26077455 Four Interpretations of Mevlevi Dervish Dance 1920 1929 X Theodore Barber

http://www.jstor.org

Four Interpretations of Mevlevi Dervish Dance, 1920-1929Author(s): X. Theodore BarberSource: Dance Chronicle, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1986), pp. 328-355Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1567602Accessed: 23/08/2008 04:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1567602?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis

Four Interpretations of Mevlevi Dervish Dance, 1920-1929

X. Theodore Barber

Few dances are as famous as the whirling of the Mevlevi dervishes. For many centuries, despite Orthodox Islam's opposition to dance, some orders of dervishes, or mystics, have employed dance movements in their ceremonies. Each order, congregating in its lodge, or tekke, had its own unique movements meant to induce an ecstatic or trancelike state. In unison, the dervishes would do such things as sway back and forth, turn in a circle while holding each other, or jump at set intervals, all the while repeating the name of God (Allah). Musicians and even singers would often accompany these actions. Yet no dervish sect has fascinated the West more than the Mevlevis, who whirled like tops in the course of their rite.

Founded in Konya, Turkey, by Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, the mystical poet of the thirteenth century, the Mevlevi (follower of Mevlana) order eventually established branches in many of the major cities of the Ottoman Empire. By the early seventeenth century Western travelers were writing accounts of these strange and impressive whirling dervishes, and such accounts continued to be published in the following centuries.1 Nearer to our own day, public awareness not only of the Mevlevis but of all aspects of the Ottoman Empire was heightened by events surrounding World War I. The Ottoman Empire was constantly in the news when it joined the side of the Germans and later, when it was broken up by the victorious Allies. Then, after Turkey was proclaimed a republic

? 1986 by X. Theodore Barber

328

MEVLEVI DERVISH DANCES, 1920-1929

in 1923, Mustafa Kemal (Atatiirk), set about doing away with many of its Islamic traditions, in an effort to modernize the coun- try. In 1925 he outlawed mystical orders, many of which had been rebellious against his policies, and whirling was officially banned until after his death.

Western dancers for many years had been looking to the Orient as a source of inspiration, and in the 1920s their attention was called to the spinning of the Mevlevis as a hitherto relatively unexplored dance form. This decade, noted for experimentation in all the arts, welcomed the repetitive, geometric, and abstract qualities of the continuous act of whirling. Dance periodicals such as The Dance Magazine and The Dancing Times began publishing articles on the Mevlevis,2 and four choreographers, working inde- pendently of one another during the twenties, each created a dance based on the whirling dervishes, each claiming to be the first in the West to do so. These choreographers-Jean Borlin, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Mary Wigman, and Ted Shawn-took very different approaches to the spinning dance, and an analysis and comparison of their work should reveal their various attitudes toward such subjects as the Orient, the nature of dance, and the importance of authenticity.

In order to discuss the extent to which the four interpretations differed from authentic dervish dancing, it is first necessary to establish the typical components of the traditional Mevlevi ceremony, which took place on Fridays and special holidays. At the outset the dervishes and the sheik-the head of the lodge-took their seats on the carpets or mats strewn along the edge of the octagonal or circular assembly hall. The dervishes wore long black overcoats with wide sleeves and tall cylindrical hats that narrowed slightly toward the top and were made of yellow camel's hair. The sheik wore a similar overcoat of a dark color, but his hat was taller than the others and had a green turban at its base. Every- one had bare feet.

After some opening prayers and musical numbers performed by the orchestra in a special gallery, the dervishes rose and in single file made three circumambulations of the room. They next re- moved their black overcoats to reveal the outfit in which they

329

DANCE CHRONICLE

whirled. This consisted of a tight-fitting, long-sleeved jacket worn over a long, sleeveless robe that was bound at the waist with a wide belt. The robe and jacket were white during the summer, but otherwise of a dark color (often gray or brown).

Then, one by one, the dervishes filed by the sheik to make a gesture of obeisance, which involved bowing to the right and then to the left of him. In return he kissed the hat of each passer- by, this serving as a signal for the individual to set out to the floor and start whirling. Balancing on his left foot as an axis, while maintaining the rotary motion with his right, each dervish slowly began to turn counterclockwise. Gradually his arms extended out horizontally from his body and assumed the traditional whirling posture. His right arm, either straight or bent at the elbow, rose above his head, with the hand turned palm up, while his left arm remained horizontal, the hand bent palm down. His head inclined toward his right shoulder. With his eyes downcast or closed, his face remained expressionless as he concentrated on repeating the name of God silently to himself. Meanwhile, in the background could be heard the lulling melody of the reed flute, the sweeping harmonies of the zither, the steady beat of the small drums, and the hymns of the chanters.

Men of all ages, from teenagers to the very old, participated in the whirling dance, and the speed of their turning often depended on their age and vigor. Some turned quickly and others slowly, but usually as they spun, the skirt section of their robes, made from ample material, flared outward in a bell shape, and the linen trousers beneath could be seen.

The semazenbashi, or dance master, who wore his black overcoat at all times, did not himself spin, but wandered among the dancers, making sure they were arranged in a circle, or a series of concentric circles, and did not bump into each other. At the end of ten to fifteen minutes, he stamped his feet on the floor as a signal to stop. The dervishes arrested their movement suddenly and bowed in the direction of the sheik. Then, after circumambu- lating the hall, they recommenced their gyrations. In fact, they whirled three separate times. At the completion of these three

330


sessions, the dervishes resumed their seats and their overcoats, and there were closing prayers.

