You are on page 1of 34

W H Y DANCE?

T O W A R D S A T H E O R Y O E R E E IG IO N AS
P R A C T IC E A N D P E R F O R M A N C E

K1MERER E. L a M o THE

This article engages the dancing and writing o f the American modern dance pio-
neer, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), and the phenomenology o f religion and dance
authored by the Dutch phenomenologist, theologian, and historian ofreligion, Gerardus
van der Leeuw (1890-1950), in order to argue that “dance” is a valuable resource
for developing theories and methods in the study ofreligion that move beyond belief-
centered, text-driven approaches. By setting the work o f Duncan and van der Leeuw
in the context o f the emergence o f the field o f religious studies, this article not only
offers conceptual tools for appreciating dance as a medium o f religious experience
and expression, it also plots a trajectoiy for the development o f a theory o f religion
as practice and performance. Such a theory will benefit scholars eager to attend more
closely to the role o f bodily being in the life o f “religion.”

T h e question w ith w hich I hegan m ^ study o f m odern C hristian the-


ology an d philosophy o f religion seem ed simple enough: W hy d o n ’t
C hristians dance? I soon realized it was m ore im p lic a te d th an I had
im agined. Christians throughout history have danced and are dancing
their ‫ﻫﻪ‬,‫ل‬ it is ju st th at theologians and philosophers interested in the-
orizing “religion” have tended not to notice. N o r can this i g i r a n c e
he hlam ed on individual scholars p er sc. T h e field o f religious studies
took root in largely C hristian contexts (those o f n ineteenth century
Europe) w here m ost Christians considered “dance” a form o f enter-
tain m en t or titillating diversion. Even the rom antic hallet was consid-
ered by intellectual and religious elites to be a derivative art— a realm
o f prim itive an d fem inine values, the playground o f the bourgeoisie.2
N ot surprisingly, the (largely Christian) philosophies o f “religion” th at

1 T he Bihle is replete with references to dance, and there is eridence that at


any point in Christian history, someone somewhere danced his or her faith. T here
was a marked decrease in Christian dance after the Reform ation and Counter-
reformation. For contrasting views on the extent to which dance has heen present
in Christian contexts, see Backman (1952) and the mom ^ n serv ativ e D aries (1984).
For hihliography, see Adams and A postolos-Cappadona (1990). For dehates am ong
American Christians over the value of social dancing, see W agner (1997).
2 See D eborah Jow itt, Time and the Dancing Image (1988), chapters 1 and 2.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Teiden, 2005 Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
Also available online www.brill.nl 17, 101-133
‫ ا‬92 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

em erged in this tim e an d the m ethods o f religious studies th at followed


tended to assume th at dancing adds nothing to the m eaning o f “reli-
gion.” Scholars have tended to perceive “dance” loosely defined as
R y th m ic hodily m ovem ent th at m ay he spontaneous or rehearsed, for-
m al or im provised— as offering an indirect contrihution to religion at
hcst. D ance appears as a symholic enactm ent o f w hat is m ore clearly
represented in verhal forms, or as a physical m eans for entering altered
states o f consciousness whose m eanings are, again, hetter represented
in verhal forms. T h e im plications o f these assum ptions for religions
studies are far-ranging, for nearly all traditions, global and local, hold
some form o f dancing as integral to religions life .‫و‬
M y question evolved: w hat kinds o f theories and m ethods w ould reli-
gious studies scholars produce if they acknowledged th at dancing can
be an effective elem ent o f “religion”?
T his article offers one response by considering the w ork of two indi-
viduals w ho asked similar questions. Early in the tw entieth century, as
the field o f Religionswissenschaft was taking shape, the A m erican pioneer
o f m od ern dance, Isadora D u ncan (1877-1927) and the D utch phe-
nom enologist, theologian, and historian o f religion, G erardus van der
Leeuw (1890-1950), h o th criticized m odern w estern C hristian attitudes
tow ards dance as harm ful to our understanding and practice o f religion,
and van d er Leeuw did so, at least in p art, due to D u n c a n ’s influence.
B orn in California, D u n can hlazed across concert stages of Europe,
w inning acclaim in 1902 as a solo dancer.4 Erom then until h er death
in 1927, she frequented w ith intellectuals, artists, and cultural elites,
sharing h er vision for dance as “a religion, an expression of life” (AD
142). V an d er Leeuw got the message. H e m ay have seen D u ncan per-
form on one o f h er tours through the N etherlands or during his stay
in B erlin .‫ ج‬Regardless, in several places he acknowledges his debt. H e

3 D ance traditions appear, for example, in Islam (the M evleri O rder of Sufis),
South Asian Hinduism (Bharata Natyam, Orissi, Kathak), Tihetan Buddhism, Jewish
Hassidism, and nearly all indigenous religions. For an explanation and critique of
why dance has heen largely ignored hy western thinkers attem pting to theorize
religion, see K im erer L. LaM othe, Between Dancing and Writing: The Practice of Religious
Studies (2004). See also, Ju d ith Lynne H anna, To Dance is Human (1987). See Dils
& ^lh rig h t (2001) for a recent anthology of dance and culture.
4 For hiographical information on D uncan, I rely primarily on Daly (1995), Blair
(1986), and Kendall (1979) as well as on D uncan’s own writings, represented in
her m^tohiography. My Life (1928b, hereafter “M L ”); and her essays collected in
The Art of the Dance (1928a, hereafter “A D ”) and Isadora Speaks (1981, hereafter “IS”).
5 See Lowenthal (1980). D uncan perform ed in her “fine little H olland ^ u n t r y ”
(227) in April 1905, O ctober 1905, April-May 1906, Jan u ary 1907, D ecem ber 1907
W H Y DANGE? 103

credits h er w ith helping him nam e and understand ph en o m en a th at he


witnessed in his studies o f Greek, Egyptian, Indian, and Asian religious,
in Islam, Judaism , and even in Christianity: historical m om ents in which
“d an ce” appears in the “guise” o f “religion.” As he writes: “I shall
m ention w ith h o n o r the nam e o f the person w ho for the first tim e
revealed to us the m ajesty o f the dance, and th at is Isadora D u n c a n .”‫ج‬
Evidence o f h er influence pervades not only his historical studies, hut
his phenom enological m ethod as well.
Eerhaps it is no coincidence that, in addition to sharing a passion
for religion an d dance, these two individuals have suffered similar fates
in their respective disciplines. T hey are celehrated for opening the way
to new developm ents and faulted for failing to leave hehind a system-
atic th eo ry an d m eth o d o f th eir own. O f D u n can Agnes de M ille
exclaims: “Isadora cleared away the ruhhish. She was a gigantic hroom .
T h ere has never heen such a th eater cleaning!” (Terry 1963: 139-69).
Eor Jacq u es W aard en h u rg van der Eeeuw was a “singular hird, heyond
the p a th o f estahlished s c h o la r s h ip .T h e ir respective claims ahout reli-
gion an d dance are considered id io s ^ c ra tic and suhjective, tied to per-
sonality and fueled hy charism a^
It is this com m on fate, I suggest, th a t signals the im portance of
D u n can and van d er Eeeuw ’s w ork for the question posed ahove con-
cerning theory and m ethod in religions studies. As explained helow, the
perspective from w hich their claims have appeared as overly suhjective is
a perspective th at elevates heliefs, texts, a n d /o r verhal forms as the
interpretive key to practices, rituals, or m aterial m anifestations o f reli-
gion. W hile this ^ rs p e c tiv e on religions studies rem ains dom inant across

(with students from her Berlin school), and 1921. She went there to await the hirth
of her first child in 1906.
6 G erardus van der Leeuw, Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art (1963, here-
after “SPB”), 70-1. T he English version is translated from a G erm an translation
of a D utch edition that was edited and puhlished after van der Leeuw’s death. See
Wegen en grenzen. Studie over de verhouding van religie en kunst (1948, 1955: 94). For a
discussion of this translation history, see LaM othe, “W ith D ance in M ind” (unpuh-
lished dissertation), chapter 2. In the plates that accom pany the D utch editions,
van der Leeuw includes a drawing of Isadora Duncan.
7 Jacques W aardenhurg, “T he ?rohlem of Representing Religions and Religion,”
in Religionswissenschaft ‫ س‬Kulturkritik: Beitrage zur Korifrenz The History of Religions and
Critique of Culture in the Days of Gerardus van der Leeeuw (1890-1950), Hans G. Kippenhurg
and Brigitte Luchesi, eds. (1991: 53-4, footnote #40).
8 For ^ c o u n ts of D uncan’s mception and legacy, see Daly (1995), Jow itt (1987),
and Blatr (1986). For characteristic attitudes towards van der Leeuw, see Sharpe
(1986), Twiss & Conser (1‫ و(ةوو‬W ichc (1999), as well as the Freface by N inian
Sm art included in the Frinceton edition of van der Leeuw’s Religion in Essence and
Manfestation (1986, hereafter “R E M ”).
104 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

the field. It is one whose m erits are increasingly u n d er fire. In a num -


her o f recent reflections on the field, scholars critique helief-centered,
text-hased approaches as evidence of a lingering ?ro testan t paradigm
heyond w hich the field m ust m ove.9
In this regard D u n can and van der Leeuw were prescient. D uncan
directly challenges this privilege w hen she proclaim s th at her dancing
is a catalyst for renew ing “religion.” V an der Leeuw docs so as well
in theorizing dance as religion, and in developing a dance-inspired phe-
]m m enological m ethod. By tracing D u n c a n ’s influence through van der
Leeuw ’s phenom enology o f religion, then, this article not only offers
conceptual tools for appreciating dance as a m edium o f religions expe-
rience and expression, it also dem onstrates how religions studies scholars
can find in the study o f dance valuahle resources for developing theo-
ries o f religion as practice and ^ r fo rm a n c e th at offer an alternative to
text-hased ap p roaches . 9‫ل‬
In support o f this project. P art I provides a hrief account o f w hat I
c'dVlforces offorgetting th at characterize the perspective from w hich dance
appears as m arginal an d D u ncan and van der Leeuw appear as his-
torical curiosities to the project o f theorizing religion .‫ إإ‬P art 11 evalu-
ates attem pts to resist these forces in recent accounts of ritual as practice
and as perform ance. P art 111 elucidates D u n ca n ’s claim th at dance is
“a religion, an expression o f life” and traces its echoes through van der
Leeuw ’s phenom enology o f religion and dance. P art IV huilds P art 111

‫ و‬T he refleetions I have in m ind include wnrks such as: K ippenherg (2002),
W asserstrom ( ‫ رووول‬, W ichc ( ‫ رووول‬, Jan tzen ( ‫ وول‬5‫ر‬, Asad ( ‫ وول‬3‫ر‬, as well as works
hy Penner (1‫ و‬8 ‫ ر( و‬Preus (1‫ و(?ةو‬and Sharpe (1986). This impulse and critique are
also evident in essays from Critical Terms ‫ ׳ارم‬Religious Studies, edited by M ark G.
Taylor (1998). See in particular the essays on ،،Belief” (by Donald Lopez), ،،Experience”
(by R ohert Sharf), ،،Performance” (by C atherine Bell), and ،‘Religion, Religions,
Religious” (by Jo n ath an z. Smith), as well as the “Introduction” by Taylor. See
also, Sullivan (1990).
10 O ne implication of the following analysis is that moving heyond a helief-cen-
tered, text-driven approach to religious studies will involve embracing “theology”
as an integral if contested resource in the study of religion. See LaM othe (2004),
Part I, for further discussion.
11 To assert that dance has not appeared as a resource for theoretical thinking
in religious studies does not discount the growing hody of ethnographic, anthro-
pological, and theoretical literature on dance in world cultures. R ather, I suggest
that theorists of dance and theorists of religion have m uch to offer one another in
the comm on project of attem pting to nam e that which eludes verhal representa-
tion. Among dance theorists, Sondra Eraleigh (1987) hegins such a conversation.
Roger G araudy (1972) is the only scholar I know who argues that American mod-
ern dancers, D uncan included, m ade dances that offered philosophical reflections
on the nature and value of religion.
W H Y DANGE? 105

in identifying pam llcE betw een D u n ca n ’s m ethods o f dance education


an d van d er L eeuw ’s phenom enological m ethod. P art V distills the
im plications o f this analysis for a theory o f religion (and not ju st ritual)
as practice and perform ance.

