TRANCE: Altered States of Consciousness and Dance

Three aspects of that play an important role as tools towards making conscious dance different from other expressive arts and give it its unique power towards affecting change, healing and development are;

1. Present-ness[1] – the ability to bring the dancer into the present creating a real-time experience that relates directly to life lived in the moment[2].
2. Whole-ness[3] – the ability of dance to involve every aspect of the dancer in the dance. Physical, emotional and cognitive presence is instrumental in creating dance where the ‘artist’ and the ‘art’, dancer and dance are one.
3. Entering Non-ordinary states of being – the ability to shift perception and cognitive processes into altered states commonly referred to as trance.

This article focuses on the last of third of these three aspects, namely Trance – or altered states of consciousness. These experiences are different from those associated with normal and everyday functioning[4]. Such states are a universal phenomenon[5] and are typically found in healing and other religious practices. They are effective in affording change because once induced a person function in a psychologically different manner from ordinary or normal states of being[6]. Through the dance it is possible to shift into various levels on trance depending on the practice which then induces emotionally charged states with perceptual changes that alter a sense of time and space[7]. Altered states of consciousness are characterised by a dominance of the parasympathetic nervous system[8] which facilitates rejuvenation, emotional modulation and healing[9].

For more on this fascinating topic see the talk “ DANCE: Trancing the Mind by Christos Daskalakos on the...

 YouTube VisVita Centre channel

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[1] Victoria Hunter, “Spatial Translation and ‘Present-Ness’ in Site-Specific Dance Performance,” New Theatre Quarterly 27, no. 01 (February 2011): 28–40, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X11000030.

[2] Rolando Toro Arañeda, Biodanza: Muziek, Beweging En Expressieve Communicatie Voor Een Harmonische Ontwikkeling van de Persoonlikheid, trans. A. Lagaaij et al. (Uitgeverij de Zaak, 2009).

[3] Ciane Fernandes, “When Whole(Ness) Is More Than the Sum of the Parts: Somatics as Contemporary Epistemological Field,” Revista Brasileira de Estudos Da Presença 5, no. 1 (2015), https://doi.org/10.1590/2237-266047585.

[4] Charles T Tart, “Consciousness, Altered States, and Worlds of Experience,” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 18, no. 2 (1986): 159–70, http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-18-86-02-159.pdf; Charles T. Tart, “States of Consciousness and State-Specific Sciences,” Science 176, no. 4040 (1972): 1203–10, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.176.4040.1203.

[5] Nevill Drury, The Shaman and The Magician:Journey Between Two Worlds (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1982); Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

[6] Anette Kjellgren and Anders Eriksson, “Altered States During Shamanic Drumming: A Phenomenological Study,” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 29, no. 2 (2010): 1–10, https://www.academia.edu/19582446.

[7] Arnold M. Ludwig, “Altered States of Consciousness,” Arch Gen Psychiatry 15, no. 3 (1966): 225–34, https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1966.01730150001001; Adam J. Rock et al., “The Effects of Shamanic-like Stimulus Conditions and the Cognitive-Perceptual Factor of Schizotypy on Phenomenology,” North American Journal of Psychology 10, no. 1 (March 2008): 79–97.

[8] Julian M. Davidson, “The Physiology of Meditation and Mystical States of Consciousness,” Perpectives in Biology and Medicine 19, no. 3 (Spring 1976): 345–80, https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.1976.0042; Arnold J. Mandell, “Towards a Psychobiology of Transcendence: God in the Brain” (Boston, MA: Springer, 1980).

[9] Michael Winkelman, “Trance States: A Theoretical Model and Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Ethos 14, no. 2 (1986): 174–203, www.jstor.org/stable/639951.