarget.com, 2006.
Bowen, John R. Religions in Practice. Allyn & Bacon, 2005.
CIIS- the California Institute of Integral Studies. www.ciis.edu/lifelong/sp05/pp08.html
Keehn, Jason. “Trance Dancing- The Rave: Can Trance Dancing Save the Planet?”
La Barre, Weston. The Peyote Cult. Connecticut: Archon Books, 1975.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York:
Oxford, 1987.
McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.
Midwestburners.com
Rouget, Gilbert. Music and Trance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Sardar, Hamid. www.asianart.com/articles/hamid/index.html
Slotkin, James. The Peyote Religion: A Study in Indian-White Relations. New York:
Octagon Books, 1975.
Sylvan, Robin. Trance Formation: The Spiritual and Religious Dimensions of Global
Rave Culture. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Turner, Victor Witter. The ritual process: structure and anti-structure. Chicago, Aldine
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Wikipedia.org
Midwestern Resources and Cultural Links
alexgrey.com, audiognomes.com, australiens.net, burningman.com, chilluminati.org, ekstasisdance.com, entheonvillage.com, erowid.com, esotericgen.com, fullmoon-festival.com, gaian-mind.com, geomagnetic.tv, goaspirit.com, goatrance.net, 604head.com, isratrance.com, liquidcrystalvision.com, midwestburners.com, midwestpsy on tribe.net, mindoutpsyde on tribe.net, mushroom-media.com, psylinks.com, psymbolic.com, spacetribe.net, spectraleyes.com, spun.org, timecode.co.za, 3am.co.za, trancepsyndicate.com, trancersguide.com, touchsamadhi.com, and ubersonic.org
Ritual Ethnology and Spirituality
~~ By Ryan Giordano ~~
“[trance dancing]… a divine vessel for personal and global transformation through ceremony, dance, music, light, food and personal interaction.” -Robin Sylvan (1)
Throughout all of time, the human species has combined the sonic driving of rhythmic and repetitious drumbeats with ecstatic dance to induce trance states which facilitate a transition between ordinary reality and spiritual community. Inherent in the human condition, trance dancing directly relates to a person’s absolute being and conceptualization of the self. These trance dance rituals enable people with spiritual connectivity as well as define them culturally. Trance dancing exists as a tribal societal function which allows the participants to come together in dance and celebration for primary religious experience, spiritual growth, and community (Sylvan, Trance, 1). Trance dance theology is enacted in ritual, as it is displayed with careful consideration and specific intent. The trance dance ritual becomes a working part of the community and serves its function like a rite of passage or spiritual quest. Participating trance dancers embrace its cultural and communal aspects simultaneous with its profoundly spiritual and personally religious potential. The spiritual nature harnessed within the trance is expressed and sanctified through dance ritual. One can use the altered states of consciousness or trance generated by trance dancing to create a ritual container that directs the energies toward sacred goals: prayer, healing, vision, and divine guidance (CIIS).
Trance dancing has existed in most all cultures in some form or another. Focused, defined, and acted trance dance rituals are dominantly present in indigenous and tribal cultures, but have been observed within modern global culture as well. The integration of pre-existing trance dance practices with new methods of trance induction and musical expression creates a contemporary global concept of trance dancer spirituality. The existence of “primitive” trance dance ritual notions in modern society gives more credibility to understanding that trance dancing is inherent in the spirit and instinctive to humanity. Trance dancing in the modern sense transcends its traditional relevance and is highly “advanced”. Modern day trance dancing is reflective of the modern day regardless of its primitive origin, making it less defined by tradition and more by experience. The modern experience is extremely technological and operates under a digital guise of collective consciousness and modern cultural construction. Communities exist between modems and spiritual enlightenment is delivered through science and existential use of high-tech facilitation. Even though technology is strongly integrated, the use of it remains at a low level of reverence; the sense of modernity does not alienate the fundamental and animalistic human experience in trance dancing as much as it has in general modern culture. Our basic nature is the source of ultimate meaning and value in the purest form, but now it has become an “artifact” in modern cultural development (McKibben, 17).
Music and trance dance have continued to be a part of culture and religion throughout time and space. As music entered the modern age it began to reflect humanity’s exploration in science and technology, as did everything else. Shamans have been replaced by pharmacies, religion has been confronted by science, and drums have been synthesized. Tribal beats are now represented in electronic dance music. Electronic music flourished as a new genre of music, but also as a culturally defined and profoundly spiritual phenomenon. Globalization and technology are concurrent to the conception and divination of electronic music application in modern trance dance ritual. As technology and essentially electronic music, spreads around the world it infuses itself with existing indigenous cultural tradition, diverse trance induction, and musical inclination. The integration of pre-existing trance dance practices with new methods of trance induction and musical expression creates a contemporary global concept of trance dancer spirituality.
