Language of the Goddess in Balkan Women’s Circle Dance

Balkan Dance and Sacred Space

First, I will discuss my experiences with three distinct yet interrelated forms of communal dance: the contemporary practice of Sacred Dance or Circle Dance, which combines traditional dances with choreographed circle dances; the international folk dance movement in the US and UK, which offers Balkan circle dance in a recreational setting; and Balkan dance, specifically women’s dances, as a living tradition in Eastern Europe.

Evidence collected by archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel and others has shown that people have danced in circles since prehistoric times. ⁶ Shared movement synchronizes body rhythms and brain waves, creating feelings of connection and unity among people who dance together. ⁷ Archaeological finds indicate that ritual dance provided a sacred space for women, and Balkan women today still use their dance circles to create safe spaces for themselves. In contrast, most women in patriarchal societies today don’t have access to safe and sacred space. My women students today, who share a longing for such space, find it in Balkan women’s circle dances which transmit pre-patriarchal values emphasizing community, equality, and respect for all of life. ⁸ These are the values of the matrifocal cultures of Old Europe, in which I believe these dances have their roots. Awakened in us through the embodied experience of circle dance, these values can show us the way to a sustainable future. This is the message of the language of the Goddess.

Folk Dance, Sacred Dance, the Search for Sacred Space

Growing up in the patriarchal society of the United States in the 1970s, I was aware from an early age that my femininity made me a target. First as a girl, and then as a young woman, I felt out of place, powerless, inadequate and acutely ashamed, simply because of my sex. My young self could see no safe way to be a woman in a woman-hating world. These feelings led me as a teenager to the women’s spirituality circles of the 1980s, where I found confirmation of my experience and support for my feminist awakening. My quest for new ways to be at home in my body led me to Middle Eastern dance, dance movement therapy, and other healing movement modalities which helped me reclaim my own body as a safe space and gave me faith in my own female strength and power.

At that time, international folk dancing was a popular pastime in the US and UK, and I developed a passion for Balkan circle dances in my teenage years. I encountered Balkan dances again at the Findhorn community in Scotland in 1985, where they were practised together with modern choreographed circle dances, in the method known there as Sacred Dance. Sacred Dance, originally developed by German ballet master Bernhard Wosien, had been brought by Wosien (assisted by his daughter Maria-Gabriele Wosien and his student Friedel Kloke) to the Findhorn community in 1976, and was quickly adopted there as a spiritual practice in dance form for awakening group consciousness. ⁹ Sacred Dance offered a joyful and meaningful way to connect with others. The dances were easy to follow, often slow and meditative, and the circle seemed to provide the sense of safe space and community which I had been seeking. I began training in the Findhorn method of Sacred Dance in 1987.

While I loved and appreciated the beauty of the overall experience of Sacred Dance, at the same time, I felt that something was missing. I observed that the dances:

were built on a foundation of Christian, masculine, sky-oriented, hero- and saviour-based interpretations of myth and symbol. There remained in my heart a hunger for something more balanced, more inclusive, more earthy, more womanly. ¹⁰

My parallel experience in women’s Middle Eastern dance and dance movement therapy hinted at deeper, more earth-based and feminine approaches to movement, which I longed to find in circle form. For me, for dance to be truly ‘sacred’, it would need to include the feminine and feminist perspectives which I cherished from my experience with women’s spirituality circles. So my search continued.

In contrast to the meditative and solemn ambiance which they took on in Sacred Dance, Balkan dances in international folk dance groups in the UK and US were taught in a way which was sporty and secular. Highest status was given to the most difficult dances, usually men’s dances with vigorous movements and complex variations, and the slow, simple, meditative dances at the heart of Sacred Dance were almost entirely absent. In a typical folk dance class, everyone started out dancing together, but as the dances grew increasingly difficult, more and more people sat out, so the dancing circle grew ever smaller. It felt like a microcosm of the modern Western view of dance as a competitive, performative activity only suited to the youngest and fittest, from which every dancer will eventually and inevitably be excluded by age or infirmity. Back then, in the days before YouTube and before I began my own travels in the Balkans, I had nothing to compare it to, so I thought this was just the way things were.