1. Forces o f Forgetting

T h e perspectives from which dance, D uncan, and van der Leeuw appear
as m arginal to religions studies are governed by three forces o f forget-
ting th at have d om inated w estern theoretical thinking about religion
since the end o f the eighteenth century: rationalization, inwardization, and
textualization.12 T hese forces not only helped birth the category o f “reli-
gion” as an object o f scientific study, they also represent the principle
strategies upo n w hich scholars continue to rely as they process religions
phenom ena, regardless o f w hether they consider themselves “hum anists”
or “social scientists,” em pathetic interpreters or objective foct-findersT
In revisiting form ative m om ents o f each, 1 call attention to the role
played by the practice o f w riting in its authorizing and note the impli-
cations for acknow ledging dance as religion.
Rationalization. T h e force 1 am describing as rationalization finds a
crystallizing m o m e n t in Im m an u el K a n t’s sem inal essay, “W h at is
E nlightenm ent?” (1784). H ere K an t honors reason or rational thinking
as the key to h u m an “enlightenm ent,” described by him as a p erson’s
em ergence from “self-incurred im m aturity” (54). W hile K a n t defines
“reason” as operating over and against “experience” (i.e., sensory infor-
m ation), he denies th at fois privilege is simply given. H u m a n beings
m ust exercise an d develop their reason in order to be able to reflect
u p o n the contents an d enabling conditions o f th eir experience and
acquire knowledge. M oreover, as K an t insists, “matters o f religion [are]
the focal poin t o f e n lig h te n m e n t. . . because religions im m aturity is the
m ost pernicious and dishonourable variety o f all” (59). Religious phe-
nom ena, in fois sense, are the m eat on w hich people cut their rational
teeth. Exercising his own reason, K an t concludes th at the essence of
religion lies in “rational belief”— that is, a belief (which cannot rationally

12 In identifying these three, I do not claim that they exhaust the held of influences.
There are others implied hy one or more of these, such as individualization. However,
I consider these three dom inant for reasons that follow.
13 For discussions on the emergence of “religion” as a category of study in the
m odem west, see w.c. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion ( 1‫ ;) وول‬and Jo n ath an
z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Critical Terms (ed. M ark c. Taylor,
8‫) وول‬. See also Smith (1982).
١^ KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

or ^ p i r i c a ll y proved) th at serves the Reeds o f reason by providing a


p oint o f orientation (such as an idea o f infinite order) or by enhanc-
ing o u r ability to derive pleasure from obeying the m oral law (such as
an idea o f absolute goodness ) .‫ ئ‬All religions p henom ena, for K ant,
stand or fall as “religion” based on the degree to w hich they express
and encourage rational belief
R e a d in g b etw een the lines o f this essay, it app ears th a t K a n t’s
identification o f rational belief as the essence o f religion rests on an
assum ption th at w riting is the practice best suited for m aturing reason.
As he insists, ‘،all th at is” needed to em erge from self-incurred im m a-
turity is public freedom . H e explains, “By the public use o f on e’s own
reason I m ean th at use w hich anyone m ay m ake o f it as a man o f learn-
ing addressing the entire reading public” (55). Bublic freedom is the abil-
ity to sit alone in a quiet place and read and write. ‫ أل‬is a freedom
pursued as an individual w ho detaches him self from civic responsibili-
tics, reflects upon his experiences, and addresses his thoughts to a “read-
ing public.” T hus, to enjoy “free m ovem ent” w ith respect to “dogm as
and form ulas,” revelation or history, a person m ust learn to open a
distance betw een his sense o f self and his bodily e ^ e r ie n c e including
the im m ediate sensations o f eyelids drooping, stom ach growling, or rest-
lessness while sitting (55). F or K ant, it is the practice o f w riting for a
reading public th at ensures th at a person will develop a proper, rational
relation to religion— one th at serves to preserve the tim e and space
needed for a free public exercise o f reason.
T h ere is m ore to K a n t’s view o f religion th an the self-reinforcing
cycle in w hich reason protects the conditions required for its own oper-
ation. K a n t’s rationalization of religion effectively locates the source of
the sacred in the practice o f w riting for a reading public, over and
against the acts o f reading scripture, seeking revelation, or heeding tra-
dition. T o develop o n e’s reason, for K ant, is a “sacred right” (52), the
purpose for w hich hum ans exist. G iven this orientation it is not sur-
prising th at “d an ce” docs not appear on his screen as “religion.” D ance
is not only w hat those w ith im m ature reason do (primitives, children.

14 K ant encapsulates his riew on rational belief and the idea of infinite order in
“W hat is O rientation in l i n k i n g ? ” ( ‫ ﺟﻮل‬0] ‫? ل‬fifi]); he discusses the rational belief
in absolute goodness in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone ( 3 ‫ ﺟﻮل‬0] ‫)] و ? ل‬. See
“Freface to the First E dition” for a concise summary. W hile scholars such as
Wollstonecraft ( 2 ‫ وول‬2] ‫)] و ? ل‬, Lloyd ( 8 4 ‫ ) ول‬and Nicholson ( 8 ‫ ) وول‬challenge the ways
in which K ant identifies this rational capacity with men, much work remains to
be done in developing an philosophy of religion that incorporates this critique. Eor
one approach, seejantzen. Becoming Divine: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Religion{ 1999).
W H Y DANGE? ‫ل)ل‬
7

the “fair sex,” low er classes and peasants). D ance is a practice th at


exercises attention to hodily sensation, and thus, develops a range of
aesthetic sensihilities diam etrically opposed to those K an t deems nee-
essary for the cultivation o f a m ature reason and a rationally-defensi-
hlc view o f “religion.”
Inwardization. As ?ro udfoot (1985) and Ja n tz e n (1995) am ong others
acknowledge, the inw ardization o f “religion” is largely cem ented in the
response Friedrich Schleierm acher levels against K a n t.15 In his classic
On Religion (1799), h l e i e r m a c h e r insists th at the core o f religion is not
“rational helief,” h u t lies ra th er in the gifting o f experience in th at
living, fleeting m o m en t ju st p rio r to any i n c e p t i o n o f suhject and
ohjectA “R eligion” is a “intuition and feeling of the universe” as acting
in, on and through us— a m om ent w hich reason can know only in
hindsight, an d then, hroken in two, as a (suhjective) feeling of freedom
and (ohjective) intuition o f a universe or whole (22).^ For h le ie r m a c h e r ,
it is religion, this feeling and intuition of the universe, th at provides us
with the conditions needed to think rationally and act ethically. Against
K ant, h l e i e r m a c h e r insists: “© nly the drive to intuit, if it is oriented
to the infinite, places the m ind in unlim ited freedom ; only religion saves
it from the m ost ignom inious fetters o f opinion and desire . . . it is just
a question o f finding the point from w hich on e’s relationship to the

15 See Jan tzen ( 5 ‫) وول‬: “ [Tjhe idea of such a mystical core of religion derives in
large p art from Schleierm acher’s attem pt to circumvent K antian strictures on reli-
gious knowledge” (338). Jan tzen also exposes how the move to privilege a mystical
core of religion represents one of the “technologies of patriarchy.” See note #21
helow.
16 I disagree with Sharfw hen he descrihes the experience invoked hy Schleiermacher
(and others) as im mediate, suhjective, and unexamined. For S hleierm ach er, as
S harf notes, the “mysterious m om ent” of religion represents an inextricahle fusion
of suhject and object; it “occurs in every sensory perception” before “intuition and
feeling have separated, where sense and its objects have, as it were, flowed into
one another and hecome one” (in Taylor 1998: 31). T he implication of this for-
m ulation, however, is th at any representation of this m om ent as an intuition
(object/it) and a feeling (subject/I)— that is, as my experience— has already lost the
mom ent. As a result, “I” can never know my own experience fully or immediately,
for “it” always already includes the self I was in that mom ent. V an der Leeuw
amplifies this implication of Schleierm acher’s work in the design of his phenom e-
nological method. See Part IV helow.
17 See atso: “T he universe exists in uninterrupted activity and reveals itself to us
every mom ent. Every form that it brings forth, every being to which it gives sep-
arate existence according to the fullness of life, every occurrence that slips forth
from its rich ever-fruitful womb, is an action of the same upon us. Thus to accept
ewrything individual as a part of the whole and everything limited as a representation
of the infinite is religion” (25).
KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

infinite can be discovered” (28-9). For ^ ]fie ie rm a c h e r then, the “touch-


stone” (2d) for any theological or ritual form , is w hether it cultivates
the capacity for sensing an d intuiting the ongoing, creative action of
the universe at w ork in our relation to all th at is.
Given h l e i e ^ a c h e r ’s focus on sensing and intuiting, it w ould fol-
low th at he recom m ends different practices for the m aturation o f a free
h u m an being. His “T h ird S peech” suggests as m uch. H e urges inter-
locutors to educate their senses. Nevertheless, the practice he recom -
m ends is sitting, and turning the senses inward, h l e i e r m a c h e r dismisses
the “p ru d en t an d ^ a c tic a l people” (59) w ho are so busy scurrying from
place to place th at they cannot notice the deep inw ard call of religion.
As he insists, “everything th at belongs to a truly h u m an life and th at
should be an ever m ore active and effective drive in us m ust proceed
from the innerm ost p a rt o f our constitution. Religion is of this n atu re ”
(57). W e m ust practice an inw ard listening.
In this process, m oreover, the act o f w riting rem ains crucial to a
p erso n ’s ability to educate the senses properly and for reasons similar
to those o f K ant. T h e practice o f writing, for Schleierm acher, protects
a p erso n ’s reason from being encum bered by theological dogm a. In
w riting a person discovers how impossible it is to rationalize religion:
to describe religion is to “desecrate” it (32). As such the act o f w riting
provides a person w ith a perspective from w hich to see th at w hatever
can be w ritten ab o u t e i g i o m i n c l u d i n g theology an d tr a d itio n - is
m erely an em pty husk. By w riting a person preserves the freedom to
ho n o r h er own inw ard experience as the locus o f revelation and com-
m unionT T he fact that he is writing about “religion” at all, Schleiermacher
avers, attests to its truth: only if there were som ething m ore pressing
than reason acting upon him would he engage in such an irrational actA

18 T he dependenee on w riting undercuts S h le ie ™ a c h e r’s otherwise positive


endorsem ent of women as well. Even though Schleiermacher celehrates women as
haring a more acute ahility to feel than men, it is men, primarily, who write.
Although there is eridence that he wrote some of his texts with a w om an he
esteemed and loved, and that ideas in the text derived from letters she had writ-
ten to him, the authorship of the text rem ained his alone. See R ichardson ( 1 1 ‫) وو‬
for an exposition of Schleierm acher’s early riews on women and their significance
in his time.
19 As he insists: “T h at I speak does not originate from a rational decision of
from hope or fear, nor does it happen in accord with some final purpose of for
some arhitrary or accidental reason. It is the inner, irresistihle necessity of my
nature; it is a dirine calling; it is that which determines my place in the universe
and makes me the heing that I am. Even if it were neither suitahle nor prudent
W H Y DANGE? 109