Modernity and advanced technology put constraint on the progression of the human species as communally cooperative and spiritually operative beings. Old and seemingly forgotten ideology expressed in trance dance ritual is revived and revitalized by new age spiritualists in counter-culture. Contemporary trance dance tribes enact a future-primal sense of traditional rituals with modern application. They fully embrace new technology and scientific theory, only it is applied in ways subservient to nature and deconstructive to the present constriction of modernity. The essence of trance dancing is brought alive by breaking down concepts of modernity, deconstructing preexisting habits and beliefs, and by surrendering unnatural ego facets. The human condition is then sowed with ancient methodology and germinated in traditional ideals. Aside from some ancient memory and cultural intuitiveness the modern sense of trance dancing is made from scratch in a cut and paste sort of fashion.
Trance dancing is not pertinent to the danced aspect of the ritual, but is distinctly characterized by it. Contemporary and ancient trance dances both incorporate much more into the experience as each are performed as events or multi-faceted rituals. Just the trance dance performance alone leaves the ritual incomplete. There is emphasis on communal order, performance, microcosmic ritual, and experiential reality. Trance dancing exists in duality as the trance is invoked in vision quests and theological conceptualism and is embodied by experience and physical movement of dance. Trance dancing, however, is neither more “trance” nor more “dance”. The concept is symbiotic as each interacts with and affects the other. Music and dance is a trance enabler as it is also a product of trance. It is a fluid fusion of human experience and spiritual connotation. Both assets can be measured and observed as a whole with the practice of ethnomusicology, the anthropological study of music’s interaction and connection with culture.
Every trance dance ritual has uniform similarities and universal modality, but each remains unique in specific tradition and culturally definitive history. Trance dancing theology is inherent to human condition and archetypal formulas, but is specialized and self-created in ritual expression. Cultures define themselves by their rituals as they act out personal life dramas and confront closed social matters. The sustainability of the self and the collective depends on these types of rituals. Trance dance ritual is a sort of social grooming that operates on multiple levels of inherent group structure. Cross-cultural comparisons are made with the use of ethnomusicology and it is found that many cultures share the same concepts of trance dance, but express them with amazing individuality and diversity.
Trances are states where one can confront fears, act out inner conflicts, and experience “catharsis” or emotional release (Bowen, 101). Community specific dramas are acted out within each unique “danced” trance ritual. One of the most dramatic rituals is performed by the women of Harasiddhi, south of Kathmandu. There they enact dramas to ensure the stability of their personal and communal universe, making the essential link between the microcosmic reality of village life and personal experience and the macrocosmic reality of elemental forces in the universe (Sardar). Linking these concepts is illustrated by the Mbuti people in the central Congo region. The Mbuti tribe directly links their ideology of Molimo, the sound and spirit of the forest, with the experience of sound and with a musical contraption, also referred to as Molimo. The direct association of spiritual belief with material culture and physical sensation is an elemental part of trance dance.
There is a saying in Africa that puts the cultural relation into perspective, it says “show me your dance and I’ll tell you where you’re from”. This saying puts relevance to specific community in trace dance performance. Many cultures keep there own cultural individuality and notoriety preserved with dance tradition, such as the Celtic and Swedish and Native American cultures. Specific dances, belly dancing for example, are turned into cultural icons. Other cultures have dance facilitation for more than just definitive purpose but also functional. Islamic Sufis are known and characterized by their “whirling Dervish dance” which inducts them into trance. Sufis wear unique clothing that flows through the air as they spin around. The dance form enables the Sufis to reach deep trance while simultaneously giving them character and applicable association with their spiritual/religious belief.
The Bible reveals religious connection and spiritual association with music in many of its stories. Music is used for exorcism of demons within Saul’s soul with the aide of David’s lyre (Rouget, 154). Trance dance is not only a spiritual pursuit and religious development; it is a spiritual mechanism or tool. It can be used to facilitate beliefs and theology, interconnecting it with whatever worldviews and ethos a group will have. While in trance a Christian may see God, a Buddhist may see Buddha, or a shaman may see a healing spirit, but a person without any spiritual orientation may see nothing at all. Trance mechanics however are tentative as religious people without having the specific spiritual application or unification of trance ritual.