A rich symbolism lay behind the Mevlevi ceremony. The black overcoats represented the tomb or death, which the dervishes put aside in order to achieve a new spiritual life. In spinning they re-created the glory and harmony of celestial bodies. Each dervish represented a planet turning on its axis, and an elder member of the order, or the sheik, often twirled alone in the center of the hall to symbolize the sun. Besides spinning free of unworthy attach- ments and passions, the dancers also became channels for spiritual energy, which entered through their upturned right hand and was directed downward to the earth through their left. Ultimately, though, the whirling had as its essential purpose the attainment of an ineffable mystical state.3

Jean Borlin

Jean B6rlin began his career as a dancer in the Ballet of the Stock- holm Opera. In 1911 Mikhail Fokine arrived in Stockholm to mount ballets for the Opera, casting B6rlin in such productions as Cleopdtre. When Fokine moved to Copenhagen in 1918, B6rlin followed him there to study under him. Then Rolf de Mare, a Swedish millionaire and friend of both Fokine and B6rlin, decided to found a company, Les Ballets Suedois, which would perform works inspired by Swedish national dances, international dances, and contemporary art movements. B6rlin was chosen to be the principal dancer and choreographer of this new company, which gave its first performance in 1920. Despite its name, Les Ballets Suedois, which was centered in Paris, in many ways became a show- case for French painters and musicians. In the course of its five- year existence, it staged such works as Reldche, designed by Picabia with a score by Satie; La Creation du monde, by Cendrars, Leger, and Milhaud; and Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel, with a scenario by Cocteau and music by five of Les Six.4

One of the first dances B6rlin choreographed for Les Ballets Suedois was Derviches, which was based on a solo he performed in March 1920 at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris.

331

DANCE CHRONICLE

Having its premiere at the same theatre on November 13, 1920, Derviches featured the whirling of Holger Mehnen, Kaj Smith, Paul Eltorp, and Nils Ostman, in addition to Borlin himself, and was on a bill with two other ballets by the company. Rumor had it that B6rlin based the work on his experience while living a nomadic life with a company of dervishes5-an obviously fanciful idea because the Mevlevis were not a nomadic order. Actually, the concept for the dance probably came from Rolf de Mare, who had traveled the world studying native dances before founding Les Ballets Suedois and who appreciated the avant-garde appeal of a performance of spinning.6

A highlight of Derviches was the set designed by G. Mouveau. The critics admired the subtle range of greens and mauves and the striking gold illumination of both the backdrop, depicting an ornate Islamic doorway, and the foreground drop, cut in an arch shape and painted with flower designs along its border.7 Yet no matter how much the set might have conveyed a sense of an authentic Islamic building, it resembled the interior of a mosque more than that of a dervish lodge, which was relatively unadorned.

Borlin's costume design also had fanciful elements, including the vivid choice of colors, which probably owed much to the influence of Bakst and the Ballets Russes. The dancers wore short red hats (which looked like fezzes rather than Mevlevi hats), blue jackets, and white robes.8 The skirt sections of the robes had an inordinate amount of material, and B6rlin, perhaps even with Loie Fuller in mind, designed them this way so that they would billow grandly as the dancers turned.

The ballet was choreographed to the music of Alexander Glazunov's "Danses de Salome," which was seemingly inappropriate in its subject matter but nevertheless had an "Oriental" sound. Descriptions of the dance itself suggest that it was fairly simple and straightforward. The five dervishes, kneeling on the ground with their skirts spread around them, bowed very slowly, praying in Moslem fashion. They then gradually rose to their feet and started to whirl, gyrating more and more swiftly and with increas- ing abandon as the music itself became wilder. Finally, the dancers collapsed, falling with their faces against the floor, but they managed to get up to acknowledge the applause.9

332


Jean B6rlin in Derviches. Photograph by Isabey from Les Ballets Suedois dans l'art contemporain. By courtesy of the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library.

333

DANCE CHRONICLE

Borlin apparently gave the dance an orgiastic interpretation, in keeping with the general public's conception of the Orient. The Mevlevis themselves did not strive to build their speed to a climax. As they began whirling, they did, in fact, gradually work up to a comfortable speed, but once it was attained, they usually spun at that rate for the remainder of the dance. And, of course, some dervishes turned slowly, if they so desired. Furthermore, the semazenbashi would not have allowed the dervishes to lose control or to spin wildly and collapse. The Mevlevis followed a strictly defined ritual procedure when they stopped their spinning movement.

Publicity photographs of B6rlin's ballet give no clear indica- tion as to how or in what formation the dancers whirled. One especially ambiguous photograph, taken when B6rlin performed the dervish dance as a solo, shows him rising into a turn, or perhaps simulating a spin for the camera. His arms seem to be approx- imating the traditional dervish posture since his right arm is raised above his head, which leans toward it, and his left is extended downward. His hands, however, are not turned according to Mevlevi practice; instead, the fingers are spread gracefully in gestures appropriate to ballet.

After the first season of Les Ballets Suedois, B6rlin decided to return to his solo version of the dervish dance. He included it in a series of ethnic dances, billed as "Divertissements," which became a staple of the company's repertoire in the following years. As a solo it was very popular, but it lost something of its important ceremonial and social context through the elimination of the set and the other dancers.

American audiences saw Borlin's dervish when Les Ballets Su6dois presented "Divertissements" in New York's Century Roof Theatre at Christmas time 1923 and when the company toured the United States in the following weeks. This new dance fascinated the critics, who had nothing to compare it to except Ruth St. Denis's whirling nautch dances or her Radha. One Philadelphia reviewer even accused B6rlin of misidentifying his solo, which "was more truly a Hindu dance."'0 After Les Ballets Suedois was disbanded, B6rlin continued to tour on his own, bringing his dervish dance to New York once again in April 1930, where he

334


died later that year, at the age of thirty-seven, from jaundice con- tracted in Brazil.