Balkan Dance in the Balkans

In the late 1980s I began to travel to the Balkans, particularly to Greece and Bulgaria, to witness circle dance as a living tradition. There I recognized many dances I had learned in international folk dance, but the ratios were reversed: here, the complex and difficult dances were not so strongly emphasized, and the vast majority of dances were simple enough for everyone to join in. There were far fewer dances: whereas the dance groups I knew were proud to boast repertoires of hundreds or even thousands of difference dances, in the Balkans one village might have a basic repertoire of five or ten dances, which everyone knew – and just two or three of those were the main ones which were danced over and over. These were the simplest dances, in which everyone could participate, and almost always versions of the three-measure pattern which is considered to be the oldest and most widespread of all circle dances. ¹¹

The dances with highest status, then, were the ones with the greatest degree of accessibility and inclusivity. With live music, these simple dances went on a lot longer than the short recordings we were used to in folk dance class. In them I discovered again the deeply meditative quality of shared joy, connection, and peace which I had known and loved in the simple steps of Sacred Dance. Here, at the heart of traditional dance, I found an atmosphere of acceptance, cooperation, inclusivity and equality, so different from the hierarchal and competitive attitude of folk dance class.

Women and Men Dance Differently

The simpler dances, it turned out, were mainly women’s dances, which I had not really come across before, since they were almost entirely absent from both folk dance and Sacred Dance. The international folk dance classes did acknowledge a traditional difference between men’s and women’s ways of dancing, but most women did not dance in women’s style; most often, everyone danced by in men’s style, with larger steps, bigger lifts and higher jumps. Those considered the ‘best dancers’ were the men and the women who could dance like men.

Why was this? In those days, almost all the teachers in the folk dance circuit were men, despite there being far more women than men among the students. It was simply taken for granted that the students would try to dance like their teachers, and that the men’s style was somehow ‘better’. To me, this was another manifestation of Western society’s tendency to see the male norm as the human norm, while women’s experience is marginalized. ¹²

In the Balkans, however, the gender divide in dance reflected a gender divide in culture, which strictly delineated activities and spaces considered female and male. In the US and UK, where I grew up, the idea of female ‘liberation’ was often defined by the degree to which women could enter realms previously considered ‘the man’s world’, so I was surprised by a society in which women did not seem to want to emulate or compete with males. Dances in Greece and the Balkans are gendered within an atmosphere of overall inclusivity, and people dance at every stage of their lives. In a typical rural village in Greece, for example, some dances are danced by everyone, while others are for particular subgroups (men or women; young or old; married or unmarried; groups of kin; groups of friends, and so on). Not everyone dances every dance, but everyone dances, in keeping with their role in society.

Seeing the high status given to women’s dances in the Balkans inspired my quest for the women’s dances I could now see were missing from both the folk dance and the Sacred Dance repertoires. The women’s ritual dances, with their simple repetitive patterns and distinctive style, offered the meditative and inclusive quality I most enjoyed in Sacred Dance, together with the earth-based and woman-centred aspects I had been seeking. My training in dance movement therapy helped me to recognize the inherently therapeutic quality of these dances, and their potential significance for women beyond the Balkans.

Why do women and men dance differently, anyway? The answer is partly based in biology. Of course, women dance vigorous fast dances too. But for a woman who is pregnant, or has recently given birth, or is breastfeeding, or is elderly, or is in poor health, overly energetic dances are neither enjoyable nor safe. It makes sense that the faster dances are more often danced by young women in that all-important life phase between menarche and marriage, a high-ranking subgroup known as lazarínes in Greece and lázarki in Bulgaria. In general, however, most women’s dances are simple enough for women in all phases of life and stages of physical ability to join in with ease.