T hus w hat initially appears as a shift in the essence o f religion from


rational helief to in n er experience serves to reinforce a helief in the
practice o f writing as capahle of guaranteeing a p ro p er relation o f reason
to “religion .٩٥ For h oth K an t and h l e i e r m a c h e r w riting m ediates
rational reflection on religion— regardless o f w hether religion is a m at-
ter o f helief or feeling. In so far as this axis (rational helief versus inner
experience) continues to define a dim ension o f the field o f religious
studies, the hope o f acknow ledging dance as religion are bleak.21 At
best a scholar w ho works w ithin this paradigm can perceive and eval-
uate the action o f dancing as an external, derivative expression o f w hat
“religion,” at its core, should be.
Textualization. T h e forces o f rationalization and inw ardization give rise
to a th ird th at crystallizes w hat they already imply: a privileging o f texts

to speak of religion, the thing that thus drives me crushes these petty notions with
its heavenly pow er” (5).
20 D onald Lopez notes the i^ e d e p e n d e n c e of rationalization and inwardization
in his critique of helief: “T he prohlem, then, is not w hether helief exists . . . but
w hether religion must be represented as something that derives from belief, as
something with external manifestations that can ultimately he traced back to an
inner assent to a cognitive preposition, as a state of m ind that produces practice”
(in Taylor 134 : ‫) ووو‬. fie identifies the roots of this nexus in “an assumption deriv-
ing from the history of Christianity that religion is ahove all an interior state of
assent to certain truths” (31), and calls for an understanding of helief as arising
“from a specific set of m aterial interests” (28). My critique reaches for the histor-
ical, m aterial interests driving this “assumption.” I seek to move beyond a con-
textual approach to religion (i.e., linlting belief to a set of material interests) to a
relational, dynamic approach descrihed in Part IV helow.
21 As Asad notes, dance is not the only aspect of hum an life that suffers from
this perspective. By defining religion as a rationally defensihle, inw ard event, he
notes, scholars m isinterpret medieval Christianity (45-6, and in general. Chapters
1-4). “It is preeminently the [^^-E nlightenm ent] Christian church that has occupied
itself with identifying, cultivating and testing helief as a verhalizable inner condition
of true religion” (48).
Grace Jan tzen ( 5 ‫ ) وول‬agrees and elahorates. Descrihing how m odem philoso-
phers of religion rely upon the example of medieval Christianity to defend their
attempts to identify an inner (mtio^lfy-defensihle) core of religion, she writes: “Eor
such projects to be possihle, it is essential that mysticism he seen as an ineffahle,
private state of (onsciousness” (320-1). She also notes how the privatization of mys-
ticism serves a patriarchal agenda, domesticating the religious experiences of women:
it “keeps G od (and women) safely out of politics and the puhlic realm; it allows
mysticism to flourish as a secret inner life” am ong those who prop up the status
quo (346). She concludes: “the idea of an essence of mysticism is a patriarchal con-
struct” (347).
I would add th at the yoking of mysticism with a private, inw ard belief has
encouraged scholars to ignore the hodily dimensions of medieval life including
occurrences, however rare, of dancing. For an example of an attem pt to correct
titis bias in medieval studfes, see Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late
Medieval spirituality (1‫) ووو‬, edited hy M ary A. Suydam & Jo a n n a E. Ziegler.
110 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

as object, m ethod, m odel, and goal o f religious studies, As the field


em erged in the last decades o f the nineteenth century, religionists of
all sorts em braced w ritten texts or scripts as the forms th at best doc-
u m en t the defining core o f religion, w hether rational belief or inw ard
feeling. T h e corollaries continue to guide graduate education in the
field: a scholar accesses an objective m eaning o f religions p h enom ena
(whatever the form) by studying languages, translating texts, and apply-
ing linguistic m odels o f interpretation to discern their m eaning.
D ecades before M ax M uller H egel’s philosophy of religion set the
stage for this developm ent. In his 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy o f Religion
H egel identifies his practice of philosophizing about religion as itself a
kind o f religions practice or “cultus” capable o f realizing the tru th of
religion: “philosophy [too] is a continual cultus” (194). For Hegel, w hen
scholars practice philosophy in the way he describes, they will not only
u nd erstan d religion as a concept and as historical forms; they will actu-
alize in their own actions w hat “religion”— C ]^ stia n ity in p a r t i c u l a r -
promises: nam ely, the m a n c ip a tio n or consum m ation o f h u m an and
G od, absolute knowing. T h ey will com e to know for themselves w hat
religion represents in a figurative form. Said otherwise, H egel confirms
th at by reading and w riting about “religion”— as both a concept and
as historical s h a p e s -p h ilo so p h e rs will learn to see ،،spirit.” “Spirit” is
H egel’s nam e for the absolute conceived as the m ovem ent o f its own
becom ing, an “eternally bringing itself forth” (411).22 In short, it is by
practicing philosophy th at people will develop a consciousness o f how
their thinking about religion is ^ r tic ip a tin g in the process by w hich
Spirit (as all th at is) becom es conscious (in h u m an minds) of itself (as
the m ovem ent o f its own becoming).
T h e im plications o f H egel’s position drive the textualization o f “reli-
gion” : historical m anifestations o f religion are figurative representations
o f philosophical truths; the philosopher or scholar of religion is best
positioned to in terp ret the figurative language o f religions phenom ena,
and the authority for so doing derives from how the practices o f phi-
losophy reading and w r itin g - tr a in h um an reason to see (the absolute
as) spirit.
In his account o f texualization as it flourishes beyond H egel into the
tw entieth century, T alal A sad implies th at the act of conceptualizing
“religion” as a figurative or symbolic text is w hat enables the study of

22 See also the “Freface” that Hegel wrote for the Phenomenology of spirit ( 1 7 7 ‫و‬
[1806]).
W H Y DANCE? Ill

religion to com e into existence as an academ ic discipline. A sad notes


th a t even w hen scholars in the early tw entieth century endorse the
study o f rites and rituals, they approach these actions as texts, as sym-
holic actions rath er th an disciplinary practices: scholars seek to read their
meaning.23 A t stake in this strategy, he affirms, is nothing less th an the
success o f the academ ic enterprise. If ritual is m erely symholic action
(i.e., a re ^ e s e n ta tio n as opposed to a transform ing practice), then ١٧^
can read it. W e can, for exam ple, “capture the essence o f Islamic rit-
ual” w ithout heing M uslim or w ithout perform ing the ritual. “All th at
is required is the attem pt to understand, with ‘sym pathy and respect
as well as openness to the sources,’ w hat Islamic rituals ‘p o rtray and
sym holize’ ” (79). In other words, only w hen ١٧^ assume th at religions
p h en o m en a are hke texts can we assume th at the process of learning
languages, deciphering texts (whether w ritten or enacted), and trans-
lating m eaning from a foreign context to our own will produce ohjective
scholarship, a rational perspective on “religion.”
Despite the ample fruits, the costs of text-driven approaches to smdying
religion are m any. In relation to dancing, for exam ple, w hen scholars
ap proach it as symholic action, they fail to consider any contrihution
to religion m ade hy the action o f dancing itself. T hey assume th at inter-
p reting the dance entails reading the gestures as expressions o f stories or
states o f consciousness, and translating this hody language into ration-
ally-defensihle m otivations.
M ore im p o rtan t still, text-driven ^ p r o a c h e s foster ignorance o f the
dynam ic on w hich the scholarly enterprise itself rests: nam ely, the fact
th at reading and w riting themselves are disciplines th at inform w hat a
scholar can perceive, think, and u n d erstan d .^ Such approaches encour-
age scholars to ignore how their own practices o f scholarship educate
their sensihilities and exercise their attention away from dance. Text-
hased m ethods assume as norm ative the experience o f the hody th at

23 Assessing the implications of this development, he queries: “is it possihle that


the transform ation of rites from discipline to symhol, from practicing distinctive
virtues (passions) to representing by means of practices, has been one of the pre-
conditions for the larger conceptual transform ation of heterogeneous life (acting
and being acted upon) into readable text?” (79).
24 M argaret Miles has developed a similar critique in her work on images in
Christian history. She argues that text-driven approaches render invisible those
whose prim ary modes of comm unication and experience are not verbal. She guides
scholars in developing theories of visual understanding and methods of critical image
use. See Image as Insight (1985), chapters 1, 2 and 7 in particular, and for an appli-
cation, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West
( 1991).
112 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

scholars themselves cultivate in m astering the acts o f reading and writ-


ing. T h ey reproduce a helief th at writing is the practice hy w hich reason
exerts its freedom over and against hodily experience and therehy secures
a rational stance on “religion.” Scholars using such m ethod thus per-
petuate against their hcst intentions a resistance to acknowledging rhyth-
mi'c bodily action in its m y ria d forms as effective with respect to “religion.”

2. Theories o f Ritual as Practice and Performance

N ow here have challenges to belief-centered, text-driven approaches to


religious studies been m ore developed th an in recent theories of ritual
as practice and perform ance. Even here, however, forces of rationali-
zation, inw ardization, and textualization continue to operate, foreclos-
ing attention to contributions dancing makes in religious life. I consider
a representative o f each cam p before m oving to explore w hat D uncan
and van d er Leeuw offer this conversation.
Ritual as practice. In developing her theory of ritual as practice, Catherine
Bell draws on Eoucault, Bourdieu, de C erteau and others to account
for the role played by concrete h u m an laboring in the process through
w hich people becom e religious subjects.^ Bell develops the idea o f “rit-
ualization” to identify how ways o f acting distinguish themselves for
specific purposes ( ‫? وول‬: fil). As she affirms such a perspective encour-
ages attention to the “p rim acy” o f the body, and its active role in ritual
as “sim ultaneously defining (imposing) and e ^ e rie n c in g (receiving) the
values ordering the environm ent” ( ‫? وول‬: fi2). How ever, Bell em braces
“the body” at the expense o f (its) consciousness. Bell talks of the “vocab-
ulary” o f ritual as gesture and w ord; she asserts th at ritual creates rit-
ualized agents who em body cultural “schemas” ( ‫? وول‬: fil). She concludes
th at the ritual efficacy o f bodily action depends upon the ^ r tic ip a n ts ’
misrecognition o f w hat their own bodies are doing. She docs so in order
to secure a rational explanation for w hy people move their bodies in
space: if ^ r tic ip a n ts knew th at they w ere constructing their own reality
rath er th an transm itting eternal truths, they w ould have no reason to
m ake the m ovem ents.

