In Europe we have the "loss of self" motif clearly illustrated in the whirl dances of the Russians sects of the Molokani in Armenia....All the countries that bordered the Meditteranean in ancient times, and the less remote sections of Asia as well, appear to have had whirl dances.

A person can be danced. In all continents the dancers carry little children on their shoulders.

A choral dance: an attempt to impose upon a chance gathering of a few dozen guests a communal feeling.

It removes the limitations of his body, extinguishes his consciousness, and pours the divine spirit into him. The whirl dance is the purest form of dance devotion.

The dance is the mother of the arts. Music and poetry exist in time; painting and architecture in space. But the dance lives at once in time and space.

If you ask an Auin Bushman what realty happens at the puberty ceremonials, he will tell you, "We dance." In the initiation customs of all peoples the dances play an especially important part. The dance is the center of wedding festivities.

Rhythmic motion has become the carrier and creator of almost every ecstatic mood of any significance in human life.