Spiritual concepts don’t get any more fundamental than of the Earth. Earthly conceptualization of Pagans, Native Americans and the majority of indigenous groups are enacted in full and profound spiritual relation. Specifically formatted ritual, such as the Native American Sun Dance, has specific goals and purpose in its encompassing worldview influence. Manipulation of trance dance energy is favorable for Earthly causes and ceremonial intent and its ritual provides deep spiritual reverence and cultural function. Community and its rituals play a valuable role in the survival of man and the earth. As nature works on a cycle or on a “land pyramid” (Leopold, 214) the community of man must revolve around the same concepts and must utilize them by ritualize acts that tend to them. Modern day grooming of ecological and environmental unions is reflective in modern trance dance ritual. Trance Dancing rekindles a person’s relationship with nature and enacts natural divinity.
Tending to the natural self and universal order, modern trance dance ritual is sometimes thought as neo-paganism. Contemporarily modern trance events fully embrace new technology and scientific theory, only it is applied in ways subservient to nature and deconstructive to the present constriction of modern technological development. The modern world as a whole is less and less nature orientation and more and more technologically perverse, but also posses counter cultural opposition in its trance dance community. Scientific establishment and technological embodiment has made the modern world condition deprived of traditional theology and orientated towards collective ideology. People brought up in the modern day have a loss of religious value and are technology driven away from service to natural fundamentals. Counter-cultural rites of passage in modernity are focused on earthly reconnection and technological rebellion. The need for release and natural freedom is inherent to the human condition and emphasized by modernity.
Modern day trance dancing is a traditional revitalization with new age application. Rituals are constructed out of all related trance dance cultural phenomena and are reconnected with advanced global networking and highly technological application. Synthesized elements of trance dance and new age idealism have created the essence of techno-shamanism. Contemporary trance dance ritual borrows from ancient and indigenous trance dance reverence and applies it to an inherent sense of modern modality. A sort of “hippy resurgence” characterizes the new age trance dancers, but much of the cultural distinction comes from Goa, India. Trance dance participation was ritualized and sanctified by the incorporation and fusion of traditional Indian beliefs with the spiritual dimensions of popular music culture. Traditional Indian iconography and shamanistic practices were integrated both intentionally and naturally in the modern expression of trance dance ideology. The aspects of counter-cultural organization and action are reinforced with the application of traditional trance dance elements.
Archetypes of the human experience are held sacred and idolized in modern trance dance society. Mysticism of inner journey in outer realms and out-of-body experience relates in direct and productive manner to the modern day counter-culture practitioners of trance dance. The influence of ideology and traditionalism from Goa is encapsulated in its introduction and application to the popular music scene. Multifaceted cultural and traditional integration produced spiritual significance and integrated secular notions with sacred symbolism and iconography. A trance dance ritual is a powerful experience initiated through intentional and specific reverence to aesthetic trance dance forces. Preexisting trance dance constructs are assimilated with revitalized sacred symbolic action and connotative iconography. Ritual mystification and sacred notions create a specialized manifestation of spirituality embodied action. Intentional development of ritual phenomena and incorporative trance facilitation is strong in the highly formulated and active spiritual community of today’s counter-culture.
Trance dance initiates form and manifest their own realities through the incorporation of explorative perception and constructed expression of worldviews. Trance dancers are self defined and collectively created; they establish themselves and create their own reality and perception in ways best described by Gary Zarhov:
Our reality is what we take to be true
What we take to be true comes from what we believe
What we believe come out of what we perceive
What we perceive is what we look for
What we look for is what we perceive
Our perception is what we believe
What we believe is what we take to be true
What we take as be true becomes our reality
Modern day trance dancing is a structured expression and display of embodied belief and manifest reality. Moreover, each person’s distinctive style of dance, with its vocabularies of characteristic gestures and movements, correlates to specific experiential states that they produce; making modern day counter-culture rituals not only an embodied religious experience, but also a danced religious experience (Sylvan, Trance, 11). Different than learning dance steps trance dancers rely on pure expression of internal journey and organized belief to construct their dance. Trance dancing is not really dancing, but rather absolute expression of spiritual belief and musical invocation’s effect on the human psyche. Bushmen of Africa express spiritual belief in “dances”. The Kung become inhabited by num energy which causes the body to flail and dance. The energy surfaces, enables trance, and can be manipulated and controlled by the spiritually gifted. Meditation and the experience of Zen can also be classified or exhibited in trance dance. Active meditation, such as “walking Zen”, Shivarea, or Yoga, reinforces the true sense of Zen. Zen refers to the mind without thought and a clear mind can be achieved through the performance of repetitious action, curbing sporadic mind chatter. Zen is achieved by dialing your twenty year old phone number or by dancing to rhythmic repetitious drum beats. The amount of control and experience of the trance dance effect characterizes the intensity levels of its rituals.