25 See Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992) and Ritual (199?) in particular. See
Grimes (1996) for an overriew of developments in ritual studies. See also MacAloon
(1984) for a focus on studies of ritual as perform ance. See Csordas (1994) for
approaches to the study of em hodim ent in culture generally. See atso Bourdieu
(19??) and de C erteau (1984).
W H Y DANGE? 113

In these respects, we see how Bell, in the effort to acknowledge the


role o f hodily action in m aidng religion, invokes the forces of ration-
alization (in assigning m otivation), inw ardization (in assum ing intention),
and textuakzation (in descrihing function). T he result is a curious impasse:
“w e” as scholars can never know how a given ritual makes or inscrihes
hodies. W e cannot ask “th em ” hecause they do not know. Yet we do
not ourselves know hecause we are not engaged in such hodily action—
we are only writing. Borrow ing A sad’s term s, Bell’s w ork traces the
“divorce” th at founds the field betw een an idea o f ritual as “represen-
tations an d skill in m anipulating representations,” on the one hand,
and as a “disciplinary program for form ing the self’ on the other (Asad
1993: 67-8).26 In so far as scholars perceive ritual as the form er they
end up discussing the body as a passive recipient o f “cultural im prints”
or im criptions (76), rather than as a process of its own becom ing through
perception an d its own creative action.
In so far as this divorce reflects and reproduces a helief in writing,
as suggested ahove, th en one im plication for scholars seeking to under-
stand religion is th at they m ust develop a consciousness o f their own
w riting practice as a “disciplinary p rogram .” Bell acknowledges the need
for such developm ents. She calls for “a reconstructed p h e n o m e n o lo g y -
a phenom enology for the post-m odern era, so to speak in w hich the
scholar and the conditions o f the scholarly project itself are systemati-
cally included as p a rt o f the total phenom enon u n d er scrutiny” (1997:
266). As P art IV attests, such was van der Leeuw ’s intent.
Ritual as performance. In the study o f ritual as ^ rfo rm a n c e , forces of
forgetting m ay also be seen w orking in and against the attem pt to affirm
the bodily dim ensions of ritual. In this area the w ork o f V ictor T u rn e r
is se m in a iv In T u rn e r’s words, “A ^ rf o rm a n c e is a dialectic o f ‘flow,’
th at is, spontaneous m ovem ent in w hich action and awareness are one,
and ‘reflexivity,’ in w hich the central m eanings, values, and goals o f a

26 Asad specifically brings up tfie example of dancing as an activity tfiat was


perceived in tfic Renaissance botfi as a medium of representation and as a prac-
tice for developing moral virtues. In ttiis sense, dancing ctiallenges ttic distinction
tic sets up between mpresentational and disciplinary perspectives on ritual (68-9).
T he fact ttiat it is mom difficult to ttic deny ttic disciplinary aspects of dance train-
ing pertiaps explains as well its exclusion from ttieories of religion wtiicti depend
for ttieir success on conceptions of action as representational or symbolic.
27 See in particular: The Ritual Process (1966) and The Anthropology of Performance
(1987). O ttier im portant ttieorists of performance include E rring Goffman (in anttiro-
pology) and J.J. Austin (in linguistics). However, T u rn er worked most closely witti
religious materials and as sucti tiis work tias been most influential to date for ttic-
orists in religious studies. Rictiard S tiectin er (1985) furttier develops T u rn er’s perfor-
mative approacti. Eor discussion, see Bell (1997), ctiapter 3.
114 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

culture are seen ،in action5” (quoted in Schechner & Appel, 1990: 1).
T u rn e r is critical o f G eertz, for exam ple, for reading social dram as as
“texts,” as m ere records or explanations. H e intends to access the “liv-
ing core” o f ritu al.^ W h at attention to dialectics o f flow and reflexivity
helps isolate, as R ich ard Schechner elahorates and is transformation: the
rhythm o f flow and reflection transform s those w ho ^ r tic ip a te in it.
T h e question w ith w hich T u rn e r and those w ho follow in his ١٧^ ^
wrestle is how to articulate the nature o f these transform ations. W hen
faced w ith this question nearly every scholar poses yet evades the issue.
T h e collection o f essays edited hy Schechner and Appel, By Means of
Performance (1991), still at the growing edge of the field, offers the fol-
low ing exam ples .‫ وج‬B arh ara M yerhoff notes th a t anthropologists are
“w eak” w hen it comes to discussing ritual tm m f o ^ a tio n s : “T h e m ore
pow erful altered states: trance, ecstasy, possession, ohsession, conver-
sion, and the hke are often regarded as ineffahle” (245). In his essay
S chechner dem onstrates this weakness. H e descrihes how hum ans “are
ahle to absorb an d learn hehavior so thoroughly th a t the new ‘per-
form ed5 behavior knits seamlessly into ongoing ‘spontaneous5 action,”
b u t he docs not give an account o f how such absorption and knitting
occur (45). Bhillip Z arrilli, in his study o f A sian bodily disciplines,
describes an “encoding o f b o d y ^ n s c io u s n e s s ’’ th at occurs through rep-
etition, and then invokes a “subtle interior psychophysical process” to
account for the “interiority55 th at an actor in kathakali is able to develop
(134). M onica Bethe and K aren Brazell, in discussing the training for
noh theater, write: “T h e underlying rules m ay never be explicitly stated
or taught, b u t they are s u b ^ m c io u sly internalized during the course
o f training” (176).
In these and m any other instances across the field, scholars outline
the limits o f their ability to articulate the nature o f transformation— bod-
ily, em otional, itoellectual— th at can occur in and through the act of
perform ance. T hese limits represent the logical outcom e o f em ploying
the three strategics (or forces o f forgetting) described above. In an

28 V ictor T urner, “Are there universals of perform ance in myth, ritual, and
dram a?” in Schechner & Appel ( 6 ‫ وول‬0 : ‫) ل‬.
2‫ و‬T he essays in By Means of Performance ( 0 ‫ ) وول‬docum ent foe written dimension
of a conference given in honor of Victor T urner. T he conference included per-
formances as well. Some of foe essays in foe collection attem pt to detail foe expe-
rience of perform ing as a way to grasp foe efficacy of ritual. As such this collection
witnesses to foe need for foe kind of development in scholarship I am advocating,
in which scholars mine foe perform ance arts for conceptual tools and not just for
cases or examples of certain ideas.
W H Y DANGE? 115

attem pt to rationalize (and thus validate) ^ rf o rm a n c e phenom ena, schol-


ars seek to m ap the inward character of a transform ation. T o get at
th at inw ard c a r á c t e r , they textualize the ritual action (even w hen resist-
ing a text-driven ^ p r o a c h ) , by com m enting upon the gram m ar and
vocabulary o f the event and using expressions such as “im cription” and
“coding.” In sum, they attem pt to read bodily m arks as clues to an
inward transform ation so as to provide a justification for the bod-
ily action. Against their best interests, such theorists deny agency to bod-
ily m ovement: they reinforce the view that writing is the m edium through
w hich they will exercise the freedom of their reason (and its objectivity)
in relation to “religion.”
In sum, fois analysis suggests th at the obstacle to theorizing rhyth-
mic bodily m ovem ent is not simply a lingering P rotestant bias tow ards
beliefs or texts from w hich scholars in the field can easily extricate their
work. T h e authority for strategics o f rationalization, inw ardization and
texualization lies in the practice of w riting— m ore precisely, in the lived
experience generated by the act o f writing. Appeals to objectivity derive
their authority from a faith they d e n ^ f a i t h in w riting as a disciplinary
practice. In short scholars cannot see about their subjects w hat they are
educated not to see about themselves: th at w hat they do in ^ a c tic in g
verbal skills changes their bodies, enabling and lim iting w hat they can
sense an d know as “religion.”
W hen all we do is read and write, everything looks fike a text, includ-
ing dance. Instances o f dancing in religious contexts are com pared to
texts, treated like texts, translated into texts, a n d /o r affirm ed as bod-
ily writing. W hile scholars have m ade great progress in noticing and
describing dances, they have not yet seriously challenged the forces th at
cultivate an ignorance of dance w ithin religious studies. In order to
acknowledge dance as religiously effective, it is not enough to see ritual as
practice and ^ rfo rm a n c e ; we m ust extend fois analysis to the rational
beliefs and inw ard experiences and textual processes o f religion as well.
O nly then can ١٧^ begin to shake the tenacious grip o f rationalization,
inw ardization, and textualization over the scholarly im agination. D uncan
and van der Leeuw, in their different ways, undertook fois challenge.

3. Interpreting Duncan's Legacy

Between 1‫ ووة‬and 1920, as scholars in Europe and A m erica w ere nur-


turing the ]rcwly-emergent “science” of religion, the A m erican dancer
Isadora D u n can achieved rem arkable success perform ing solo dances
116 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

whose m ovem ents pulsed an d flowed in accord w ith rhythm s o f w ater


and wind, to the music o f classical and R om antic composers. Along
the way, she m ade a claim th at was unique relative to other perform ers
in h er day and to people throughout history hefore her: as a woman
perform ing dances o f h er own creation alone on stage in public, she was
renew ing religion. For D uncan, dance renews “religion” hy generating
new ideals o f a hum an relation to the constitutive forces of the universe—
ideals o f god, heauty, and love; and it does so w hen a dancer moves
from an aw akened “soul.”
T o date, few scholars in dance studies have paid attention to these
claims oth er th an to acknowledge th at D u ncan thought of her danc-
ing as “a religion” (Daly 1995: 19-11, 30). T h e omission is under-
Standahle. D u n c a n ’s allusions to religion are scattered across notes,
speeches, an d puhlished writings; she uses the term to refer to specific
traditions an d to som ething th at transcends them all. She am higuously
refers to herself as a “Pagan Puritan; Puritanical P agan” (ML 955); a
“mystic” in search o f beauty and love. In response scholars attem pting
to delineate a “consistent theoretical fm m ew ork” in her writings tend
to purchase coherence at the expense o f h er religious vocabulary (Daly
1995: 99). Scholars in terp ret D u n c a n ’s references to soul, for exam ple,
as a “rhetorical strategy” aim ed at gaining credihility for dance; as a
“cultural h a h it” for nam ing deep em otional e ^ e rie n c e s ;^ or as poetic
“flowering.”31 C oncern am ong dance scholars to dem onstrate the rigor
o f their em ergent field (by em ploying the forces nam ed ahove) rein-
forces the tendency to explain away D u n c a n ’s religious rhetoric.
H ow ever, closer attention to this rhetoric reveals a p attern w hich
van der Leeuw discerned: D u ncan uses the term “religion” in m uch
the same ways as h er ^ t e m p o r a r i e s in the field o f religious studies,
h er beloved rom antic poets, and in particular, the philosopher whose
w ork “ravished” h er “being,” Friedrich Nietzsche (ML 141). D uncan
uses the term “religion” to m o u n t an engaged critique o f C hristian
thought an d practice. She deploys the term to reform Christianity along
the trajectory o f h er engagem ent with it. A quick introduction to D uncan
precedes an interpretation, via van der Leeuw, o f her religious claims
for h er dance.

‫؟‬٠ Daly (2-31 :5 ‫) وول‬. See also “ [I]n D uncan’s day, such inrisihle power . . . was
accorded dirine dimensions” (38). Franko ( 5 ‫ ) وول‬discerns a theory of emotional
expression em hedded in D uncan’s work.
31 Note: “ [S]he analyzed her discovery of the solar plexus as the crater of all
m otor power (even if she did, at times, flower it by saying that the soul was in
the solar plexus)” (Terry 1963: 95).
W H Y DANGE? 117

D u n can inherited h er critical ^ rs p e c tiv e on C hristian religion from


h er m other, M ary D uncan, who, w hen D u ncan was five m onths old,
renounced h er C a h o licism and divorced her hushand. ‫ أل‬was M ary
D un can w ho instilled in her four children a passion for the m ^ts-m usic,
literature, the visual arts— and a com m itm ent to developing their own
artistic spirits. E nding h er form al schooling at age ‫ ل‬2 ‫ و‬D u ncan spent
m uch o f h er tim e reading, dancing on the C alifornia heaches, and
inventing w hat she called her ‘،religious dances” (ME 28). She rejected
existing traditions o f dance— the codified techniques o f hallet, the titil-
lating entertain m en t o f vaudeville, the class-hound social dances for
failing to realize the potency o f dance as art. She rejected the forms
o f P rotestant and C atholic C hristianity with w hich she was fam iliar for
failing to realize the holiness o f hu m an em hodim ent. S upported hy her
family, she n u rtu re d her passion for dancing into a conviction th at
dancing is the art capahle o f overcom ing w estern C hristian antipathy
to the hody she helieved th at dance could generate new ideals of bod-
ily being as “holy.” In 1899, c o n ^ n c e d th at A m ericans did not under-
stand h er vision, she left for E urope, family in tow.
Indeed, in E urope D u ncan found the inspiration and audiences she
needed to develop h er principles o f dance practice and perform ance.
In E ondon and in Paris, she frequented m useum s, studying the danc-
ing f ib r e s on G reek artifacts. She traveled to Greece; she read Nietzsche,
W hitm an, K eats, R ousseau, D arw in and Haeckel. By 1992, D uncan
was perform ing for large, enthusiastic crowds in Budapest, M unich,
and V ienna, and th en on to Paris and M oscow, through Italy and the
N etherlands. In 1903 she delivered and published her first essay, “T h e
D ance o f the F u tu re,” in w hich she proclaim s th at dance is “a high
religious a rt” (AD 62). In Berlin they called h er “D as heilige Isadora” :
(Eowenthal 1993: 193).
W h en van der Eeeuw credits D u ncan for dem onstrating how dance
can ap p ear as religion, an “expression of life,” he suggests an approach
for analyzing the religious rhetoric th at D u ncan continued to use in
the essays she w rote from 1993 to h er untim ely death in 1927. For
van der Eeeuw (pre-figuring J.Z . Smith) “religion” is first and forem ost
a “n am e” for th at w hich appears: ft is a concept or category people
use to represent w hatever idea, act, artifact, or event appears to them
as related to other appearances or “p h en o m e n a” they have learned
to associate w ith the nam e “refigion.”^ For van der Eeeuw, as such,
th ere is no “essence” to religion th a t lies b eh in d the shapes o f fts