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

G. I. Gurdjieff, whose primary reputation is as a mystic and oc- cultist, was born of Greek and Armenian parentage in the Caucasus sometime in the 1870s. He spent the early part of his life travel- ing through much of the Orient, seeking spiritual masters who had knowledge of esoteric truths. By 1915 he was in Moscow gathering followers, and at this point P. D. Ouspensky met him and became his leading disciple. In the following years, Gurdjieff, with his pupils in tow, had to keep moving from place to place because of the changing political situation. He set up his organization, which came to be called "The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man," in various Eastern cities before making his way across Europe and settling, in July 1922, at an estate near Paris, the Prieure of Avon, in Fontainebleau.

Gurdjieff developed a system of sacred exercises, gymnas- tics, and dances (collectively called "the movements"), which he taught to his followers. He prided himself on being a "Teacher of Dancing," and one student, Gladys Alexander, declared his techniques to be even more fulfilling than those of Dalcroze and Duncan." Gurdjieff began giving his pupils rhythmic exercises and dances set to music around March 1918, when his organization was located in Essentuki.'2 At first Gurdjieff played guitar to accompany the movements, but eventually Thomas de Hartmann, an accomplished composer whose ballet The Little Pink Flower was produced in St. Petersburg in 1907 with choreography by Nicholas Legat, became pianist for the sessions.13

When the Institute was situated in Constantinople, from June 1920 to September 1921, the movement training was emphasized, and Gurdjieff and his assistants taught classes in "Harmonic and Plastic Rhythm" and "Ancient Oriental Dances."'4 In this period, Gurdjieff paid many visits to the local Mevlevi lodge to view the whirling ceremony. Ouspensky and de Hartmann both documented these visits.'5 It is possible, however, that Gurdjieff

335

DANCE CHRONICLE

had previously seen the whirling dervishes during his early travels. At least they were mentioned in Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff's semifictional account of his early years, written after 1927.16 In any case, J. G. Bennett, who witnessed one of the Institute's dance recitals in Constantinople, noted that Gurdjieff had begun to incorporate Mevlevi whirling in the movements.17

Once in France, Gurdjieff played up his Eastern background. He was fully aware that the Orient fascinated people as a place of mystery and enchantment and that the public was eager to learn of the secrets and philosophies of the East. At the Prieure he built a large "Study-Hall" for the daily practice of the movements, decorating it in an opulent, Orientalist style, in some ways reminis- cent of a mosque. At one end of the hall was a raised stage, with Eastern musical instruments hung on the wall behind it, and the occult geometric figure of the Ennegram suspended from above. At the foot of the stage was a piano and a small hexagonal foun- tain, which was scented with Oriental perfume and wired to produce a colored-light show on the water. Oriental rugs of various sizes were strewn in the area in front of the stage. This area, enclosed by a short wooden fence, was reserved for students of the Insti- tute, who sat on goatskin-covered cushions. Guests sat outside the fence on benches covered with rugs. At the rear of the hall was Gurdjieffs raised booth, draped with Eastern textiles. The windows of the hall were painted with Persian designs, and white cloth embroidered with aphorisms written in a "secret language" (re- sembling an Arabic script) billowed from the ceiling."8

Visitors were allowed to view five-hour presentations of Gurdjieffs exercises and dances in the Study-Hall on Saturdays, but Gurdjieffs first major public performance in the West took place on December 13, 1923, in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, where, by coincidence, Berlin had also appeared. The entire con- tents of the Study-Hall was transported to Paris in order to decorate the theatre for the run of the show. The foyer was turned into an Oriental palace where the public could taste Eastern delicacies.19 Although accounts of the performance did not make it clear to what extent the Oriental paraphernalia found its way onto the stage, Alexander de Salzmann's lighting design was said to have been spectacular.20

336


Thirty dancers selected from the international assemblage of Gurdjieffs followers at Fontainebleau performed to the accompaniment of an orchestra of thirty-five musicians playing the com- positions of de Hartmann and Gurdjieff. The program included gymnastic exercises, dervish and other sacred dances, and religious ceremonies, all from such places as Turkestan, Tibet, Afghanistan, and Chitral.21 Many of these demonstrations were probably of questionable authenticity, however. One dervish dance, for example, was credited to a group of monks drawn from the Kubravi, Kaljandar, Nag'shbandi, Djellali, and Kadiri sects; yet all these types of Islamic mystics traditionally eschewed the dance in their religious practice.22

Mevlevi whirling was on the bill at the Theatre des Champs- Elysees, and this dance, at least, was reasonably genuine, judging from a posed rehearsal photograph. Eight or nine dervishes are standing in an appropriate circle formation, facing center. They are wearing the traditional white jackets and belted robes, as designed by Gurdjieff, and their arms are posed in the usual whirling position, in which the dervish becomes a channel for spiritual energy. They are not slanting their heads to the right, though, and their hats are of a dramatic height, perhaps taller than authentic ones. In the background of the photograph, one can just make out the figure of the sheik with his dark robe. On either side of him, lining the wall, are five dervishes wearing white overcoats. The Mevlevis wore light-colored, rather than black, overcoats when not participating in the dance, so these dervishes are probably just attending the ceremony without whirling. All the dervishes pic- tured are men, and this corresponds to Mevlevi tradition, which allowed only men to take part in the ceremony, while any women present observed from behind a screen. Although Gurdjieff's atti- tude would be frowned upon today, he in fact believed that dervish dances were too vigorous for women.23

Despite the Western instruments and the orchestration, the music for this Whirling Dervish Dance probably had, to some extent, an authentic sound to it. Gurdjieff and de Hartmann were both familiar with Mevlevi music, and de Hartmann had even tried to write down the music he had heard at a concert performed by Mevlevi musicians in Constantinople.24 Whether or not the audience

337

DANCE CHRONICLE

A rehearsal photograph of Gurdjieffs Whirling Dervish Dance taken in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris, 1923. From C. S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff.

could hear Gurdjieff's voice while the music was playing at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees is not certain, but he did indeed stand in the wings giving his dancers directions and commands, and in this way he functioned as a type of semazenbashi.