Intense ritual and rites of passage become deeply sacred and culturally profound. In the modern day, techno-shamanistic and community significant organization unifies people globally, yet tribally and all encompassing, yet uniquely characterized. The communal operation of trance dancers exists in a substructure of the counter-cultural organization. The specific action of trance dance and counter-culture is relative to theories of Victor Turner and ‘communitas’. Communitas is a Latin noun referring to an unstructured community in which people are equal, or to the very spirit of community (wikipedia.org). Communitas uses concepts of unstructured community in relation to trance dancer’s separation from traditional community and structural norms. Trance dance ritual reinforces and enables great social equality, solidarity, and togetherness. The concept of communitas is best characterized by expressive liminality in stages of separation, expansion of consciousness, and rebirth or reincorporation.
Trance dancer’s experience of communitas is incredibly diverse, openly accepting, and universally transferable. Communitas is used to distinguish the modality of social relationship from an area of common living and association. Turner distinguishes the different aspects and variety of it between existential or spontaneous, normative, and ideological communitas (Turner, 132). Modern day trance dance rituals are all inclusive as they relate to transient personal experience of togetherness, organization into permanent social systems, and application to utopian social models. The ritual exhibits strong notions of liminality and transitional society. The assembly and performance of trance dance ritual is very much focused on communal liminality and contextualized ritual.
One modern trance dance ritual in particular, Interfuse, has deeply significant and profound characteristics of communitas. Interfuse is a gathering of tribal trance dancers or “burners” where initiates experience a sort of rite of passage or intentional organization of communitas orientation. It is a yearly, four day camping oriented event held in Missouri that upholds the ideals of the Burning Man Festival (extreme communitas). The event for some is a pilgrimage and for all an intense tribal gathering, but specifically, Interfuse is classified as a Midwest Regional Burn. The Midwest Regional Burn of Interfuse is highly contextualized by trance dance ritual, but remains similar to other Regional Burns and Trance Dance Events held throughout the world every year which incorporate ritualized space and personal cultural expression. Other tribal groups with trance dance rituals of the same sense among the Midwest are the Chilluminati of Chicago (Sacred Earth), Audiognomes of Wisconsin (Inhabited), Trance Psyndicate of Illinois (Earth Dance), Mindoutpsyde “Psyowa” (Voodoo Therapy), Vesuvius of Missouri (Fire/UV Performance), Esoteric Gen of Arkansas (Aum Festival), and. The organizers of Interfuse, the Midwest Burners describe their regional burn ritual by these definitions (midwestburners.com):
• An event created solely by the actions and participation of those who attend. It's your party - evolved and propelled by the creative energies of everyone there.
• A social experiment in temporary community. Many "first timers" are caught unprepared for the pervasive feelings of openness and togetherness that often accompany a Regional Burn.
• One of the few places you'll ever find where people give freely to one another without thought of profit or return. This is called a Gift Economy. Vending and commercialism are not allowed.
• A time when people come together to express radical creativity in all its' forms.
• A place of freedom, strangeness and amazement, radical art, music, dance, performance, and spontaneity.
Interfuse or Regional Burns are characterized by the main event or ceremonial burning of an effigy. Following a fire poi procession; fire spinners, drummers and other performance artists build collective energies of participants to a fever pitch. An enormous effigy, commonly a human effigy or “man”, is animated as it is burned in a highly emotional and personally relevant nature. There is no meaning assigned to the burn, save that all things are temporary, although Interfuse has different themes each year; last year was archaic imagination and this year was the afterlife. It's completely subjective; each person comes away with their own personal meaning. Interfuse also is culturally as well as ritually distinct. Interfuse participants enable elements of communitas with specialized clothing and style, expressive performance, and unique social communication and experience. Archetypal and specific roles are played out initiates experience the effect of trance dance ritual. The Midwest Burners distinguish certain roles of earth guardians, Inter-rangers, crisis prevention specialists, performers and performance safeties, fire spirits, and medics within their structural characterization.
At Interfuse, a temporary city-community is built with tents, domes, art and deco, light, dance, fire and music in the wilderness. Diversity and natural harmony is celebrated continuously from Thursday through Sunday morning. At the end of it all the city is dismantled and left with no trace. Traditionally in modern trance dancing, rituals are held in an assortment of different venues, such as empty warehouses, hidden farms, churches, community centers, and your mom’s basement. Venues for these kinds of rituals are usually unstable, sporadic, unpredictable, and unsustainable. Sometimes illegal, the assembly of venues resembles the formation of temporary autonomous zones, or TAZs. Peter Lamborn Wilson, AKA Hakim Bey, describes the formation of TAZs as counter-cultural resistance operating without settlement. The anti-structural composition of communitas and the characteristic operation of specific trance dance ritual are accentuated by TAZ formation. Trance dancer TAZs are constructed for temporary clandestine operation of festivities; forming ritualized space and anti-structural embodiment. TAZs put a communitas in action and characterize trance dance ritual.
