For centuries in India, religious rituals featured sacred female dancers, known as devadasis, whose stylized movements suggested both idealized beauty and communion with the gods.
In a sacred dance performed at night, the mediocre performance of one dancer who had been "very handsome last year" reminded Murasaki Shikibu "of the fleeting life of us all".
It won't be on Broadway — it opens on Sunday at the well-respected Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J. — but it is still "A Chorus Line," a sacred text of dancers everywhere and a show that Ms. Rak feels she's lived, though she's never been in it.
My job — it's a personal rule — means that I don't belong in dance class anymore; that is a dancer's sacred space.
The kachina dancers are sacred and represent the rain gods.
In the nineteenth century, Hindu reformers, reacting to the taunts of Victorian missionaries, began to attack the institution of temple dancers and sacred prostitution.
Several are represented in this seasonal potpourri: "Jingle Bells," "Winter Wonderland" and "Silent Night" are secular and sacred carols, "O Hanukkah," a male dancer's variation, is an homage to the Festival of Lights, and "Snowballs" is from "The Nutcracker".
Despite the choppy footage throughout the roughly 30 minutes of unedited film, there is something sacred about the way in which the dancers, both men and women, ride a wave of soundless rhythm.
In 1965, he presented the first of his sacred concerts — using his orchestra, a choir and dancers — at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
This almost sacred ritual of class, previously experienced only by Cunningham dancers and selected guests, will soon be on view to anyone with an Internet connection and curiosity.