There was a complex philosophy behind Gurdjieffs whirling dance, as there was for his movement teachings in general. These dancers on the Parisian stage did not seek to entertain their audiences or receive critical acclaim; rather, they performed the movements in order to develop themselves and spread the word about Gurdjieffs ideas and work.25 An essay in the program for the performances, like some of Gurdjieff's other writings, clearly outlined a mystical approach toward dance and movement. Gurdjieff believed that thought, feeling, and action are all inter- connected and that everyone has only a limited repertoire of habitual postures. In order to achieve new states of sensation or perception, we must break out of our typical patterns of physical behavior and perform non-natural movements.26 Thus, Gurdjieff

338


was against dancers having a personal "style."27 Dancers should instead strive to move in untypical and unexpected ways. Not surprisingly, many of Gurdjieff's movement exercises were pur- posefully strange or awkward. Students would, for example, keep their arms outstretched for great lengths of time or cross the lower parts of their legs and then force a kick.28 Obviously, whirling was another extraordinary way of moving, meant to induce a unique state of consciousness in Gurdjieff's pupils. Perhaps the Mevlevis would have agreed in part with this interpretation of their dance, but they would have referred more specifically to the Divine and to union with God to explain their experience.

Gurdjieff also thought that the original purpose of sacred dance was to reflect and transmit the mystical laws of the universe and that the religious establishments of ancient times used dance as a language to express these laws. Every movement served to indicate some aspect of a specific doctrine.29 Gurdjieff used the Mevlevi dance as an example of this theory, citing the way it imitated the movement of the solar system, which he believed worked according to sacred geometric principles. He had the whirling dervish dance in mind when he told Ouspensky that sacred dances could record, among other things, the laws governing the motion of the heavenly bodies.30 Actually, though, the Mev- levis were probably not relating specific astronomical knowledge through their dance. In rotating like planets, they sought to par- ticipate in a rather general idea of cosmic harmony.

Dance, according to Gurdjieff, was also a means to improve concentration. He devised complicated group dances in which the performers would be totally lost if they did not pay attention. Furthermore, the dancers had to perform various mental exercises of a mathematical nature as they moved. These exercises, such as silently repeating a series of numbers or doing calculations, made further demands on their attention.31 Gurdjieff believed that the secret of the absorption of the Mevlevi dervishes was that they, too, did counting exercises while they moved.32 The Mevlevis did, in fact, focus their attention, but they were engrossed in repeating the name of God rather than numbers. Gurdjieff probably emphasized mathematics because of his belief in arithmology, an occult science that assigned mystical meanings to numbers.

339

DANCE CHRONICLE

Following the performances in Paris, Gurdjieff came to New York with twenty-two pupils and staged his dances and movements, including the Whirling Dervish Dance, at Leslie Hall on January 23, 1924. This free performance, which lasted four hours, attracted a large crowd. At least one individual present in the audience, C. S. Nott, was so inspired by the show that he decided to become a follower of Gurdjieff.33 Additional demonstrations were presented in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse and Carnegie Hall, and at theatres in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, before Gurdjieff and his troupe returned to France in early April. Then, on July 6, 1924, Gurdjieff was in a car accident. Although he recovered from his injuries, he thereafter decided to devote most of his energies to writing rather than to the movements, which he continued to teach only sporadically.34

Mary Wigman

Mary Wigman has written that before she began dancing at the age of twenty-seven, she looked "even toward the Orient for a mystic answer to a wordless riddle."35 Her interest in the Orient was fur- thered when she studied the techniques of Rudolf von Laban, who himself was fascinated by the dances of the East. Not surprisingly, some of the works she choreographed had an Oriental flavor, and one such piece was her solo Monotony (Whirl Dance), which was influenced by Mevlevi spinning.

Although Wigman did state that Monotony, created in 1926, was related to dervish dance,36 she generally played down this connection. She apparently did not want to associate herself with a specific religion. As she wrote, "We have no undivided religious concept in whose name we may celebrate the dance. However, we have within us a living belief and strong yearning from which we create dances of mystic character."37 Furthermore, Wigman pre- ferred to allow audiences to interpret Monotony in any way they wished. The dance could be "expressive of sheer ecstasy in geometric form" or even "symbolic of mankind seeking the riddle of life, exalting in it, then being extinguished by it."38 In her book The Language of Dance, Wigman described how a Chinese gong

340


was another source of inspiration for the dance. She was strongly affected by the circling movement of the leather-covered stick striking the gong and by the resulting sound, which seemed to cause the room to spin.39

The first public performance of Monotony took place in Germany in 1927. Wigman performed the piece within the group cycle Die Feier (Celebration), II. Here Monotony was clearly given a religious context in that it appeared during the cycle's first section, entitled "The Temple." The cycle was staged again, in an expanded form, the following year, but Wigman was soon performing her whirling dance as an independent solo. She toured widely with it, receiving much critical acclaim for her vir- tuoso spinning. An audience in London in 1928 supposedly clapped all the way through it. When she danced Monotony during her three tours of the United States, between November 1930 and March 1933, it was frequently featured as the grand finale. She continued to perform the dance until 1942 and claimed she never changed it in the course of all those years.40

A general sense of the dance can be had by piecing together Wigman's own accounts with those of various critics and by examining photographs of the performance.41 Wigman appeared in the center of the stage wearing a two-piece silver brocaded outfit. The sleeveless top, with two triangular points jutting from the bottom of it, left her midriff exposed, and the skirt, lined with red, reached to her ankles. Her hair was pulled back, and her feet were bare. As she began to whirl, the piano started to play a short Oriental motif composed of two phrases of four notes each, repeated over and over. Meanwhile, a drum maintained a steady beat that changed according to the pace of the dance, and a Burmese gong added a continuous vibration.