Embodiment of culture and ritual within trance dancing is of experiential liminality. A liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy where one's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition, during which your normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, opening the way to something new (wikipedia.com). Liminality agreeably occurs in the second or middle stage of communitas, but characterizes the whole experience. Liminality of social context de-emphasizes class and releases one from social pressure or constriction of modernity. TAZs are states of liminality that are arguably either anti-structural, hyper-structural, or both. The liminal zone is inhabited by people in liminal states in ways of personal experience as well as group structure. People experience liminality in experience of altered states and trance, but also people can be liminal as an adolescent or a transsexual.
Experience of liminality happens in preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages. First one is separated from their normal community and distinguishable through special dress, material culture, or physical expression. Next, they go into an inbetween state that has no real association with their normal community where they experience true freedom. The last stage the person reincorporates themselves back into their normal community and has confirmation of the experience, sometimes as rehabilitation. The process one undergoes through these stages and at Interfuse all happens in liminal concepts of time. Liminal time is expressed by special sanctified dates or ceremonial functionality, similar to pilgrimages and experience of all night and morning musical sets within trance dance ritual.
Liminality is socially characteristic, but also occurs in spiritual and transitional conscious inaction. States of liminality of one’s conscious are hypnagogic experiences of threshold consciousness. In hypnagogia, a person may seem fully awake, but has brainwaves of someone in deep slumber; similar to the concept of a penumbra area of shadows. Altered states of consciousness and naturally altered or drug induced perception engage liminal consciousness in trance dance ritual. Spiritual liminality occurs in ritual contexts and trance association. Liminal states only are spiritual if the person experiencing them defines it that way. Even without spiritual connotation, trance dancers experience states of communitas, temporary autonomous zone structure, and liminality with reverence to harmony, ritual intent, and utopian society. It can be argued that trance dancing is circumstantially defined by its counter-cultural operations, is ritualistic by default, and spiritually exempt; these kinds of perceptions align trance dancing with secular and sacred ideology.
Trance dancing is much more than just tribal and social ritual, but is specialized in notions of ancient and indigenous tradition and new-age science which empower the trance dance’s spiritually inclined aspects of ritual. Modern day trance dancers, such as Interfuse initiates go beyond counter-cultural ritualism in how they seek spiritual significance within an intentional orientation and sacred construct; they produce religious formation out of pre-existing countercultural identity. When this counter-cultural action is used in sacred context and is given spiritual ideology it becomes something much more than a counter-cultural phenomena, it becomes a fully functional religious experience. Trance dancers elaborate and enable material culture, Mantras, iconography, and ritualize experience of trance inaction. Experience is sacred or secular simply by the beliefs of the person having the experience. One person’s peak dance-floor experience might simply be seen as having a good time at a party, while another’s might be a spiritual connection to the divine (Sylvan, Trance, 10). A popular music concert can also be perceived as church event. Trance dancers enforce church-like structure by incorporating opening and closing ceremonies (Aums), emphasis on development and ritual sanctity (workshopping and alters), and shared worldview and spiritual commonality (modern trance dance).
Trance dance rituals provide makeshift temporary communities in which its members are initiated through powerful encounters with the sacred (Sylvan, Trance, 102). The existence of defined trance dance ritualism however is tentative as religious without having a specific spiritual application. Attached spiritual meaning and use of sacred objects and ideology both factor in to the profoundly spiritual and religious distinction of trance dancing. The cut and paste borrowing of preexisting trance dance rituals created in the modern day proves to be less about sustaining tradition, but more about qualitative meaning and the nature of experience (Sylvan, Trance, 11). Symbolism is found through the use of cultural material rather than in its objectivity. Alters created in trance dance rituals are fully functional and deeply sacred. Modern trance dance has emerged as a highly applicable, profoundly spiritual, religiously organized phenomenon. New-age religion resembles less of religious tradition and more of culturally spiritual transformation and embodied experience.
Spiritual experience is focused on energies and sensation instead of doctrine and worship among today’s trance dancers. Meditation is favored over prayer and belief is acted instead of preached. Observation of trance dance spirituality is observed in how “the white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus, but the Indian goes into his tipi and talks to Jesus” (La Barre, 166). The active utilization of trance dance energy and applied theological awareness is characteristic to religious functionality of highly spiritual degree and ritual context. The emphasis of trance provides a gateway to religious construct and spiritual development. Trance induction can be performed with the facilitation of music, dance, meditation, associative experience, dramatic bodily acts, and drug ingestion. Religious function is served by trance induction due to its highly experiential applications of spiritual concepts adherent to trance itself. Trance enables theoretic journey and characteristic “trips” of sacred context.
