No Bounds

“I see the Dance being used as a means of communication between soul and soul – to express what is too deep, too fine for words. . . . I see [humanity] made finer and quicker to correct itself – because the Dance reveals the soul. The Dance is motion, which is life; beauty, which is love; proportion, which is power. To dance is to live life in its finer and higher vibrations, to live life harmonized, purified, controlled. To dance is to feel one’s self actually a part of the cosmic world, rooted in the inner reality of spiritual being.

The revelation of spiritual beauty in terms of movement is the natural and inevitable progression of life and art; and the word Dancer should rightly mean one who expresses in bodily gesture the joy and power of his[/her] being. . . . Behind the veil of our actual, common days is the Eternal Now which is seeking ever to reveal itself – to shed light on the confusion of our heavy hours. But the power of the dance to release the soul is still buried under the weight of the binding and artificial world we have created for ourselves – in which there is no time to know, and no space to move.

The Eternal Now of the Dance includes both past and future. It includes the knowledge and assurance that in the past bodily gesture was the first communication of the simple needs of primitive [humans], and it includes the vision of the future in which the Cosmic Consciousness, to which [humanity] gradually attains, will find expression in finer bodies and more beautiful and articulate gestures.

We cannot, of course, communicate, in any language, what we do not feel or know. But in modern times we have used almost exclusively the language of the intellect – speech – to express all states and stages of consciousness, and by so doing we have inhibited and dwarfed the physical and emotional beauty of the self. . . . [forgetting that] dancing in its nobler uses is the very temple and word of the living spirit. It is largely from this error that the sense of separation between body and spirit has grown. In reality, each individual self creates and governs its own organ of expression, and with this organ its communication with the world.

Let us, therefore, regard the dance fundamentally as a Life Experience, as the primitive and ultimate means of expression and communication. Let us see in the free, spontaneous dance of every child the beginning of the universal language, and the universal art, which, largely unconscious to him[/her]self, grows bodily into words, telling of illusive and exquisite moments of the hidden self; and later flowers into forms of art that will heal the world of some of its artistic sins.

To know this experience, even in a slight degree, to have space and light and music, a real sacrifice is necessary. The physical elements of our present life are designed for other uses, and our days are crowded with profitless confusions. Let there be more beauty and harmonious activity experienced by the individual, less merely for him[/her]. That is the purpose of Dance. . . . How much of our precious time is wasted by impositions from without – by having our minds defaced and poisoned by pictures that confuse and weigh down the spirit, in the name of art, because we do not know how to release the divine urge to strength and beauty within ourselves!

Pure dance has no bounds. The infant begins to dance at its mother’s knee. Old age should not have its gestures to express love and serenity no less. Each period of life has its own activity, its own beauty, and it is stupid and futile to attempt, as we do on the stage in the name of art and entertainment, to force or retard the natural unfolding of the spirit from youth to maturity. . . . Some day our conceptions will expand to take in, with the loveliness and freshness of childhood, the gracious dignity of age, in art as well as in life. Here the dance will unfold many truths of being, many unknown or unseen joys possible to us in the very midst of our common days.

Make way for the dance! See if it does not repay a thousand fold. It will enlarge the horizons, give meaning to many things now hidden, new power to the self, a new value to existence. Dancing as a life experience is not something to be taken on from the outside – something to be painfully learned – or something to be imitated.

Dancing is the natural rhythmic movements of the body that have long been suppressed or distorted, and the desire to dance would be as natural as to eat, or to run, or swim, if our civilization had not in countless ways . . . put a ban upon this instinctive and joyous action of the harmonious being. Our formal religions, our crowded cities, our clothes, and our transportation are largely responsible for the inert mass of humanity that until very lately was encased in collars and corsets. But we are beginning to emerge, to throw off, to demand space to think in and to dance in.

Oh, dancers and lovers of beauty everywhere, come, let us reason together and see if we cannot make a better world, “one nearer to our hearts’ desire!”

– Ruth St. Denis (1879 –1968) was an American modern dance pioneer, introducing eastern ideas into the art. She was the co-founder of the American Denishawn School of Dance and the teacher of several notable performers. While touring in Belasco's production of Madame DuBarry in 1904 her life was changed. She was at a drugstore with another member of Belasco's company in Buffalo, New York, when she saw a poster advertising Egyptian Deities cigarettes. The poster portrayed the Egyptian goddess Isis enthroned in a temple; this image captivated St. Denis on the spot and inspired her to create dances that expressed the mysticism that the goddess's image conveyed. From then on, St. Denis was immersed in Oriental philosophies. The global organization and activity, the Dances of Universal Peace, credits Ruth St. Denis for much of the inspiration behind its creation. The Dances of Universal Peace organization subsequently published many of St Denis' previously unpublished writings on spiritual dance and the mysticism of the body.