Women’s Ritual Dances

Because the steps were simple and all the women were expected to take part, the women’s circles created the safe and sacred space for women I had longed for all my life. The dance circle offered a peaceful place of rest and relaxation for women, an oasis within the arid desert of an otherwise strictly patriarchal culture. I was touched to see how Balkan women’s dance rituals were respected in their society, and how men supported these women-only spaces, for instance as musicians playing for their dancing, or simply by acknowledging women’s right to gather regularly to dance and sing.

The women I met, who became my friends and teachers, seemed transformed by their dance experience, freely expressing joy, laughter, delight, and light-heartedness which were not necessarily their main mood in everyday life. Neurological research confirms that the act of dancing and singing in unison affirms feelings of belonging and cohesion. ¹³ The women wear festive costumes specific to their village and age group, emphasizing connection and solidarity and minimizing individual differences. Both folk dance and folk costume enable women to transcend the cares and concerns of daily life and enter a separate ritual time and space in which they move beyond the personal into a state which is transpersonal. ¹⁴

I have described elsewhere how dancing women in their ritual stance and ritual dress take on the appearance of the Goddess. ¹⁵ This powerful female figure runs all through the culture of the dance: the Goddess is referred to in songs, embroidered on cloth, encoded in dance patterns, and reflected in the appearance of each dancer. Donning beautiful and elaborate festive clothing embroidered with female figures, women join the dance circle in a ritual posture we can call ‘Goddess-derived’. ¹⁶ Thus transformed, the women dance to bring blessings and good energy to the community, a living tradition which can still be witnessed on ceremonial occasions such as Easter and Midwives’ Day. ¹⁷ In the context of their ritual dance, the women become mediators of the life-giving power which was the central attribute of the ancient Goddess.

For me, these dances were not merely ethnographic curiosities. In them, I saw an ancient and authentic means of spiritual expression and communion with the divine. Once I began to study the women’s dances in a serious way, my background in dance movement therapy helped me understand their inherently therapeutic capacity. The dances can naturally facilitate processes of healing and insight, help dancers reconnect with the sacred cycles of life, and even support the healing of trauma. ¹⁸

More than 30 years of researching and teaching women’s ritual dances has shown how they can serve as sources of empowerment, even for women far from the Balkans. They touch on the universal impulse to share a meaningful and joyful experience of the sacred in connection with others, within a spiritual ethical framework which affirms the rightness and goodness of nature, the body, and the female. This is the ancient worldview of the culture of the Goddess.

Ancient Roots of the Dance – How Old Are the Dances?

The historical and archaeological record provides plenty of evidence for ancient circle dancing. ‘The value of [the round dance] for communal cohesion in ancient Greece can hardly be overestimated’; ¹⁹ even Plato stated that ‘choral dance and song are identical with education as a whole’. ²⁰ Round dance rituals at sites including Delphi, Knossos, and Eleusis sought to align the human realm with a higher cosmic order, symbolized by the circle. ²¹ The chorus in Aristophanes’s Ranae sings, ‘In the sacred round dance of the goddess … I will go with the women and girls/where they dance all night for the goddess’. ²² and indeed, the work of ritual in ancient Greece was largely in the hands of women, whether laywomen or professional priestesses. ²³ Strabo affirmed that ‘all agree in regarding women as the chief founders of religion, and it is the women who provoke the men to the more attentive worship of the gods, to festivals, and to supplications’. ²⁴

Circle dance, however, long predates the classical period. Circles of dancing figures – most often female – have been depicted for thousands of years in rock art and pottery fragments in Europe and the Near East. Representations of dancing women appear as early as 14,000–12,000 BCE, ²⁵ with remarkable abundance from 7,000 to 4,000 BCE, coinciding neatly with the spread of agriculture. According to archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel, scenes of dancing ‘are among the oldest and most persistent themes in Near Eastern prehistoric art’, and the dancing motif is ‘one of the most powerful symbols in the evolution of human societies’. Communal dance formed an integral part of agricultural and seasonal rituals, and was the central means of passing on knowledge and wisdom from one generation to the next. ²⁶