Common in most all cultures, spiritual awakening and trance induction is sometimes aided with psychotropic plants and psychoactive drugs. Drug induced trances differ from self-aided natural trance, but yield similar results; although drug-aided genuine spiritual experience is sometimes thought to be “just the drugs”. Drug facilitation has distractive external effects and other serious adherent risks to pure trance conceptualization in addition to threats to mental and physiological health. Drug use without ritualized connotation, developmental intention, or spiritual association does not have any value as trance modality. Although seen as heresy, attempts to research peyote were conducted, but produced flawed results because the experiments were performed outside of the ritual setting (Slotkin, 51). Spiritual application of drug use can be classified as entheogen practition, from the Greek meaning of “bringing the God within” (Sylvan, Trance, 21). The drug MDMA or ecstasy has association with Greek roots of ecstasis, or being outside of oneself. Maenad and Bacchae trance dancers of ancient Greece were known as ‘the raving ones’, describing their application of estactic trance. Sufi tradition relates to Allah (God) by reaching ecstatic states through trance. Direct relation with divinity and God is characteristic to ecstatic states and developmental trance; closely associated with ritualized use of psychoactive herbs and drugs.
The trance experience is ultimately controlled by the self, but is guided by music and dance, DJs and performers, peers and community, ideology, and spiritual orientation. The relationship between the guides and the self is very symbiotic. Similar to pastors, guides can lead the self to different emotional, liminal, spiritual and physical realms. Benevolent, neutral and malevolent trances may be induced (intentionally, spontaneously and/or accidentally) by different methods and the different aspects (wikipedia.org). Trance experience is classified by auditory, kinesthetic, visually driving, olfactory, and gustatory factors. Each particular aspect is engaged by the multifaceted ritual and incorporative spirituality of trance dance. Trance is facilitated by the collective ritual of trance dancing and not only through dance methodology. Aspects of trance are accessed and facilitated by the ritual as a whole.
Trance in dance ritual is centered around auditory experience. Trance is enabled by brain and chakra stimulating polyrhythmic music. Dedicative styles and technology serve the auditory advancement of traditional sonic trance. Popular electronic music has evolved into many different sub-genres and styles, but an overall phenomenon of a modern mode of trance has remained consistent within its spectrum. Sacred distinction is made in secular existence of electronic music by the genres Psy-trance and Goa-trance. Trance is conducive in their 4/4 drum rhythms, fast tempos, and rise-peak structure. Sonic healing and musical effect on brainwaves is researched and accredited by popular belief and even recognized by the New York Times Science Section. Rhythmic sound has profound effect on brain activity and development. PSY and GOA Trance styles of music are intrinsic to modern day trance dance facilitation. “PSY” has become sort of a spiritual icon, similar to other mantras such as PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect).
Other auditory aspects include anthropological analysis, application, and utilization of linguistics. Communication and the use of linguistics is emphasized in trance dance ritual and formulated by its specific construct. Social grooming is carried out in the ritual as well as objective development and language use. Lyrical communication is absent within the music with exception to cultural and ritual associative use of “samples”. The universal connection through modern day trance music allows it to break language barriers and enable extra-lingual communication. The music has linguistic capability without the use of words and transcends the use for them entirely in its induction of trance. Extra-lingual assets are invoked by musical communication through shared experience and effect. Totality of experience is summed up with one word phrases; “tripping” for example describes an extensive experience with multi-associative property. Other communication is distinguished and characterized by application of certain ritual aspects, such as rambling gut-spilling speech and analytic effects of drugs-aided speech, Mantras and symbolic wording, and vocal adjustments to ritual conditions.
As important as auditory, kinesthetic aspects have deep reverence in trance dance ritual as embodied and danced activity. Motion and gestures in trance express its profoundly experiential effect relative to modern trance dance ritual. Physical contact (massages) and sensual grooming (hugs) also play important roles in kinesthetic ritual. Bodily invocation and physical sensation define kinesthetic trance and are heightened in drug induced trances. Many entheogens, especially ecstasy, produce dramatic sensuous effects and bodily affliction. Body-highs of all modes are expressed as both embodied and out-of-body experience. Astral projection, sleep deprivation and effects from fasting, “tripping”, and disassociative reality are all associations of out of body experience while embodied experience relates to dancing and energy production/opening of Chakras, Yoga/Shivarea, active meditation, and bio-cultural implication of trance dance ritual. Spiritual practice of Tantra heavily relates to the body’s place in trance. Other interrelationships are expressed in action, like looking at what you are hearing or observing actions and performance.