32 See the “Epilegomena” from van der Leeuw (REM).


118 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

m anifestations;33 there are only appearances. F urther, w hat appears to


som eone as “religion” does so as a function o f the relationship hetw een
the person an d th a t w hich ap p ears— the relationship hetw een w hat
appears an d the weh o f other p h enom ena w ith w hich the person is
fam iliar as “religion” due to his or her education and experiences.
Several im plications follow. First van der Feeuw insists th at w hat-
ever appears to som eone as “religion” is as m uch concealed as it is
revealed hy the weh o f “structural relations” th at enable its appearance
in the first place. As a nam e “religion” functions as a conceptual “n et”
or “netw ork” cast over “the chaotic m aze o f so-called reality” (REM
672). Second, the shape o f any p erso n ’s (definition of) “religion” is
u nique— a function o f his or her irreducibly singular em bodim ent in
space and time. T hird, every application o f the term “religion” reweaves
the web o f p h en o m en a w hich com prise it, opening the possibility for
new ^ ^ a r a n c e s o f m eaning.
R etu rn in g to D uncan, this ^ rs p e c tiv e on “religion” opens an avenue
for in terpreting h er religions rhetoric. By yoking the nam e “religion”
w ith “d ance,” D u n can was calling upon her ^ t e m p o r a r i e s to reweave
the webs o f m eaning they associate w ith “d ance” and “religion” in
order to open themselves to new appearances o f each. She was not
seeking to align h er dancing w ith any given expression or definition of
religion. She sought to catalyze an ite rd e p e n d e n t developm ent of w hat
people o f h er tim e recognized as “dance” and as “r e l i g i o n . S h e envi-
sioned a future w here w hat counts as “dance” w ould be ^ a c tic e d and
perform ed as “religion,” and w here ideas and actions recognized as
“religion” w ould be accountable to the f a c t i c e o f dancing. D uncan
was inviting people to experience dancing (hers at least) in ways they
reserved for “religion,” and experience “religion” as w hat her dancing
represents it to be.
M oreover, D u n c a n ’s com m ents about dance as ‘،religions a rt” not
only represent h er attem pt to dislodge a C hristian conception o f reli-
gion an d dance as m utually exclusive and often conflicting activities;
they represent h er attem pt to m ove “religion” beyond a prim ary con­

33 E he irony is rich. V an der Leeuw is most often faulted for assuming an


unspeakahle “essence” of religion, for postulating a “sacred” something that exists
hehind all forms of religious life (See for example, Twiss & Conser (1992). In fact,
van der Leeuw says the opposite time and again: for the phenomenologist, “there
is nothing w hatever ‘hehind’ the phenom enon” (REM 6).
34 For m ainstream Christian attitudes towards dance at the time, see W agner
(1997).
W H Y DANGE? ١١٩

cern w ith heliefs and texts. By yoking it w ith dance, D u ncan reim ag-
ines “religion” as practice and perform ance— as a practice o f aw akening
“soul,” and a performance th at ^ m m u n ic a te s participation in the dan cer’s
experience o f m oving from an awakened soul. A hrief survey of D u ncan’s
soul language suggests th at van der Leeuw ’s own definitions o f dance,
religion, an d their ^ in c id e n c e build on D u n can ’s ^ in c ip le s, and fur-
th er delineate the ways in w hich attention to (her) dancing as religion
can help scholars o f religion resist the forces of forgetting.
Soul language. For D u ncan the ‘،first basic theory” o f her art is th at
m ovem ent m ust flow from an aw akened soul (AD 76). As such the
“first step” in learning to dance is to aw aken fois “soul” (AD 52). W hile
D u n c a n ’s “soul” talk m ight suggest a dualistic n th ro p o lo g y , van der
L eeuw ’s analysis illum inates how she uses the w ord to stretch and
reweave the webs o f m eaning generally associated with the term. D uncan
uses to “soul” to nam e a tm m form ation in a perso n ’s sense o f her bod-
ily being. A person can com e to sense m ovem ent impulses arising in
w hat D uncan calls the “tem poral hom e” of the soul, the beating, breath-
ing rhythm s o f the solar plexus (ML 341).35 In fois experience, then, a
dan cer feels h er body differently. She develops a physical consciousness—
not an im age o f h er body b u t a bodily sense o f her self as (knowing
herself through) m ovem ent.
Further, “soul,” for D uncan, nam es an ability not only to sense move-
m en t impulses, b u t to m ove w ith them and give them kinetic expres-
sion. As a dancer develops fois ability he begins to appreciate how the
impulses seem to originate and pass beyond his bodily boundaries. H e
comes to sense his solar plexus as the site w here he is open to receive
and amplify currents of force and flow connecting him w ith w hat is.
H e undergoes w hat D u ncan describes as a “conversion” in w hich he
experiences him self as ^ r tic ip a tin g in w hat she calls “a “rhythm ic unity
which runs through all the manifestations of N ature” (AD 102), a “divine
continuity.” As D u n can phrases it, a dancer senses in and through his

35 Scholars have dehated which external influences governed D uncan’s choice of


foe solar plexus as foe hody center. D uncan may have heen prim ed for her dis-
covery hy exposure to foe Delsarte system of exercise (for example, T erry 1 6 3 ‫ و‬:
Part I). In D elsarte’s program , foe body is composed of three zones: head, torso,
and limhs, each of which in turn is composed of three zones. In foe case of foe
torso, foe three are foe upper chest or heart, foe solar plexus, and foe lower ahdom-
inal region. Movements that begin in foe torso carry emotional and moml significance;
those beginning in foe solar plexus do so exclusively. However, for Duncan, move-
m eut sourced in foe solar plexus did mom than express emotion. See Genevieve
‫)] و‬.
Stehhins, Delsarte System of Expression (11885 ] 02
120 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

own m ovem ent a “pow er w ithin” w here th at pow er consists in the ahil-
ity to m ove in ways th at enact or hring into heing his “relationship to
the universal rh y th m ” (AD 52).
M oreover D u n can avers, a dancer w ho has ^ a c tic e d receiving and
m oving w ith such impulses, can learn to recreate the forms o f these
experiences in designing and executing choreography. In so far as she
docs, h er perform ance com m unicates at several levels. First, her move-
m ents represent the physical consciousness she has cultivated‫ ־‬her hours
o f physical an d m ental practice. Second, as recreations o f the shapes
in w hich m ovem ent impulses have appeared to her, her dancing rep-
resents kinetic images o f “the divine continuity” she has developed the
ahility to perceive. As kinetic, such images appear only in m ovem ent
as the unseen patterns o f physical consciousness anim ated in malting a
given shape. ‫ ث؛ة‬T h ird , in so far as her dancing presents such Itinetic
images, it also represents h er particular hody as “one with the great
m ovem ent th at runs through the universe” (AD 68)— she appears as
the individual w hose hodily m ovem ent com m unicates ^ r tic ip a tio n
in w h at app ears th ro u g h h e r m ovem ent as a “universal D ionysiac
m ovem ent” (AD ‫ م(ﻟﻮ‬D u n can calls such dancing a “p ray er” and a “rev-
elation.” In other words, a dancer w ho moves from w hat D u ncan calls
an aw akened “soul” can m ake visihle and visceral h er active partici-
pation in the generation o f religions ideals. As D u ncan hymns: “her
m ovem ents will hecom e godlike, m irroring in themselves the waves, the
winds, the m ovem ents o f growing things, the flight o f hirds, the passing
o f clouds, and finally the thought of m an in his relation to the universe”
(AD 63).
In sum, D u n can affirms th at through the practice and ^ rf o rm a n c e
o f (his) dance, a dancer develops a paradoxical ability: H e is able to
represent his individual body as a m edium for generating kinetic images
o f (his dissolution in) a rhythm ic unity o f life. His dancing com m unicates
^ r tic ip a tio n in w hat his practice enables him to know: th at a dancer
w ho moves from an aw akened soul speaks out o f him self and some-

36 For D uncan, such Itinetic images appear in the form of wave movements. A
wave is hoth form and movement; it is call and response: ،‘foe rhythm that rises,
penetrates, holding in itself foe impulse and foe after-movement; call and response,
bound endlessly in one cadence” (AD ‫) وو‬. D uncan observed wave forms in “all
energy” around her in classical music as well as foe natural world, in foe figures
of Greek art and foe pulsations of desire (IS 45). Nearly all of her dance creations
feature m ovem ents th at pulse and flow, even w hen crisply punctuated. “Blue
D anube” and “W ater Study” were two of her early crowd-pleasers.
W H Y DANGE? 121

thing greater (AD 52), out of his particular em hodim ent and (his sense
of) ultimacy.
In this vision for dancing, then, D u ncan offers a notion o f “religion”
th at moves heyond helief and its corollaries. D u ncan uses the nam e
“soul” in ways th at resist inwardization: it is the experience o f hodily
m ovem ent th at opens and represents a sense of inw ard depth as the
source for the m ovem ent.^ In her description o f dancing as generat-
ing “thoughts” o f h u m an in relation to the universe, she resists ration-
alization: she roots theology in the experiential possihilities opened hy
hodily practice. By descrihing her perform ance as prayer and revelation,
she resists textualization: w hat religions acts com m unicate is participa-
tion in the physical consciousness they represent. Thus, D u n c an ’s reli-
gion language sketches a theory of religion as practice and perform ance.
Religion involves ^ a c tic in g patterns of physical consciousness, educating
sensory awareness, and cultivating vffnerahility to currents of will, desire,
and idea. It involves generating, perform ing, and thus enacting kinetic
images o f self in relation to others and world. From the perspective
D u n can opens, theories of religion th at privilege textual ohjects, models,
or m etaphors p erpetuate an ignorance o f w hat renders religion effective,
nam ely the ways in w hich its ideas and actions express and choreograph
a logic o f hodily becom ing.^
A Curious Coincidence. V an der Leeuw ’s own definitions of dance, reli-
gion an d their ^ in c id e n c e resonate uncannily w ith D u n c a n ’s principles
o f dancing, an d produce similar patterns o f resistance to the forces of
forgetting. In fact, he appears to draw inspiration from her w ork not