Both Garfinkel and Elizabeth Wayland Barber provide ample evidence for the Neolithic origin of Balkan circle dance and the connection to the development of agriculture. Many dance rituals are based on a belief linking the fertility of females with the fertility of the land. ²⁷ Givers and nurturers of life, and the likely inventors of agriculture, women were considered the natural mediators of the sacred cycle of life, death, and regeneration. ²⁸ In parts of the Balkans today, where they are still seen as having the power to communicate with spirits and travel between the worlds, women sing and dance to bless the planting, gather the harvest, and pray for rain, and also to mark life transitions such as birth, menarche, and marriage. ²⁹ Dance rituals confirm women’s importance in their community and reinforce their sense of self-esteem, autonomy, and sense of connection, through an embodied experience of power and the conscious creation of women-only sacred space.

Signs and Symbols: the Language of the Goddess

Dance steps can not be carbon-dated, but signs and symbols in material artifacts can shed light on non-material art forms (such as dance steps, song words, and folk tales) where the same symbols appear. Balkan women’s dance takes place within an extraordinary aesthetic richness: the exquisite colours of the intricate handmade costumes, the patterns and motifs woven and embroidered in the textiles, the sheer beauty of the dancing circle with its exuberant movement in synchronized steps, and the potent, hypnotic songs and melodies in archaic modes, intervals and rhythms. Visual, auditory, emotional and kinaesthetic perceptions combine to strengthen the sense of connection to the life force which is expressed in women’s dance and also in Neolithic art. As Gimbutas describes,

Celebration of life is the leading motif in Old European ideology and art. There is no stagnation; life energy is constantly moving as a serpent, spiral, or whirl. Recall the richly painted vases of the Cucuteni, Dimini, Butmir, and Minoan cultures, and sense the moving, turning, rising, splitting, and growing energy they portray. ³⁰

The ‘moving, turning, rising, splitting, and growing energy’ depicted visually in Neolithic artefacts reflects what people feel when they dance.

In my exploration of women’s ritual dances in the Balkans I was struck by the enormous quantity of ritual textiles laden with symbolic motifs, including the ubiquitous image of the Goddess as well as the circle, spiral, serpent, crescent, star, triangle, zigzag and tree of life. ³¹ These symbols are equally abundant in the archaeological record. They feature among the 32 ‘first signs’ of Paleolithic rock art, identified by paleoarchaeologist Genevieve von Petzinger, ³² and recur throughout Neolithic Old Europe and the Classical period, appearing in the religions of Greeks, Etruscans, Basques, Celts, Germanic peoples, and Balts, and into modern times. ³³ This remarkable historical continuity, and the care with which they have been handed down, show the importance these signs and symbols had for those who used them. Because of their close association in the Neolithic era with Goddess figures and scenes of worship, Gimbutas named this collection of signs ‘the language of the Goddess’. ³⁴

Sacred Script and Multiple Meanings

Along with visual motifs such as spirals and whorls, Gimbutas identified a repertoire of geometric and linear markings which she viewed as a sophisticated system for transmitting ideas. She referred to it as a ‘sacred script’, because of its association with ritual objects, and argued that it developed ‘from a long use of graphic symbolic signs found only within the context of an increasingly sophisticated worship of the Goddess’. ³⁵ Although ‘it is not universally recognized that the inscriptions found on Neolithic artefacts constitute a form of “writing”’, many scholars agree that these signs and symbols may have been used to transmit meanings. ³⁶ Elizabeth Wayland Barber, for instance, suggests the signs may have served to mark agricultural and calendrical cycles, which were intrinsically linked to the cycles of women’s lives. ³⁷