Visually driven trance states are heavily incorporated with the whole trance dance experience and ritual, similar to vision quests. Distinctive clothing (or nudity), performance, iconographic implication, and artistic emphasis strengthen the interrelation of visual components. UV deco and tapestries along with computer visual displays on large projection screens are arranged in sacred context. The art work is infused with sacred geometry like in Buddhist Dagyab and fractal design reflects association with natural composure and specific manipulation and facilitation of the perceptive mind in trance. The human body has near-perfect symmetry and economies of expression through fractal geometry that are quite evident in the structure of the circulatory system, for example, or the nervous system. Just look at a drawing of veins and arteries and you'll notice the fractal patterns of geometry -- the same patterns you'll see drawn in the underside of a leaf, by the way (Adams). Association with nature is ingrained in fractal design, made up of readily identifiable patterns that are connected through a sort of biological artistry. Artists such as Alex Grey and Luke Brown distinguish this design of nature and trance visualization in their artwork.
Yantras also have profound application in trance danced ritual as in advanced phases it is possible to attain union with God by the geometric visualization of a Yantra. A Yantra is like a microcosmic picture of the macrocosm which causes onlookers to have simultaneous inner and outer focus. Iconography of this matter is explored in complexly distinctive forms as well as in simple terms of focalized energy and intense concentration in dots, or bindus, and perspective use. The focus through visual sense strongly connects the mind and trance to perceptional visualization and the design of reality. Visual modality of trance is also inducted with use of strobe lights, black lights, and ambient lighting which alter perceptions and reality. Black lights and UV colors strengthen liminal states with visual environment. Visual association and light patterns have direct interrelation with brain function in ways of hypnotic induction, hallucinate reality, and emotional sensation. Visual components relate with the brain, just as olfactory stimulation has deep association with brain function, such as memory.
Olfactory trance has relevant application in trance dance in some ways unique to its ritual. Borrowed notions of traditional trance dance and ideology are enacted through the burning of incense and sage. Pheromone understanding and Aromatherapy practice in a sense is incorporated with invigorated olfactory stimulation and psyche manipulation using connection between memory and smell. The essence of Marijuana use is also encapsulated in its smell to anyone familiar to its effects. Other ritualistic application of smell is conceptualized with association and application of modernly specific stimulating properties, Vick’s Vapor Rub for example. People engaged in trance dance ritual have heightened senses and reverence of smell just as they do the other seven senses (ESP and collective sense being the extra two). Sense of smell is enhanced by some drugs as well sanctified through olfactory sensitivity.
Lastly, trance is inclusive to gustatory principle among many different levels. The process of digestion and ingestion is greatly affected by dance methods and ritual circumstance. Biological characterization and bio-cultural evolution can be observed in specifically chosen sustenance and ritualized consumption such as serotonin/melatonin rich bananas and figs, chai tea, Energy drinks, fruits, and candy. One gustatory driver is consumption of energetically stimulating sustenance and another is ingestion of trance enabling drugs. The ingestion of drugs, however, is often overemphasized and wrongly empowered in greater gustatory application in trance. In the shadow of ingestion, gestation has major responsibility for and relevance to energy production and utilization. Even the removal of gustatory drivers also enables modes of trance in fasting conceptualization and ritualized or spiritual dieting. Additionally, the eating and tasting experience is facilitated by ritualistic behavior in how Interfuse initiates share and enjoy their food, eating in a socially grooming fashion of ritual context.
Ritual applications of trance are not always religious, but are commonly spiritual. Trance is spiritually significant because it interacts on levels of human conscious and constructed reality. The phenomenon surrounding trance ideology does not necessarily have merit of religion until it has some sort of association with spiritual or intense ritual context; which is expressed in trance dance, especially in a modern world. Counter-cultural reality and action transmit trance ideology through a ritualistic collection of trance aspects and modality. Traditionally rebellious and religiously lost, modern day trance dancers experience religiosity in a dysfunctional manner and yet still produce absolutely profound spiritual retention and unique communalistic constructs. Roughly put, the [ritual] consists of: an attitude of openness, sharing, empathy and playfulness; intense, unselfconscious dancing; a collective altered state of consciousness, thanks to the combined effects of specific rhythms, lights and psychedelic drugs; and, at its height, a melding of group feeling and energy into an ecstatic, orgasmic release that feels nothing less than spiritual or religious--albeit in a form that has little resemblance to any type of spirituality or religion we are familiar with (Keehn). Religion in the new age begins incorporates less relevance to religious tradition and more of cultural and spiritual transformation and experience. The experience of intensive trance dance rituals and communal transients of counter-cultural affiliation takes form of reconstituted and reinvented religious expression. Absent religious tradition is made up for by extremely incorporative, specialized, and applicable distinctions in modern trance dance ritual.