37 This reading represents my response to scholars who reject D uncan’s “soul”


language as mere rhetoric, or who critique her for reinscribing a dualism she pre-
tends to reject. As Nietzsche w h o m D uncan read and adm ired also knew, to
speak only in material, bodily terms about dance would reinforce the place of dance
in western Christian culture. D uncan discerned that realizing the potency of dance
as art would require and there is still m uch mom work to be done transform-
ing our study and practice of “religion.” For further discussion of D uncan’s rela-
tion to Nietzsche, see LaM othe, “A G od Dances T hrough Me: Isadora D uncan
on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ideas of Bodily Being” (2005a), and “Nietzsche’s Dancers:
Isadora Duncan, M artha Graham, and The Revaluation of Christian Values” (2005b).
38 I am not implying that there is a “natural” logic of bodily becoming that can
be identified apart from a given cultural formation of it. As Susan Foster discerns
in relation to systems of dance training, w hatever a body does makes it into what
،‘it” is (1986: chapter 1). By “logic of bodily becom ing”, then, I seek to convey the
idea that the way in which a body becomes w hat it is is never completely deter-
mined by society or “n ature” but is a function of how an individual body, as a
pattern of sensory awareness and response, moves in relation to cultural and environ-
mental factors. Every religion, I argue, represents a way of engaging and exploiting
this logic.
122 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

only in generating conceptual resources for studying other instances of


dancing as religion, hut also in developing his phenom enological m ethod.
First, van d er Leeuw ’s definition o f dance as a paradoxical rhythm
o f ecstasy and ^ r m a t i o n echoes D u n c an ’s account o f dance as move-
m en t flowing from an aw akened soul. O n the one hand, for van der
Leeuw, all dance is “ecstatic” in th at the effort o f executing the move-
m ents o f a dance places a dancer “heside” or “outside” herself (SFB
26; 1948, 41). As she learns to execute m ovem ents, a dancer alters the
conceptual and sensihle houndaries through w hich she ordinarily rec-
ognizes herself. A dan cer hecom es the rhythm ic forms she perform s—
she loses herself, hecom es o th e r to herself. V a n d e r L eeuw gives
exam ples the Mevlevi dervishes, the A m erican Shakers, the G reek fol-
lowers o f Dionysus. O n the other hand, in the process o f surrendering
h er sensations o f self to the rhythm ic forms, a dancer actualizes and
projects a new sense and im age o f self as the one w ho is (lost to the)
dancing. V an der Leeuw m entions anim al dances, H indu and B uddhist
dances thro u g h whose choreographed forms a dancer enacts h er iden-
tity in relation to the anim al or goddess she dances. Despite the different
em phases, however, van der Leeuw adm its th a t a rhythm of ecstasy
and affirm ation, or discarding and seizing, is com m on to hoth forms.
H e writes: “T o und erstan d the psychology o f the dance and to see at
the sam e tim e its ^ n n e c tio n w ith religion, ١٧^ m ust look u p o n its
rhythm as m otion an d response, the seizing o f life and the discarding
o f life. T h e rhythm unfolds in a douhle m an n er” (SPB 27; 1948, 42).
‫ أل‬is this rhythm th at he sees unfolding in D u n ca n ’s description o f dance
flowing from an aw akened soul, descrihed ahove.
Nevertheless, van der Leeuw like D uncan admits that not all instances
o f dancing ap p ear as religion. D ance appears as religion only w hen ‫أن‬
also appears as an “expression of pow er”— a phrase echoing D u n ca n ’s
“expression o f life.” For van der Leeuw a phenom enon has m eaning
as “religion” w here ‫ أن‬appears as an expression o f “po w er” in two
senses. Any action, law, art ohject, musical piece, text, or ritual expresses
pow er w hen it appears as h o th a will to pow er, th at is a h u m a n ’s
attem pt to m aster the horizons o f knowledge and possibility, and, at
the same tim e, as a dem onstration o f how hum ans are uncannily dis-
placed in the process o f m aking those efforts by awesome and alluring
forces other th an themselves (REM C h apter 1; 679-80 ).‫ وو‬In other words

39 A longer diseussion of this theory is needed. V an der Leeuw is in line with


contem porary thinkers in resisting any n th ro p o m o rp h ism or reification of “The
Sacred” or “T he H oly” as the core of religion. H e chooses “pow er” as a word
W H Y DANGE? 123

“religion,” for van der Leeuw, is a nam e for h u m an acts th at negoti-


ate h u m an relationship to forces represented in those acts as constitu-
tive o f life. T h e key for van der Leeuw is a claim to ultimacy: religion
appears as “th at on w hich no w ider nor deeper m eaning w hatever can
follow: it is the last w ord,” a figure at an inner or outer edge o f know-
ing (R EM 680). W itil fois definition it is not surprising th at his descrip-
tion o f instances w here dance appears as religion is vintage D uncan.
A ro u n d the w orld an d th ro u g h o u t tim e, he concedes, people have
helieved “th at the negation o f self has hrought [them] closer to a higher
life” (S?B 26; 1948 41): ecstatic self-dissolution yields affirm ation of
“higher life” as a dan cer experiences and transm its a “uffification” of
h er ‘،movements w ith the m ovem ent o f the w hole” (SPB 68; 1948 90).
In sum, van d er Leeuw ’s phenom enology o f religion and dance illu-
m inâtes hy developing the significance of D u n c an ’s claims for dance as
m ovem ent flowing from an aw akened soul. If h er dancing is religion,
then “religion” consists o f practices of hodily atentiveness in w hich peo-
pie develop a physical consciousness o f a paradox o f ecstasy and affirmation th at
comes to characterize the rhythm o f their bodily becoming; religion consists
as well o f performances in w hich dancers com m unicate kinetic images th at
enahle those w ho do a n d /o r w atch to grasp a sense o f their participa-
tion in the w ork o f ^ n c e iv in g “life” as a “unity” [Einheit] or “oneness.”
Eor van d er Leeuw and D u ncan fois (provisional, dynamic) definition
o f religion reflects a helief th at dancing (alongside writing) is a m edium
for negotiating our relation to religion.

4. An “Indirect Method”

Parallels hetw een D u n can an d van der Leeuw extend heyond their
accounts o f dance as religion to the m ethods o f training they develop
for dance and for phenom enology o f religion, respectively. Exploring

that eludes the distinction hetween secular and religious. “Power” works for him
by articulating the difference. Moreover, van der Leeuw’s notion of power is dynamic
and relational in a way th at draws upon H egel and Nietzsche and prefigures
Foucault. Like Foucault, van der Leeuw rejects a top-down model of pow er’s oper-
ation. Power works through the forces of discipline, practice, and perform ance that
exercise and open our capacity to know (what appears as Other) in particular ways.
At the same time, van der Leeuw goes farther than Foucault in his ahility to artic-
ulate the positive contrihution of hodily becoming to the life of power. V an der
Leeuw’s work, in fact, could be helpful in further developing the implications of
Foucault’s work for theories of religion. For an introduction to Foucault’s notion
of “power”, see Power/Knowledge (1980); for an example of its application, see Discipline
and Punish (19??).
124 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

these parallels suggests th at dance Is not only a w orthy ohject o f reli-


gious studies. It Is also a potential resource for developing theories and
m ethods for studying religion th a t challenge an d com plem ent text-
inform ed approaches descrihed ahove. In particular, van der L eeuw ’s
phenom enology o f religion bears traces o f D u n c an ’s m ethods o f dance
training. A b rief discussion o f D u n ca n ’s ^ p r o a c h to dance training illu-
m inâtes how van der Leeuw ’s phenom enology avoids both an “objec-
tive” ap proach th at reduces religion to w hat can be w ritten about It
and a “theological” approach that assumes a sui generis essence of religion.
Awakening soul. W hile criticized as having no technique, D u ncan artic-
ulated tim e an d again the ^ in c ip le s th at guided her attitudes tow ards
technique. In so far as dance entails aw akening “soul” (as described
above) It can neither be tau ght nor learned. T h e ability to dance can
only be stirred into awareness by a coordinated exercise of physical,
intellectual, em otional capabilities. ،،The dances of no two persons should
be alike” (AD 58). As such D u ncan rejected systems o f education th at
enforce a sense o f s e r r a t i o n betw een physical and m ental dim ensions
o f h u m an living. Such systems are detrim ental to the process by w hich
persons learn to sense and understand bodily m ovem ent as enacting their
relationship to w hat appears in th at m ovem ent as real. Instead o f a
school for dance, D u n can w anted a “School o f Life.”
T o fois end D u n can w orked out an ^ p r o a c h to praetiee designed
to catalyze in others w hat she h ad discovered in h er own dance expe-
rience.^ She guided h er students in simple e x e rcise s-w alk in g , skip-
ping, running, leaping‫ ־‬in order to increase their strength and agility;
she surrounded them w ith “an atm osphere o f beauty” (AD 80)— nature,
visual art and sculpture, poetry and music‫ ־‬in order to stir their aes-
foetic sensibility; she led them in increasingly im p lic a te d patterns of
m ovem ent designed to retine their aw akening physical consciousness.
In these ways D u n can sought to create the conditions w ithin w hich
children could find w ithin themselves a capacity to sense m ovem ent
impulses, follow them through their particular body-shapes, and recre-
ate in dances the forms in w hich those impulses appeared to them so
as to com m unicate ^ r tic ip a tio n in th at experience to others. As she

‫ ص‬In this respect, D uncan’s work in dance echoes that of Schleierm acher as
described above and parallels the work of her contem porary R udolf O tto‫ ־‬both
of w hom also influenced van der Leeuw. In O tto ’s Idea of the Holy (1‫ و‬58 (‫ ر‬he denies
that he can comm unicate an experience of the numinous to his readers, h e writes
his book as a “schem a” which may stir in his readers an awareness of their own
capacity to sense and respond to the “strange harm ony of contrasts” that, for him,
characterizes the “wholly other.”
W H Y DANGE? 125

insists: “I have no system. M y only purpose and m y only effort have


heen to lead the child each day to grow and to m ove according to an
in n er im pulse” (AD 119), w here th at “inner im pulse” is the fruit of
engaging in practices that invite a physical ^nsciousness focused through
the solar plexus. W hen she practices in this way, D u ncan helieves, a
dan cer is capahle o f generating itinetic images o f a hu m an in relation
to the universe th at do not reproduce a dualistic sense o f “soul” in
“hody” or “religion” versus “dance” images w hich live in h er hody
as the capacity for m alting m ovem ents through w hich she knows her-
self as ^ r tic ip a tin g in the generative rhythm s o f life. D ancing, for
D u n can contra K ant, is a practice th at enahles a person to develop
the ‘،highest intelligence in the freest hody” (AD 63).
Practicing understanding. W here D u nean rejects systems th at force all
hodies to m ake the same m ovem ents, van der Leeuw rejects m ethods
th at im pose “im periously dom inating theory” upon the rich variety of
p h en o m en a (R EM xxi). H e decries such m ethods as equivalent to a
“straight-jacket.”^ In response, w here D u ncan insists she has “no sys-
tcm ,” van d er Leeuw asserts th at his m ethod is at hcst “indirect” (REM
677-8). H e descrihes m ethodology in general as an afterthought: a
scholar’s attem pt to descrihe w hat he has already done. In van der
Leeuw ’s case, his phenom enology bears traces o f having attended to
m om ents in h i s t o ^ - D u n c a n in c lu d e d w h e r e som ething appears to
som eone as religion and dance. T h e coincidence is not surprising: his
Religion in Essence and Mantfestation was published the year after Sacred
and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art, in w hich he discusses dance.
T h e problem , for van der Leeuw, with religionists w ho im pose the-
ories o f religion onto the m anifold o f life, is th at they wield the term
“religion” unconsciously, taking “it” for granted as a thing th at is sim-
ply there. H e designs his phenom enology of religion to help anyone
em ploying the term appreciate it as a name and thus take responsibil-
ity for their own participation in the m eaning it has for them . His phe-
nom enology is “indirect” in the sense th at he posits no object or essence

