Zikr Dance Ensemble: Mysteries, Rites and Revelations"

[YouOverThere]

To do something different, I attended the Zikr Dance Ensemble's performance titled "Mysteries, Rites and Revelations" on Saturday (May 7) in Boulder, CO. And different it was. And difficult to describe, so I'll just quote from the program:

The Zikr Dance Ensemble offers a spectrum of works that are based on transcendent dance rituals from many different ancient world cultures throughout history along with original and contemporary dance/theatre realizations.

The performance contained just about everything (though only a few brief snippets of classical ballet), including a 2,000 year old Assyrian mourning dance.

The Zikr Dance Ensemble was founded a few years ago by a man named David Taylor, who in 1979 founded a "contemporary ballet" company in Denver which probably not coincidentally is named the David Taylor Dance Theatre. He retired from running the company, handing it over to his protege, and apparently got bored with retirement and decided to form a dance company to explore sacred dance forms. He doesn't have a fixed line-up of dancers, instead hiring local dancers for each program. The 15-member cast for this program included 6 dancers from the David Taylor Dance Theatre, 5 dancers from the Colorado Ballet plus nominally retired CB principal Gregory Gonzalez, a couple of local dance instructors, and a dance student.

Most of the choreography was created by David Taylor, much of it based on ideas from mystical dances from various cultures such as the Sufi, but there were a few pieces choreographed by an early 20th century mystic named George Gurdjieff. I think that the term "mind-blowing" is quite appropriate for this production.

[bart]

Thanks, YouOverThere. This sounds fascinating. I had heard of Gurdjieff, but did not know how central dance was to his teachings, in the sense of Sufism, etc.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurdjieff_movements

[dirac]

I add my thanks to bart's, YouOverThere. Nice to hear about these performances. Had no idea Gurdjieff had dabbled in choreography.