Wigman spun on the same spot continuously for six or seven minutes. At first her movements were slow, but then she picked up speed; she slowed down again several times before finally accelerating to a breathlessly fast pace of two revolutions per second. Her whirling was in no way stiff, mechanical, or even monotonous, as the name of the dance would imply. Her arms and hands were continuously weaving sinuous and seemingly

341

DANCE CHRONICLE

arbitrary patterns in the air. At one point, her arms went up and down as if to the tick of a metronome. At another, they extended out in front of her. Her upper torso and head would also lean in different directions as she turned. Her feet generally remained flat on the floor, except at the conclusion of the dance, when she stopped suddenly during her fastest turn and went on tiptoe while stretching her arms above her head and looking upward. After this, she flopped down on the stage, full length, but rose to take her bows.

Wigman's dance had an oddly Oriental atmosphere-her dress suggested that of a belly dancer, and the music had an Eastern tonality. Yet Monotony had little in common with actual Mevlevi dance, outside of the act of whirling. Wigman's gender, the length and speed of her dance, and the various positions she assumed as she turned were all incompatible with authentic dervish whirling. The main purpose of Wigman's interpretation was to convey a mood rather than to re-create a foreign dance in all its details.

Nevertheless, Monotony was something of a mystical experience for Wigman. The Mevlevis believed that Rumi, their founder, often rose upward from the earth as he spun,42 and in her essay "The Dancer" Wigman described how whirling gave her a sense of weightlessness:

Now she spins incredibly fast around herself. Suddenly something mysterious occurs: she rises from the ground, remains as if still in the air, as if floating in quiet suspense!

She knows only too well that her motion continues, but she no longer feels the movement itself. Uplifted with such ease she floats, carrying a great rapture with her. The whirling motion is communi- cated to the room, the walls begin to circle around her, clearly notice- able at first, then becoming more and more blurred, almost obli- terated while expanding infinitely and widened in a rapid, raging revolution.

Is she not for the moment the central point of the world? . .. And at the next instant there is the awareness of being unable to bear this state of lightness. She is conscious that the spell must break, that she must roll back to the same heaviness from which this flight grew, that her unity with the elements must be sundered.43

342


Mary Wigman in Monotony (Whirl Dance). From Mary Wigman, The Language of Dance, translated by Walter Sorell. By courtesy of the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library.

343

DANCE CHRONICLE

Wigman's discussion of Monotony in The Language of Dance included a further analysis of the sense of heaviness, or the "vortex," which pulled her back to earth at the end of the dance.44 Apparently her final gesture of reaching upward, before collapsing, represented an effort to grasp a "non-existent support" as an es- cape from the vortex, which she was desperately trying to resist. Then there was a "sudden letting go" and "the fall of the relaxed body into the depth with only one sensation still alive: that of a complete incorporeal state."

The Mevlevis, of course, did not collapse at the end of their whirling, nor did they emphasize a conflict between the pull of the heavens and the earth, since they themselves acted as media- tors, channeling spiritual energy from above and leading it downward. However, the dervishes might have found much of Wigman's experience familiar, especially her references to feelings of lightness, rapture, centricity, and unity with the universe. Although Wigman's dance was not authentic Mevlevi whirling, she might have achieved something akin to a mystical state.

Ted Shawn

When Ted Shawn choreographed his Mevlevi Dervish in 1929, he probably had not seen any of the previous interpretations of the whirling dance. He had attended a performance of Les Ballets Suedois in Paris in 1923, but B6rlin's dervish piece had not been on the bill.45 Also, the Denishawn Dance Company was away on tour during the weeks that Gurdjieff appeared in the United States. The first time Shawn saw Wigman perform was in Berlin in the spring of 1930. His assessment of her recital, which included Monotony, was revealing:

These dances had no design, architectural structure, no real content or meaning. She was, as we all know, not a beautiful woman, and I did not expect that. But I was surprised to find that the basic quality of all her movement was masculine-and to me masculine movement in a woman dancer is just as repulsive as feminine movement by a man dancer .... For instance, she did a "Whirling Dance" (which was created also at a later date than my own "Dervish Dance"

344


although it was heralded in Germany as something never before done) . . . and she did nothing but whirl-there was no theme, no significance or idea back of it.46

Shawn had a decidedly negative reaction to Wigman's almost freeform style and was obviously eager to demonstrate how his own dance was superior to hers. His statement about her dervish dance being later than his is open to interpretation. Either he honestly believed that his Mevlevi Dervish was created before Monotony, in which case he was incorrect, or he was referring to his Vision of the Aissoua of 1924, which was indeed centered on a North African dervish (or Aissoua), but was actually just a varia- tion of some of his earlier dances, which had no connection with Islamic mysticism.

