Spirituality in Dance

As with sport, many professional dancers have intense spiritual experiences during performance. This should not be surprising as dance forms part of a number of religious practices.

The whirling dervishes of Sufi Islam spin until they fall over, then lie on the ground feeling their body merge with the Earth. Dance is also deeply ingrained within Hinduism both as a practice in ritual and as imagery within the religion. Shamanistic and Animistic rituals make great use of dance within their rituals as a method of inducing a trance state. New age religions have also used dance within their rituals.

Dance does not, however, need to be part of a religious tradition to induce a spiritual experience. Outside of religion, many dancers have had a very deep sense of the spirituality of dance. Isadora Duncan described her search for a dance that was the “…divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movement.” This linking of dance and spirituality continues into modern dance music, and dance continues to be seen as a way of both expressing and experiencing spirituality.