Dance of the Spirit

Dance of the Spirit
Author: Maria Harris
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 242
Release: 1991-05-01
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0553353063

Each woman has a special spiritual destiny, as unique and inalienable as the rhythms that govern her life. Maria Harris teaches women how to dance to the music of their own souls and discover the spiritual steps that can transform their lives.

Coaxing the Spirits to Dance

Coaxing the Spirits to Dance
Author: Robert Louis Welsch
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2006
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Coaxing the Spirits to Dance explores the relationship between social life and artistic expression since the nineteenth century in one of the most important art-producing regions of Papua New Guinea. It includes a stunning presentation of hand-carved and hand-painted ancestor boards, masks, drums, skull racks, and personal items. Each society on the Papuan Gulf had its own elaborate traditions of carved, painted, or decorated masks, boards, and hand drums that filled the men's longhouses for use in dances and performances. Today these art objects offer a glimpse into the varied cosmologies and ritual lives of these surprisingly diverse societies before they were changed significantly through their contact with the West.

When the Spirits Dance Mambo

When the Spirits Dance Mambo
Author: Marta Morena Vega
Publisher:
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-04-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781574781564

When rock and roll was transforming American culture in the 1950s and '60s, East Harlem pulsed with the sounds of mambo and merengue. Instead of Elvis and the Beatles, Marta Moreno Vega grew up worshiping Celia Cruz, Mario Bauza, and Arsenio Rodriguez. Their music could be heard on every radio in El Barrio and from the main stage at the legendary Palladium, where every weekend working-class kids dressed in their sharpest suits and highest heels and became mambo kings and queens. Spanish Harlem was a vibrant and dynamic world, but it was also a place of constant change, where the traditions of Puerto Rican parents clashed with their children's American ideals. A precocious little girl with wildly curly hair, Marta was the baby of the family and the favorite of her elderly abuela, who lived in the apartment down the hall. Abuela Luisa was the spiritual center of the family, an espiritista who smoked cigars and honored the Afro-Caribbean deities who had always protected their family. But it was Marta's brother, Chachito, who taught her the latest dance steps and called her from the pay phone at the Palladium at night so she could listen, huddled beneath the bedcovers, to the seductive rhythms of Tito Puente and his orchestra. In this luminous and lively memoir, Marta Moreno Vega calls forth the spirit of Puerto Rican New York and the music, mysticism, and traditions of a remarkable and quintessentially American childhood.

The Goddess of Dance

The Goddess of Dance
Author: Anna Kashina
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2012
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780983832027

When Princess Gul'Agdar of Dhagabad begins studying the ancient magic of the Sacred Dance, she has no idea that this seemingly innocent act is the first step on the treacherous path to immortality, absolute powerNand slavery. Even her beloved Hasan cannot save her this time, as his enemies lure him into the mysterious True Library, destined to trap all-powerful wizards in a magical desert beyond this world.

Dance of the Spirit

Dance of the Spirit
Author: Maria Harris
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2009-07-22
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0307419673

Each woman has a special spiritual destiny, as unique and inalienable as the rhythms that govern her life. Maria Harris teaches women how to dance to the music of their own souls and discover the spiritual steps that can transform their lives.

Salpuri-Chum, A Korean Dance for Expelling Evil Spirits

Salpuri-Chum, A Korean Dance for Expelling Evil Spirits
Author: Eun-Joo Lee
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0761868887

This book is a study of Salpuri-Chum, a traditional Korean dance for expelling evil spirits. The authors explore the origins and practice of Salpuri-Chum. The ancient Korean people viewed their misfortunes as coming from evil spirits; therefore, they wanted to expel the evil spirits to recover their happiness. The music for Salpuri-Chum is called Sinawi rhythm. It has no sheet music and lacks the concept of metronomic technique. In this rhythm, the dancer becomes a conductor. Salpuri-Chum is an artistic performance that resolves the people’s sorrow. In many cases, it is a form of sublimation. It is also an effort to transform the pain of reality into beauty, based on the Korean people’s characteristic merriment. It presents itself, then, as a form of immanence. Moreover, Salpuri-Chum is unique in its use of a piece of white fabric. The fabric, as a symbol of the Korean people’s ego ideal, signifies Salpuri-Chum’s focus as a dance for resolving their misfortunes.