In the summer of 1914, Shawn choreographed a sword dance for his duet with Ruth St. Denis in Arabic Suite. He described his performance as follows:

In this role I entered, burnoose flying and white turban twisted high. Brandishing a curved sword, I executed a dashing vigorous dance full of leaps and turns accented by pounding feet. I was a veritable whirlwind of movement and, to the accompaniment of rolling drums and clashing cymbals, worked to a terrific climax of spiral leaps ending center front in a heroic pose with scimitar held high above my head.47

By November 1914, Arabic Suite had become Ourieda, in which Shawn played the lover of an Ouled Nail dancing girl (St. Denis). Arriving at the coffeehouse where the Ouled Nail was performing, he did the same sword dance and then whisked her away.48 Then, in 1923, Shawn toured North Africa and witnessed Aissoua ceremonies in Biskra and Kairouan. The dervishes in these ceremonies worked themselves into a frenzy and pierced their flesh with pins and swords. In his account of their rituals, Shawn noted that he had difficulty finding anything dancelike in their wild, shaking motions.49 Yet on returning to America, he wanted to stage an Aissoua performance of his own, no doubt realizing that such a piece would draw audiences. Since he was not willing to stab

345

DANCE CHRONICLE

sharp objects through his skin, Shawn decided more or less to re- cycle his earlier sword dance. Thus, as Jane Sherman has noted, when Shawn, as a dervish, entered the coffeehouse in Vision of the Aissoua, he performed much the same dance as he did in Arabic Suite/Ourieda.50 However, according to Sherman's recon- struction of the 1924 ballet, he now also did a wild spin on one spot, his sword held high in both hands.51 Either this had been present in the earlier productions (something difficult to determine) or he decided to add it because he had seen the Aissoua dervishes make occasional crazed spins during their ceremony.52

Although Shawn's Aissoua dance of 1924 included some turning, he had not seen any Mevlevis during his trip to North Africa. A passage in his book Gods Who Dance (1929) makes this clear,53 despite the fact that he was fond, in later life, of stating that he had witnessed a Mevlevi ceremony on this trip.54 Either his memory betrayed him or he wanted to give more credibility to his own Mevlevi dance. In any case, his whirling dance of 1929 was based on the rite performed by the Mevlevi order in Syrian Tripoli, as described by W. B. Seabrook in Adventures in Arabia (1927).55 Shawn was familiar with this book,56 and the programs for his performance referred specifically to the dervishes of Tripoli, who believed "that in the rhythm of the dance is the finest means of absolute union with God."

Shawn developed Mevlevi Dervish for his solo performance at Carnegie Hall on April 15, 1929. Denishawn was beginning to be dissolved, and he wanted to establish himself as an independent artist. This dance was not strictly a solo, though, since some assistants (Anna Austin, Marian Chace, Regenia Beck, and Eres- tine Day) participated in the piece. These assistants remained in silhouette in front of the whirling Shawn and depicted worldly incidents involving love, reveling, mourning, and death.57 As ex- plained in the program, the dervishes believed that "the objective world and its emotions are only a pageant of shadows." However, at least one critic did not care for the foreground figures, which did not seem shadowy and haunting enough,58 and Shawn elimi- nated them in all performances of Mevlevi Dervish after 1929.

346


Ted Shawn in Mevlevi Dervish. Photograph by Robertson, Berlin, 1930, from the Denishawn Collection. By courtesy of the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library.

As a true solo, the dance was very popular-so much so that Shawn kept it in his repertoire even into the 1950s. Like Borlin and Wigman before him, he did not have any qualms about whirling alone, outside of a social and ritual setting, which Mev- levis would probably have considered essential. Shawn justified himself in this way: "The Whirling Dervish is an example of the individual ecstatic type of dance. Although it is done at times in company with many other people doing the same thing, it is not a

347

,7\a

DANCE CHRONICLE

group dance as such, because each individual is inducing his own individual ecstasy."59

Shawn commissioned Anis Fuleihan to compose the music for Mevlevi Dervish, believing that a Syrian-born musician would create an "authentic" sound.60 Fuleihan's composition did not employ any Eastern instruments, though, but rather two pianos and two drums. Shawn also made an effort to create a realistic- looking Mevlevi costume. He wore a light-colored dervish hat; a dark jacket that was really a wrapped, long-sleeved shirt with a white "bib"; a wide, horizontally striped belt made stiff with heavy buckram so it would not wrinkle in the course of the dance; an ample skirt made of sand-colored woolen serge material and weighted in its hem so that during the whirling it would flare out in sculpted folds; and black tight-fitting trousers. His feet were bare.

Shawn made approximately 270 revolutions during the dance, which lasted four and a half minutes. He did this with his eyes open but without "spotting," and in order to avoid dizziness, he had to concentrate his visual focus inward.61 Although he whirled for a brief time compared with the Mevlevis, he started before the curtain rose and continued even as he took his bows, giving the impression that his dance was never-ending. His method of whirling also did not correspond to Mevlevi practice in that he turned clockwise, using the right foot as a pivot, and he never moved from a space twelve inches in diameter.

Shawn emphasized that his piece was more than a tour de force: "In my 'Dervish' the technical stunt of the 41/2 minutes of whirling, disciplined by remaining on one spot, is justified by the theme of the Dervish going through an ancient ritual to achieve union with God-and this struggle between the pull of the senses and the spiritual aspirations is taken care of by the movements of the head, arms and torso."62 Thus, as he whirled, Shawn used his upper body to create a dramatic narrative expressing the conflict between the pull of the heavens (or spirit) and the pull of the earth (or senses), a theme also present in Wigman's dance, but which he neglected to notice.

348


Fortunately, Shawn's Mevlevi Dervish has been recorded on film, as the full complexity of his gestures needs to be seen to be appreciated.63 Shawn also tape-recorded his comments on the symbolism of the dance.64 Using these sources, it is possible to convey a more detailed impression of the work.

At the start of the dance, the lights are red-amber to indicate the earthly passions. Shawn is whirling, and his skirt is flaring. His arms are down at his sides and away from the body, hands bent, palms down. He slowly thrusts his chest out. Then he makes several gestures symbolizing greed. For example, he grasps at the air and then brings one hand after another to his face as if putting food in his mouth. Deciding now to abandon gluttony, he makes a gesture of denial with his hands. With his palms down, fingertips touching in front of his face, elbows horizontal, he presses down until both his hands are behind his back.

