by Janet Scott
In the winter of 1977, Professor Bernhard Wosien and his daughter Gabriele came from Munich to the Findhorn Community in Scotland to share their vast knowledge of the ritual and symbolic roots of European folk dance forms. A Sacred Dance group was created, and over the years Professor Wosien has returned many times to teach new dances and to devise dance rituals on religious and mythic themes. It is from this experience that our Sacred Dance work developed.
Human activity is made sacred when we open ourselves to the higher energies of our divine nature and use them to transform our awareness. Dance is among the oldest of the sacred arts, having been used throughout history to invoke the Powers, natural and supernatural. The dance has been a vehicle for celebration, praise, petition and magic, as well as for the transmission of cultural patterns and traditional wisdom.
The folk dances of Europe, especially those of the less industrialized East, have been well preserved, and still embody the ancient energies, though their precise meanings may have been long forgotten. The patterns, rhythms and gestures carry a power which may reveal itself to us when we dance with "sacred intent". Like all true products of the folk traditions, they connect us with our inner mythic world, giving us a deeper sense of who we are, where we come from and why we are here. These dances are a link to the highest aspirations of our creative collective unconscious.
We are not concerned with the provenance nor ethnic authenticity of these dances. For us they offer a way of being, a key to understanding and a joyful opportunity to celebrate our oneness with each other, our world and with those who have danced this way before. They are a way to carry the best of the old into the new.