When Animals Sing and Spirits Dance

When Animals Sing and Spirits Dance
Author: Claude Boucher
Publisher: Anchor Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Chewa
ISBN: 9780957050808

When Animals Sing and Spirits Dance is an introduction to the diversity and drama that is the gule wamkulu, the 'great dance, ' of the Chewa people of Malawi. Covering 200 characters bedecked in mask and costume or woven structure, the book reveals not only the physical variety of the characters but also analyzes their songs, dances, and often codified messages that are delivered through word and action. It is through the dancers of the gule wamkulu that the ancestors communicate with the living and give instructions on how to abide by the code of moral conduct, the mwambo. It is also through the great dance that we can glean intimate insight into the values and worldview of the Chewa. Illustrated throughout with color photographs and original artwork, When Animals Sing and Spirits Dance is a lively interpretation of the great dance, told very much in the voice of the Chewa themselves. The songs are interpreted in both Chichewa and English, with appropriate recognition that direct representation is often impossible. The gule wamkulu was declared a masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005. This book is a worthy entrée to the majesty, spectacle, and spirituality that is the great dance.

Let Their Spirits Dance

Let Their Spirits Dance
Author: Stella Pope Duarte
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061748412

“Stella Pope Duarte is a writer who will not be stopped. Her story takes its power from a larger love, and the quest here is as pressing as any I’ve read. This is a novel that looks at a rocky, uncertain time, with the intention of helping. It does." — Ron Carlson, author of The Hotel Eden and At the Jim Bridge An inspiring novel about family, the memories of war, and a woman who valiantly rallies herself and those she loves into reconciling with the past Stella Pope Duarte’s strong and musical voice is reminiscent of Laura Esquivel and Alice Hoffman. Let Their Spirits Dance is a moving, spirited story of a family who takes a trip to the Vietnam Memorial thirty years after the war, and whose trip evolves into a spiritual journey, towards healing and redemption. Teresa Ramirez, is a schoolteacher from El Cielito in Arizona. Still haunted by the death of her brother Jesse in the Vietnam War. Her mother cherishes the memory of her son’s words to her as he boarded the plane for Vietnam, when he told her she would hear his voice again. When Teresa’s ailing mother sees a photograph of the Vietnam War Memorial, she makes a vow to touch his name on the Wall, and this begins a journey that changes the lives of Teresa and her family forever. In this powerfully evocative novel, Pope Duarte connects family, friends, and an entire nation with the names on the Wall, honoring the men and women who served in Vietnam as well as those who watched and waited, but never forgot.

Igbe

Igbe
Author: Jael Mudiaga
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 76
Release: 2020-07-11
Genre:
ISBN:

If Juanita had known about the diabolic troubles she'd encounter upon returning to her country, she probably would have remained in the States where she had built a successful career for herself. But staying back meant abandoning her mother, the one person who genuinely cared unconditionally for her. Taking a leave that was frowned upon by her bosses, she packs a bag and drags her fiance down to the deep rural parts of Delta State, in Nigeria. Her entire plan to take her mother back for proper treatment all blows up in her face when she arrives to find her mother's corpse with no reasonable explanation as to the cause of her death. Ready to sue everyone she could accuse, secrets buried many years ago begin to surface. Could she really escape her roots, go back home where there were no talks about dancing spirits or would it buy time until the sanction of madness and death caught up with her right there in America? What the young lawyer met in Nigeria would question her very existence and reveal truths that had only been told in folklores. With her fiance abandoning her to her fate, Juanita must fight to stay alive without running physically mad as her mother had done in the streets of Lagos. She would either succumb to the demons that chased her or blindly embrace love and faith with rocky foundations and no certain future. Based on the true story of a woman who lost her life to Igbe after her mother sought for a child from the goddess, this fictional tale tells of deities, spiritual powers, tradition, sacrifice, love and faith. Even till this day, the worship of Igbe is still in the hearts of Delta State and has many followers.

Songs for the Spirits

Songs for the Spirits
Author: Barley Norton
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2010-10-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0252092007

Songs for the Spirits examines the Vietnamese practice of communing with spirits through music and performance. During rituals dedicated to a pantheon of indigenous spirits, musicians perform an elaborate sequence of songs--a "songscape"--for possessed mediums who carry out ritual actions, distribute blessed gifts to disciples, and dance to the music's infectious rhythms. Condemned by French authorities in the colonial period and prohibited by the Vietnamese Communist Party in the late 1950s, mediumship practices have undergone a strong resurgence since the early 1990s, and they are now being drawn upon to promote national identity and cultural heritage through folklorized performances of rituals on the national and international stage. By tracing the historical trajectory of traditional music and religion since the early twentieth century, this groundbreaking study offers an intriguing account of the political transformation and modernization of cultural practices over a period of dramatic and often turbulent transition. An accompanying DVD contains numerous video and music extracts that illustrate the fascinating ways in which music evokes the embodied presence of spirits and their gender and ethnic identities.