A new series of gestures represents combativeness. For instance, keeping his elbows bent and his upper arms above his head, he smacks at the air with his hands. Later, with his right elbow leading, he bends forcefully into a spiral whirl. Now, standing erect, he beats at the air with clenched fists and shields his face with his elbow.

Next, his hands, first alternately and then both together, reach above his head in a gesture showing his desire to rise above materialism. He then accurately assumes the typical Mevlevi posture, with the right arm up and the left extended horizontally. Shawn interpreted this posture in a way appropriate to his narrative-the upper hand representing the pull of aspiration and the lower, the pull of materialism.

Now he shows the lust for power of kings, posing as if surveying his terrain. One hand shades his eyes while he extends the other arm forward to the horizon. Then he represents the kingly pleasures by making undulating arm movements indicating court dancers.

After he touches his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears to desig- nate the senses, there is a sudden break in the music; the piano stops playing, while only the drums continue. This pause indicates

349

DANCE CHRONICLE

a change-he is now going to renounce materialism totally. The piano comes in again, and his hands press down as before in the gesture of denial. He crosses his clenched fists in front of his face, then suddenly drops them behind him. This is an even stronger symbol of his break with earthly passions.

His speed now doubles, and the light becomes white. His arms are above his head, wrists bent, palms up. He is obviously experiencing a spiritual state, for his head is thrown back and he wears an ecstatic facial expression. At this point, the curtain closes.

Shawn's Mevlevi Dervish had its roots in two sources-Ruth St. Denis's Radha (1905-06) and the theories of Franqois Delsarte. Radha presented a narrative similar to Shawn's dervish dance: a goddess experienced the senses and then renounced them in order to attain enlightenment. Furthermore, inspired by nautch whirling,65 St. Denis spun in the "Delirium of the Senses" portion of her dance, and in many ways her turning resembled that of Shawn. For example, she performed elaborate arm movements, including undulating ones, as her skirt ballooned upwards; she went into a spiral turn at one point with her elbow leading; and she threw her head back and increased her speed as she reached the climax.66

Delsarte and his followers divided the body into regions and devised schemes for determining the meaning of all possible gestures and postures. Shawn so admired this system that he wrote a book about it, Every Little Movement (1954), and patterned much of his dancing after Delsartean principles. To cite some of the more obvious movements in Mevlevi Dervish that derived from these principles: Shawn's arms stretching downward (as at the opening of the dance) represented attachment to the material, while his arms reaching upward (as at the closing) symbolized attainment of the supernatural;67 his chest thrust forward indicated pride;68 and his gestures of denial, which ended behind his back, were standard Delsartean designations of negation.69 Furthermore, according to Shawn's interpretation of Delsarte, facial expression was important to dance,70 so Shawn was careful to give his dervish an ecstatic appearance, even though genuine Mevlevis remained expressionless.

350


Shawn clearly had a unique interpretation of Mevlevi dance, transforming it into a Delsartean dramatic narrative. The other interpretations choreographed in the 1920s were unique in their own right, too: B6rlin created a colorful spectacle featuring billowing skirts; Gurdjieff centered his dance on his occult philosophies; and Wigman made a free adaptation that was nevertheless mystically powerful.

At the end of the 1930s, dervish dancing in Turkey entered a new era with the death of Atatilrk. The Mevlevis were now allowed to perform on a limited basis and eventually even made their way to New York, a troupe of them appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 1972. As far as the West goes, there were some attempts to choreograph whirling dervish dances in the decades following the 1920s, but this theme suddenly became very popular again in the 1960s and 1970s when dancers such as Kenneth King, Laura Dean, and Andy de Groat featured whirling in their performances. Another generation of experimentalists was being inspired by this Oriental dance form.

Notes

1. For examples of early accounts, see Metin And, "Dances of Anatolian Turkey," Dance Perspectives, No. 3 (Summer 1959), pp. 14-15.

2. Ralph Stoody, "The Chorus of the Dervishes: Like Human Gyroscopes the Dancing Priests of Islam Whirl and Turn in Strange Religious Ecstasies," Dance Magazine, March 1927, pp. 32, 60; and Albert Barett, "The Holy Dances of the Dervishes," Dancing Times, June 1929, pp. 238-39.

3. Some detailed discussions of the Mevlevi ceremony and its symbolism include John P. Brown, The Darvishes (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 282-85; Ira Friedlander, Whirl- ing Dervishes (New York: Collier Books, 1975), pp. 88-92; Lucy Garett, Mysticism and Magic in Turkey (New York: Charles Scribner, 1912), pp. 123-27; and W. B. Seabrook, Adventures in Arabia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927), pp. 250-53.

351

DANCE CHRONICLE

4. For further information on Jean B6rlin and Les Ballets Suedois, see Sally Banes, "An Introduction to the Ballets Suedois," Ballet Review, 7, Nos. 2-3 (1978-79), 28-59, and Richard Brender, "Reinventing Africa in Their Own Image: The Ballets Suedois' Ballet Negre, La Creation du monde," Dance Chronicle, 9, No. 1 (1985), 119-47.

5. Unidentified clipping (England), Jean B6rlin clipping folder, Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

6. Rolf de Mare et al., Les Ballets Suedois dans l'art contemporain (Paris: Editions du Trianon, 1931), p. 20.

7. De Mare, p. 133, and "Au Theatre des Champs-Elysees: Saison de Ballets Suedois," Comoedia Illustre, Dec. 1920, p. 61.

8. "Au Theatre des Champs-Elysees," p. 61. 9. "The Swedish Ballet: New Turns in the Repertoire of the

Scandinavian Dancers" (unidentified clipping, England), Les Ballets Suedois clipping folder, Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, and de Mare, p. 48.