41 From a 1926 article, “Some recent achievements of ^ychological research


and their application to history, in particular, the history of religion” (in W aardenhurg
(1973: 399), hereafter “SRA”). T he full quotation is: “Reality should no longer he
riolated hy forcing ft, with considerahle difficulty, into a purely methodological
strait-jacket and then, with no less difficulty, trying to wrest it free from it after
haring it duly ‘explained’ . . . realily ft too rich and too manifold to leave us even
the slightest hope that we may ever he able to interpret it out of one single principle
and by one single m ethod.”
‫ص‬ KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

to religion, no “thin g ” out there to exam ine. Instead his phenom enol-
ogy is in ten d ed to guide scholars in ^ a c tic in g understanding— in dis-
cerning w hy som ething appears to them , in the course o f w ork as
historian or theologian, as “religion.”^ For van der Leeuw, “phenom -
ecologists” practice im aginatively and em pathetically recreating appear-
anees of meaning. T hey are constantly interrogating the web of “strnetnral
relations” th at any given appearance of ،،religion” calls into being. T he
three non-linear m om ents o f van der L eeuw ’s “indirect m eth o d ” align
w ith his D uncan-inform ed account o f dance as religion in resisting the
forces o f forgetting. I describe each in turn.
1. First, w hat D u n can describes as an aw akening o f soul and van
der Leeuw theorizes as a rhythm of ecstasy and affirm ation finds a par-
allel in the two-fold rhythm o f imaginative empathy van der Leeuw describes.
T o recreate for herself the structural relations u n d er w hich som ething
appears to h er to ap p ear to som eone else as w hat she recognizes as
،،religion,” a scholar m ust exercise em pathy and im agination. V an der
Leeuw describes “em pathy” as an act o f setting aside o n e’s own expe-
riences in o rd er to ju m p into the living stream o f a n o th e r’s world,
“transposing oneself into an object or re -e ^ e rie n c in g it” (SRA 401 ).‫وه‬
At the same tim e, however, a scholar m ust draw upon her own expe-
riences in order to imagine for herself w hy dim ensions o f th at other per-
son’s living stream ap p ear as they do to the natives as well as to her.
In o th er words, van d er Leeuw identifies a rhythm o f seizing and dis-
carding o n e ’s lived experience as the enabling condition for under-
standing; lived experiences are resources on w hich scholars draw, whose
influence they m ust always interrogate in ‘،giving birth out o f o n e’s own
m ind to w hat stands already th ere” (SRA 404). For van der Leeuw,
claims to “objective” results m ask a scholar’s vital role in courting and
recreating appearances o f m eaning.

42 V an der Leeuw designs his {ffienomenology of religion to complement and


correct work in history and theology. For a discussion of this “hraided” method-
ological approach to the study of religion, see LaM othe (2004), Part Two. For a
discussion of van der Leeuw’s theology, see C arm an (1965).
43 V an der Leeuw draws upon the work of “^y ch o lo g y ” as developed hy Dilthey
and Jaspers in defining empathy. V an der Leeuw is aware that a phenomenolo-
gist “deprives himself by the act of em pathy of any due prospect of his object, and
even of seeing it at all” (SRA 401); however, he insists that the nature of the
object namely the m eaning something has for someone ean not be understood
any other way. As he notes, ،‘h e who wants to experience the stream [of another’s
^nsciousness] in its living coolness must learn how to swim” (SRA 402). T he
m etaphor here is apt: “swimming” is an art in which a person learns how to move
with the currents into which she jum ps.
W H Y DANGE? ‫ ا‬27

In his discussion o f im aginative em pathy van der Leeuw does not


im ply th at self-consciousness precedes study. T o the contrary. V an der
Leeuw ’s m ethod fram es a scholar’s understanding of religion as a func-
tion o f a transform ing encounter th at hrings into being both the object
o f study an d the “self” o f the scholar w ho sees it. A scholar comes to
know (the m eaning of) his past experiences in relation to w hat they
enable to ap p ear to him as “religion.” Thus, van der L eeuw ’s m ethod
rejects the m o d ern notion th at a scholar is an “I ” w ho can reflect
rationally on bodily experience, the m arkers o f gender, class, race, or
the contents o f “religion.” A ny appearance o f “religion” always already
represents a m utually generative relation betw een o n e ’s bodily becom -
ing an d w hatever p h en om ena appear. As van der Leeuw claims, “© nly
the persistent and strenuous application o f this intense sym pathy, only
the u n in terru p ted learning of his role, qualifies the phenom enologist to
in terp ret ap pearances” (REM 675).
2. Essential to this task o f im aginative em pathy is a second f a c tic e :
a suspension ofjudgment. Eor van der Eeeuw “epoehe” refers to a “restraint”
th a t enables a scholar to m ove freely back an d forth betw een h er
em bodied experiences and w hat appears to her about the life of another,
and thus im agine em pathetically the structural relations enabling a given
^ ^ a r a n c e A At the same time, van der Eeeuw insists, “This re stra in t. . .
implies no m ere m ethodological device, no cautious procedure, b u t the
distinctive c ]^ a c te ris tic o f m a n ’s whole attitude to reality” (REM 675).
V an d er Eeeuw likens the practice o f sus^m ding ju d g m en t to the prac-
tice o f love. It represents an attitude th at is open to shocks o f insight,
to being transform ed by o n e’s conscious ^ rtic ip a tio n in the logic of
o n e’s own bodily becom ing.
3. Einally, in ^ a c tic in g im aginative em pathy and the suspension of
judgm ent, van der Eeeuw avers, a ^ e n o m e n o lo g ist m ust practice moving.
“T h e phenom enology of religion is dynamic: as soon as it ceases to

44 In using this te ™ van der Leeuw makes reference to Husserl, only to dis-
tance himself from H usserl’s quest for essences. In his “Preface” to Religion in Essence
and Manifestation Ninian Sm art writes that, for van der Leeuw, “epoche” or hrack-
eting means suspending one’s worldview in the nam e of ohjectirity. Sm art then
criticizes van der Leeuw for failing to produce ohjective results. However, for van
der Leeuw, the epoche refers to the suspension not of hiases per sc, hut of the desire
to make claims to ttuth. W hat is suspended is an attitude towards what appears
a need to pursue it, pin it down, in its nature. Phenomenology resists the temp-
tation of asserting truth, fact, or realily. In fact, the epoche that Sm art evokes
would not provide grounds for imaginative em pathy at all. Imaginative empathy
as van der Leeuw descrihes involves interpolation into one’s own experience, not
ahstraction from it (R EM xii).
9 £‫ا‬ KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

m ove ‫ أن‬ceases to o p erate” (R EM 695). A ^ e n o m e n o lo g ist is always


on the m ove hetw een “facts” descrihed by historians and social seien-
tists, an d “tru th s” offered by theologians; betw een w hat appears to him
and his recreated interpretations of those appearances’ meaning; betw een
m anifestations o f religion around the w orld and those fam iliar to him.
This incessant m ovem ent is w hat protects a scholar of religion from
poetry or dogm atism ; it ‫ن‬s a m echanism o f self-^rrectio n , ensuring th at
a scholar holds any u d e r s ta n d in g o f a phenom enon accountable to
those m ost affected by it. This process can never end, van der Leeuw
adm its, for ‫ أن‬is coextensive with life. People will continue to generate
new religious m eanings, new m eanings of religion, new ^ rsp e c tiv e s on
past events, an d new experiences on w hich to draw in studying all of
the above.
In sum, w hat distinguishes van der L eeuw ’s indirect approach from
idiosyncratic subjectivism is similar to w hat distinguishes D u n c an ’s danc-
ing from u n train ed m ovem ent: a practice o f cultivating physical con-
sciousness. D u n can and van der Leeuw both design (indirect) m ethods
for helping individuals cultivate awareness o f how bodily becom ing par-
ticipates in enabling ^ ^ a r a n c e s o f m eaning. T h e m edium through
w hich ١٧^ dance a n d /o r understand is the m edium through w hich ١٧^
live. T h e im plication for the scholar o f religion is th at how she trains
h er physical consciousness informs w hat kinds o f appearances she ‫ن‬s
capable o f receiving and recreating in words. M oreover, every time she
pulls upo n the fabric o f h er lived experience to recreate the structural
relations th at give rise to appearances o f religion, she will com e to see
h er experiences differently, in relation to the uses to w hich she applies
them . Every appearance o f religion will stretch and expand not only
h er sense o f “religion” b u t also h er sense o f “self.” Eor this reason,
then, the relation o f object to m ethod van der Leeuw describes is not
a self-reinforcing circle b u t an open spiral o f discovery and response. For van
der Leeuw it is the scholar’s willingness to be transform ed by an appear-
ance o f m eaning th at guarantees th at h er findings will not be “purely”
subjective, b u t wi11 com m unicate a ^ynamfo relationship o f understanding.

5. Theorizing Religion as Practice and Performance

W h at im plications docs this juxtaposition of van der Leeuw and D uncan


have for theory an d m eth o d in the study o f religion? For one, their
exam ples suggest the need for rethinking w hat we expect from theory
and m ethod. Both devised “indirect” m ethods for developing an ongoing
W H Y DANGE? 129

receptivity to flashes o f insight: to m ovem ent impulses arising in the


solar plexus, or to ^ ^ a r a n c e s o f m eaning daw ning. Both m ethods,
m oreover, require th at persons w ork to cultivate an awareness o f how
such receptivity expresses and engenders their own hodily h e c o m in g -
their patterns o f m em ory, sensitivity, and strength. If they do not, the
forces o f w estern C hristian culture will pull them to helieve in them -
selves as rational m inds operating in and over m aterial hodies. D uncan
and van der Leeuw thus challenge scholars in religion to reflect upon
the kinds o f h u m an potentials their practice and ^ rfo r m a n c e as schol-
ars enahle them to develop. T h e question haunts: do our processes of
scholarship develop in us the capacities we need to understand w hat it
is we recognize as ،،religion”?
Second, tracing D u n c an ’s influence through van der Leeuw ’s account
o f religion and dance also offers resources for theorizing religion as
practice an d perform ance. T h e term s introduced here physical con-
sciousness, logic o f hodily hecom ing, rhythm o f ecstasy and affirm ation,
kinetic im age, spiral o f discovery and response— need to be tested and
refined by w orking them through additional cases. Still, the exam ple
o f D u n can suggests th at a scholar who uses these term s will resist priv-
ileging textual objects, models, and m eanings as ciphers o f inw ard helief
or experience, ff scholars think about ،،religion” as enacting a logic of
hodily hecom ing, they will see religions p h enom ena o f all kinds visual,
kinetic, oral, textual in term s of the physical consciousness they express
and enable. T h e questions they ask will change.
Instead o f asking about w hat a person believes (as a privileged defining
m om en t o f religion), we ask: how is a person exercising the hodily
dim ensions o f his living? W h at possihilities for belief docs a p erson’s
hodily m ovem ent open for him? W h at kind o f physical ^ m c io u sn e ss
docs the ahility to helieve in ،،x” represent?
Instead o f asking w hat a person is thinking w hen she writes, dances,
prays (and im plying a rational intent), we ask: w hat range o f sensitiv-
ity and responsiveness is she exercising through her bodily m ovem ent?
W h at sense o f h er bodily becom ing and its m eaning is her action help-
ing h er to develop? W hat possihilities for thought is she opening or
foreclosing?
Instead o f asking about the meaning o f a dance or ritual (as if the
m eaning can he detached from its action), we ask: w hat are the pos-
sihilitics for perception and for m eaning pulled into heing hy the pat-
terns o f (in)attention required to m ake the given movem ents?
Instead o f asking w hat a practitioner is expressing (as if the source of
130 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

the event lay in inw ard experience), we ask how are his practice and
perform ance bringing into being as real a desired relation to tradition,
to m em bers o f his com m unity, to his sense (or lack thereof) o fg o d /d e ss,
to his own self? W h at networks do a given practice o f bodily move-
m ent bring into being as the condition enabling the ^ rfo rm a n c e ? W hat
webs o f social relations (political, econom ic, familial, social) or webs of
symbols an d beliefs does the perform ance o f a dance or ritual allow
^ r tic ip a n ts (a n d /o r scholars) to grasp and ^ m p re h e n d ?
In short, instead o f looking to find a text to explain w hat a phe-
nom enon m eans, ١٧^ ask: w hat bodily m ovem ents enable the tex t’s pro-
duction? W h at practices an d ^ rfo rm a n c e s docs the existence o f the
text and the privilege accorded to it (by ^ a c titio n e rs a n d /o r scholars)
represent?