The practice of contemporary trance dancing, despite its global union and profound creation has threats to its cultural sustainability and religious sanctity. Sustainability of tribal formation is affected by individualistic/disconnected locality; trance dancers are mainly connected digitally through the use of cell phones and internet due to modern pressures. Cultural experience by tribes is somewhat weakened in small scale non-ritualized sociality, but especially strong in large scale ritually social interaction. Ritually absent cultural action is more so than not, spiritually invalid and religiously frivolous. The sociological prevalence and secular majority may cause religious imbalance and deconstruction of the sacred. Modern day cultural phenomena, especially trance dancing rituals, are also at high risk of commercialization, complete unrecognizable transformation, and self-destruction. Cultural opposition and resistance also determine trance dancing’s operational potential in ways of political influence, discriminative ideology, unethical action, and invasive control. Modern authoritative figures tend to perceive trance dancing as a non-ritualized, non-sanctioned, communally destructive gathering of rebellious drug-addicts (RAVE act premises). Religious sanctity in modern trance dancing is dependant on spiritual integration, ritualistic application, and intentional development, but is often unappreciated, misunderstood, and ignored. Trance dancing has to enable trance in order to be defined by spiritual expression in addition to social communalization, so exploring and establishing more aspects of trance and its utilization will strengthen both religious sanctity and cultural sustainability.
The single most influential and distinguishable factor of modern trance dance ritual is its modernity. Trance dance ritual has never before been so advanced in technological integration or so globally universal; neither has it been so socially complex. The pressure and motivation of the new age and the collection of informative discovery make modernity strong and uniquely defined in character and spiritual potential. Never more has our world needed action in the ideological sense of trance dancing. Trance dance ritual has extreme importance in the modern day because popular cultural is so deconstructive, imbalanced, insubordinate to nature, and spiritually as well as religiously devoid. Trance dance ritual balances the modern world and applies focus to global development without completely deconstructing or rejecting modern nature. Socially and communally strengthening, physically and mentally healthy, technologically and naturally developmental, personally and spiritually meaningful, culturally and religiously defining trance dance ritual positively and productively affects human evolution which may very well be the salvation and for the people of the modern world.
Works Cited
Adams, Mike. “The Discovery of DNA Variability, Holographic Blueprints and the Symphony of Life”. NewsTarget.com, 2006.
Bowen, John R. Religions in Practice. Allyn & Bacon, 2005.
CIIS- the California Institute of Integral Studies. www.ciis.edu/lifelong/sp05/pp08.html
Keehn, Jason. “Trance Dancing- The Rave: Can Trance Dancing Save the Planet?”
La Barre, Weston. The Peyote Cult. Connecticut: Archon Books, 1975.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York:
Oxford, 1987.
McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.
Midwestburners.com
Rouget, Gilbert. Music and Trance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Sardar, Hamid. www.asianart.com/articles/hamid/index.html
Slotkin, James. The Peyote Religion: A Study in Indian-White Relations. New York:
Octagon Books, 1975.
Sylvan, Robin. Trance Formation: The Spiritual and Religious Dimensions of Global
Rave Culture. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Turner, Victor Witter. The ritual process: structure and anti-structure. Chicago, Aldine
Pub. Co., 1969.
Wikipedia.org
Midwestern Resources and Cultural Links
alexgrey.com, audiognomes.com, australiens.net, burningman.com, chilluminati.org, ekstasisdance.com, entheonvillage.com, erowid.com, esotericgen.com, fullmoon-festival.com, gaian-mind.com, geomagnetic.tv, goaspirit.com, goatrance.net, 604head.com, isratrance.com, liquidcrystalvision.com, midwestburners.com, midwestpsy on tribe.net, mindoutpsyde on tribe.net, mushroom-media.com, psylinks.com, psymbolic.com, spacetribe.net, spectraleyes.com, spun.org, timecode.co.za, 3am.co.za, trancepsyndicate.com, trancersguide.com, touchsamadhi.com, and ubersonic.org
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Re: TRANCE DANCE review
Fri, June 15, 2007 - 12:33 AMwhich can be summed up in 7 words.....shake yo ass to sum psytrance bitch! -
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Re: TRANCE DANCE review
Fri, June 15, 2007 - 2:07 AMHA! I was lokking for some feedback on this..... that was perfect. Im now reconsidering the title
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