10. "Swedish Ballet Is Spectacular" (unidentified clipping, Phila- delphia), Les Ballets Suedois clipping folder, Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

11. J. G. Bennett, Gurdjieff: Making a New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 140.

12. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1949), p. 372.

13. Thomas and Olga de Hartmann, Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 35.

14. Bennett, p. 128. 15. Ouspensky, pp. 382-83, and de Hartmann, p. 102. 16. G. I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men (New York:

E. P. Dutton, 1974), pp. 178-79. 17. Bennett, p. 129. 18. For descriptions of the Study-Hall, see Bennett, pp. 140-41;

de Hartmann, pp. 118-21; and Fritz Peters, Boyhood with Gurdjieff (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964), p. 60.

19. De Hartmann, p. 123. 20. Mel Gordon, "Gurdjieff's Movement Demonstrations: Theatre

of the Miraculous," Drama Review, 22 (June 1978), 42.

352


21. Bennett, p. 226. 22. Ibid., pp. 105-6. 23. Ibid., pp. 230-31, and C. S. Nott, Teachings of Gurdjieff (York

Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1961), pp. 10-11. 24. De Hartmann, p. 102. 25. For Gurdjieffs attitudes concerning the public performances,

see de Hartmann, pp. 123-24, 130, and Nott, pp. 26-27. 26. Bennett, pp. 227-28, and G. I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real

World (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), pp. 227-28. 27. Gurdjieff, Views, p. 168. 28. Gordon, pp. 41-42. 29. Bennett, p. 226, and Gurdjieff, Meetings, pp. 161-63. 30. Ouspensky, p. 16. In A New Model of the Universe (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 341, Ouspensky also mentions that the Mevlevi ceremony was patterned schematically after the solar system.

31. Gordon, p. 40; de Hartmann, p. 112; Bennett, pp. 226, 229. 32. Ouspensky, In Search, p. 383. 33. Nott, pp. 6-19, discusses the New York performance in detail. 34. See Irmis Popoff, Gurdjieff (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1969),

p. 116, for a description of whirling exercises done under Gurdjieff's direction in the late 1940s.

35. Mary Wigman, "But I Had to Dance," in a souvenir program for one of her American tours, n.d.

36. Mary Wigman, The Mary Wigman Book: Her Writings, ed. Walter Sorell (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1975), p. 138.

37. Ibid., pp. 92-93. 38. Ibid., p. 138. 39. Mary Wigman, The Language of Dance, trans. Walter Sorell

(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 37-38. 40. Ibid., p. 38. 41. Ibid., pp. 38-39; Wigman, The Mary Wigman Book, p. 138; S.

Hurok and Ruth Goode, Impresario: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1946), pp. 158-59; Robert Littell, "The Dancing of Mary Wigman," New York World, Jan. 11, 1931; Idwal Jones, "Passing By," New York American, March 17, 1931;

353

DANCE CHRONICLE

and other miscellaneous clippings, programs, and scrapbooks in the Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

42. Brown, p. 255. 43. Wigman, The Mary Wigman Book, pp. 118-19. 44. Wigman, The Language of Dance, p. 39. 45. Ted Shawn, "One Thousand and One Night Stands" (unedited

TS), II, 123-24, Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

46. Ibid.,p. 115. 47. Ted Shawn and Gray Poole, One Thousand and One Night

Stands (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1960), p. 35. 48. Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis. Pioneer and Prophet (San Francis-

co: J. H. Nash, 1920), p. 67. 49. Shawn and Poole, pp. 138-39, and Ruth St. Denis, An Un-

finished Life (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1939), p. 239. 50. Jane Sherman, The Drama of Denishawn Dance (Middletown,

Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1979), p. 119. 51. Ibid., p. 121. 52. Ted Shawn, Gods Who Dance (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1929),

p. 190. 53. Ibid., p. 12. 54. Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, "A Dialogue" (phonotape,

1965), Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

55. W. B. Seabrook, Adventures in Arabia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927).

56. Shawn, Gods Who Dance, p. 12. 57. "Ted Shawn Returns to New York," New York Post, April 18,

1929; "Ted Shawn Welcomed in Solo Dancing," New York Times, April 16, 1929; and other unidentified clippings, Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

58. "Ted Shawn Scores with Old Favorites in Solo Recital," New York Herald Tribune, April 16, 1929.

59. Ted Shawn, "Religious Use of the Dance," Institute for Religious and Social Studies, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, Dec. 16, 1952.

354


60. Ted Shawn, "Religious Dances: Commentary" (phonotape, 193-), Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

61. Conversation with Barton Mumaw. 62. Ted Shawn, "One Thousand and One Night Stands" (unedited

TS), IV, 115. 63. Ted Shawn, choreographer, [Religious Dances] (Motion Pic-

ture, 193-), and [Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Tour] (Motion Picture, 1948-52), Dance Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

64. Shawn, "Religious Dances." 65. St. Denis, An Unfinished Life, p. 55. 66. Suzanne Shelton, Divine Dancer (New York: Doubleday, 1981),

p. 61, and Don McDonagh, The Complete Guide to Dance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), p. 29.

67. Ted Shawn, Every Little Movement: A Book About Francois Delsarte, 2d ed., rev. and enl. (Pittsfield, Mass.: Eagle Printing Co., 1963), p. 32.

68. Ibid., p. 74. 69. Ibid., p. 33. 70. Ibid., p. 70.

355

Documents

26077455 Four Interpretations of Mevlevi Dervish Dance 1920 1929 X Theodore Barber