W hy dance? In order to know. A n approach to religion focused through


bodily m ovem ent allows for the consideration of p h enom ena th at have
not received equal treatm en t in the past. Such appearances will pro-
duce new theories o f “religion” and new m ethods for its s tu d y -re w e a v -
ing o u r definitional webs. A m o v e m e ^ -c e n te re d ap p ro ach prom ises
resources for im aginatively recreating the m eaning o f tm m form ations
affected by religions belief an d action as a function o f how people enact
a logic o f bodily b e c o m in g -sc h o la rs included. Finally, fois approach
to religion encourages scholars to cultivate aw areness o f how the prac-
tice and perform ance o f scholarship always already participates in their
own bodily becom ing, an d vice versa. In so doing, fois approach fos-
ters understandings o f religion th at are dynam ic, relational, holistic, and
ever accountable to the multiple logics of bodily becom ing whose appear-
anees they enable.

A rlington, M A

References

Adams, Doug and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (eds) (1990). Dance as Religious Studies.
New York: Crossroad.
Asad, Talal ( ‫ زووول‬. Geneaologies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity
and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopltins ?ress.
Backman, Louis (1952). Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine.
Tr. E. Classen. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Banes, Sally (1‫ زةوو‬. Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage. London & New York:
Routledge.
W H Y DANGE? 131

Bell, Catherine ( ‫)? وول‬. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University

(1996). M odernism and postmodernism in the study of religion. Religious Studies


Review. 22 (3): 179-190.
(1992). Ritual Theory‫ و‬Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Blair, Frederika (1986). Isadora: Portrait of the Artist as a Woman. New York: M cGraw-
Hill Book Company.
Bourdieu, Pierre (19??). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Richard Nice (trans). Camhridge:
Cam bridge University Press.
Carm an, Jo h n (1965). T he theology of a phenomenologist: An introduction to the
theology of G erardus van der Leeuw. Harvard Divinity School Bulletin 29 (3): 13-
42.
de Certeau, Miche (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Steven Rendall (trans). Berkeley:
U niversiu of California Press.
Csordas, Thom as (ed) (1994). Embodiment and Experience: The existential ground of culture
and self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daly, Ann (1995). Done Into Dance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Davies, J.G . (1984). Liturgical Dance: An Historical, Theological, and Practical Handbook.
Tondon: SCM Press.
Dils, A nn and Ann Cooper Albright (eds) (2001). Moving History/Dancing Cultures.
Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
D uncan, Isadora (1981). Isadora Speaks. Franklin R osem ont (ed). San Francisco: City
Lights.
(1928a). Art of the Dance. New York: T heatre Arts Books.
(1928b). My Life. New York: Liveright.
Durkheim, Emile (1995). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. K aren E. Fields (trans).
Free Press.
Eoster, Susan (ed) (1997). Choreographing History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
(1986). Reading Dancing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Foucault, Michel (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-
1977. Colin G ordon (ed/trans). New York: R andom House, Pantheon Books.
— (19??). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan (trans). New
York: Vintage Books.
Eraleigh, Sondra H orton (1987). Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Eranko, M ark (1995). Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Garaudy, R oger ( 2? ‫) ول‬. Danser Sa Vie. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Geertz, Clifford (1988). Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
— ( 3? ‫) ول‬. Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Grimes, R onald (ed) (1996). Readings in Ritual Studies. U pper Saddle River, New
Jersey: Prentice Hall.
H ann a, Ju d ith Eynne (1987 [1 ‫)] و ? و‬. To Dance is Human: A Theory o f Nonverbal
Communication. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Hegel, G.W.E. (1988). Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 1827. Peter Hodgson (ed).
Berkeley: University of California Press.
(19??). Phenomenology of spirit. A.V. Miller (trails). New York: Oxford University Press.
Ja n tz e n , G race (1999). Becoming Divine: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Religion.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
(1995). Power, Gender and Mysticism. Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press.
Jowitt, D eborah (1988). Time and the Dancing Image. Berkeley: University of California.
132 KIMERER L. EAMOTHE

K ant, Im manuel. (1 ‫) وول‬. An answer to the question: W hat is enlightenment? (1784)


and Introduction to “W hat is orientation in thinking?” (1786). In Kant: Political
Writings. H.B. Nishet (trans). Camhridge: Cam hridge University ?ress.
(1793 ]‫ ول‬6 ‫)] ه‬. Religion within the limits of reason alone. Theodore G reene and Hoyt
H udson (trans). New York: H a ^ e r Torchbooks.
K endall, Elizabeth (1979). Where She Danced: The Birth of American Art-Dance. Berkeley:
University of California.
K ippenburg, H ans G. (2002). Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
K ippenburg, H ans G. and Brigitte Luchesi (eds) (1 ‫) وول‬. Religionswissenschaft und
Kulturkritik: Beitrage zur Konfrenz The Histoiy of Religions and Critique of Culture in
the Days of Gerardus van der Leeeuw (1890-1950). M arburg: diagonal-Verlag.
LaM othe, K im erer E. (2005a). A god dances through me: Isadora D uncan on
Eriedrich Nietzsche’s ideas of bodily being.” Jo u rn al of Religion, 85.2, April.
— (2005b). Melzche's Dancers: Isadora Duncan, Martha (dr¿¡¿،¿??¿, and the Revaluation of
Christian Values. New York: Palgrave McMillian Press, December.
— (2004). Between Dancing and Writing: The Practice of Religious Studies. New York:
F ordham University Press.
— ( 6 ‫) وول‬. With Dance in Mind: Toward a Theology of Dance via Gerardus van de?‫ ־‬Teeuw
and Martha Graham. Unpublished dissertation.
Lloyd, Genevieve (1984). The Man of Reason. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Eoewenthal, Lillian (1980). Isadora D uncan in the Netherlands. Dance Chronicle, 3 (3).
MacAloon, Jo h n (ed) (1984). Rite, I)?‫־‬،¿??/.،¿, Festival, spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory
of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of H um an Issues.
Mifos, M argaret R. (1 ‫) وول‬. Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in
the Christian West. New York: Vintage Books, R andom House.
— (1985). Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Se¿'¿,¿/,،¿?- Culture.
Beacon Press.
Nicholson, Linda ( ‫) ووول‬. The Play of Reason. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
O tto, R udolf ( 5 8 ‫) ول‬. The Idea of the Holy. Jam es Harvey (trans). Eondon: Oxford
University Press.
Penner, H ans H. (1‫) ووو‬. Impasse and Resolution: A Critique (:ft¡¿، Study of Religion. New
York: Peter Eang.
Preus, j . Samuel (1987). Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Price, Ja n e t & M argrit Shildrick (eds) ( ‫) ووول‬. Feminist Theory and the Body. New York:
Routledge.
Proudfoot, W ayne (1985). Religious Experience. Berkeley: University of California.
Richardson, R uth D. (1‫) ﻟﻮو‬. The Role of Women in the Fife and Thoughts of Early
Schleiermacher (1768-1806). Edwin Mellen Press.
Ryba, Thom as (1‫) ﻟﻮو‬. τι¿، Essence of Phenomenology and Its Meaning for the Scientific
Study of Religions. New York: Peter Lang, T oronto Studies in Religion, Vol. 7.
Schechner, Richard and Willa Appel (eds) (1 ‫) وول‬. By Means of Performance. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Schechner, R ichard ( 8 5 ‫) ول‬. Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich ( 6 ‫) وول‬. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. R ichard
C router (trans). Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press.
Sharpe, Eric (1986 [1975]). Comparative Religion: A History. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court.
Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine (1990). The Roots of Thinking. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.
Smith, Jo n ath an z. (1982). Imagining Religion: From Jonestown to Babylon. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
W H Y DANGE? 133

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (11962 ] ‫)] ﻟﻮو‬. The Meaning and End of Religion. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press.
Sullivan, Lawrence (1999). “Seeking an end to the prim ary text” or “Putting an
end to the text as Prim ary” . In F.F. Reynolds and S.L. Burkhalter (eds) Beyond
the Classics? Essays in Religious Studies and Liberal Education. Scholars Press.
Suydam, M ary A. and Jo a n n a E. Ziegler (eds) (1999). Performance and Transformation:
New Approaches to Late Medieval spirituality. ^ € ١٧ York: St. M artin’s Press.
Stebbins, Genevieve (1902 [1885]). Delsarte System of Expression. ^ € ١٧ York: Edgar
S. W erner Publishing and Supply Go.
Taylor, M ark G. (ed) (1998). Critical Terms '/cm Religious Studies. Chicago: Chicago
University Press.
Terry, W alter (1963). Isadora Duncan: Her Life, He?‫ ־‬A?-¿, He?‫ ־‬Legacy. New York: Dodd,
M ead & Company.
Twiss, Sum ner and W alter Conser Jr. (eds) (1992). Experience of the Sacred:Readings
in the Phenomenology of Religion. Hanover: Brown University Press.
T urner, Victor (1987). The Anthropology of Performance. New York: P ^ J Publications.
(1966). The Ritual Process. De Gruyter.
van der Leeuw, Gerardus (1986). Religion in Essence and Manifestation. J.E . T u rn er
(trans). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
— (1963). Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art. David E. G reen (trans). New
York: Holt, R hinehart, & W inston.
(1937). Vorn Heiligen und der Kunst. Frau Dr. A. Piper (trans). Carl Bertelsmann
Verlag: Gütersloh.
— (1948, 1955). Wegen en grenzen. Studie over de verhouding van religie en kunst. Amsterdam.
— (1933). Phänomenologie de?- Religion. Tubingen.
W a d e n b u r g , Jacques (1978). Reflections on the Study of Religion, Including an Essay on
the Work of Gerardus van de?- Leeuw. Religion and Reasons 15. T he Hague: M outon
Publishers.
— (1973). Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. T he Hague: M outon.
(1972). Religion between reality and idea: A century of phenomenology of reli-
gion in the Netherlands. Numen Vol. X IX , August December.
W agner, Ann (1997). Adversaries of Dance: From tire Puritans to tire Present. U rbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois.
Wasserstrom, Steven p. (1999). Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade,
and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wiebe, D onald (1999). The Politics of Religious Studies. Palgrave Press.
Wollstonecraft, M ary (11792 ] ^‫]) وو‬. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. New York:
Everym an’s Library.
‫آلﻣﺂورلم؛‬

Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may priut, dow nload, or send artieles for individual use
according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international eopyright law and as
otherwise authorized under your respective ATT,AS subscriber agreement.

No eontent may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the
copyright holder(s)’ express written permission. Any use, decompiling,
reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a
violation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS eollection with permission
from the eopyright holder(s). The eopyright holder for an entire issue ٥ ۴ ajourna!
typieally is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However,
for certain articles, tbe author o fth e article may maintain the copyright in the article.
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific
work for any use ‫ آس‬covered by the fair use provisions o f tbe copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the
copyright hoider(s), please refer to the copyright iaformatioa in the journal, if available,
or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s).

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously


published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association
(ATLA) and received initia‫ ؛‬funding from Liiiy Endowment !)٦٥.

The design and final form ofthis electronic document is the property o fthe American
Theological Library Association.

You might also like