Brady DeHoust -- Participating in the Dance

Before we draw too far from dance in our foray up van der Leeuw’s model of artistic progression, I’d like to relate in more detail a phenomenological experience of the dance which undergirds and informs my understanding of what van der Leeuw and Harris assert in regards to dance, ritual, and participation.

This experience came as a part of my Appalachian Trail adventure this past summer, an event of enormous aesthetic value which must remain unexplored until later posts. It came smack in the middle of the two weeks, during our reprieve in the town of Damascus, VA, in the midst of Trail Days, an annual festival celebrating hiker culture in which backpackers, an eclectic group by any standards, come from near and far to revel in the glorious communitas of the Trail. As part of our little AT excursion, we students were encouraged to join in the revelry, which is where the story begins.

The dancing took place in a large building at the center of town (most probably the town hall), with a vast, spacious room with a stage which managed to emulate both a church sanctuary (sans pews) and a classic barn of the Footloose variety. A group of us went on a whim, having nothing else particularly to do for our last night in town, and we actually stumbled upon the place while looking for a friend who’d gone missing. At any rate, this was the setting for the dancing.

And boy, did we dance.

We skipped, spun, twirled, and swung for upwards of three hours to the sound of a live three-part band and the voice of a professional contra dance caller, a local legend who looked like Santa if he’d spent ten years in the mountains and become a hippie, or the Bedouin patriarch from The Prince of Egypt, complete with tie-dye. There must have been a hundred people dancing, at least, with half that on the sidelines waiting to join in. We dance half a dozen classic contra dance, to include the Virginia Reel and Sally Gooden. And I was no spectator; I don’t think I sat out a single dance, and I reeled with every girl in our group, a few locals, and at least a dozen hikers. It was marvelous. I laughed til my sides hurt and swung til my lungs hurt and clapped til my hands hurt and galloped til my feet hurt.

The fun was in the movements, the successes and the mistakes and everything in between, and the beauty was in the hodge-podge of faces constantly swinging by, smiling ear to ear, sometimes whooping and hollering, sometimes as tranquil as a mountain lake. The beauty was also in the sheer synergy, the solidarity, the shared joy and success of a round well-danced, the seamless precision of a call well-followed. It was a highlight of the trip.

Van der Leeuw wrote, “The dance is truly alive only when one not merely stages dance productions, but dances himself; when the dance is the natural expression of the man who is just as conscious of his body as he is of his soul. In the dance, the boundaries between body and soul are effaced. The body moves itself spiritually, the spirit bodily” (35). I can vouch for that, citing this experience as proof.

The real overlap came with the final dance, the “Sun Dance,” which, as it was explained by the caller, had roots in classic agricultural ritual, seeking the blessing of the sun, recognized as the source of life and growth. It was simple and elegant, set to a waltzing rhythm, just forward, back, side, side, a spin to switch partners, all holding hands in a big circle and moving with the delicate flow of a leaf resting on glassy waters. That was the closest I’ve come to the ritual roots of the dance which van der Leeuw and Harrison describe; it was a beautiful encounter, to be sure.

Thus the story of my AT contra dancing escapades and the grounds they provide for understanding the themes of dance, ritual, and participation.