Although we cannot say for sure what the symbols mean, it is likely that they are polyvalent or ‘transfunctional’, capable of carrying multiple meanings simultaneously. ³⁸ ‘The idea that symbols can have more than one meaning’, as Carol Christ reminds us, ‘can be difficult for scholars trained in rational analysis to comprehend’, ³⁹ yet the very fluidity and flexibility of polyvalent symbols is a clue to their power. As Christ explains, ‘[t]he diversity of explications of the meaning of the Goddess symbol suggests that symbols have a richer significance than any explications of their meaning can express’. ⁴⁰

Archaeomythology

The discipline of archaeomythology, which combines mythology, linguistics, folklore, archaeology, history and ethnography, provides a helpful methodological approach for examining associations between material and non-material cultural expressions. ⁴¹ Bulgarian ethnographers Ilieva and Shturbanova use the archaeomythological method to reveal how folk dances employ symbols to transmit messages they have carried since antiquity, ‘despite the layers of cultural transformation’. ⁴² Maria-Gabriele Wosien says that geometric patterns representing dance are handed down in traditional cultures as coded images or ‘signposts through life’, providing ‘memory models for deep experiences of human consciousness’ preserved in sacred traditions of movement and gesture. ⁴³ To understand these ‘signposts’ requires a certain degree of lateral thinking. We can be guided by the words of poet Adrienne Rich:

To do this kind of work takes a capacity for constant active presence, a naturalist’s attention to minute phenomena, for reading between the lines, watching closely for symbolic arrangements, decoding difficult and complex messages left for us by women of the past. ⁴⁴

To this I would add that the subjective experience of dancing the dances can illuminate the values and teaching encoded within them.

Other examples of symbolic language in women’s folk art include the Ukrainian Easter eggs known as pysanka (pl. pysanky), literally ‘written eggs’, painted with pre-Christian patterns which bestow blessings and protection, and the ‘gramménes’ or ‘written’ aprons of Greek Thrace, woven with fertility symbols believed to bless and protect the bride. ⁴⁵ For the women who ‘write’ and wear these aprons, textiles are their texts. ⁴⁶ Women’s folk arts such as these perpetuate the Neolithic view of women’s artistic expression as an invocation of divine benevolent forces of nature, for the benefit of their community.

Four-fold Methodology

Over time I developed a fourfold methodology comparing symbols in four separate strands of folk culture: archaeological artefacts, dance steps, dance songs, and textile patterns. All four of these areas show a striking similarity of imagery, with key motifs appearing again and again. In my view, this can not be a product of coincidence. ⁴⁷

Through these repeating motifs, the Old European symbol system has been kept alive into the present day. Signs such as the circle, spiral, serpent, crescent, star, triangle, zigzag, tree of life, and the Goddess, initially seen in archaeological finds, recur in the patterns of women’s circle dances, and in the textiles women make and wear for their ritual dancing.

To give one example, the butterfly symbol in Neolithic art is associated with the Goddess and her powers to transform and regenerate. ⁴⁸ Even today, it often appears in traditional dance costumes, for instance on the bodice of women’s chemises in Pentalofos, Greek Thrace. ⁴⁹ The butterfly’s prominent wings reflect the ritual posture with upraised arms frequently seen in women’s dances and Goddess figures. This anthropomorphic representation reflects the image of the ‘woman with wings’, another key motif in both traditional folk costume and Neolithic art. ⁵⁰

The dance songs which accompany the women’s dances typically feature images of protected space, including harbour, walled garden, orchard, sacred grove, threshing ground, woven basket, partridge nest, castle, fortress, monastery, enclosed courtyard, well or spring, and the circular path of sun, moon, and stars. ⁵¹ All of these metaphors in some way affirm a safe and fertile space, often specifically a round enclosure. At the same time that these images are brought into being through the songs the women sing, they are mirrored by the dancing circle, the temenos or sacred space in which the process of ‘conscious healing dance’ can unfold. ⁵²

The repetition of simple patterns in the dance affirms the eternal continuation of the cycle of life, death and regeneration. Gimbutas argues that reverence for these cycles, represented by the Goddess, was the most important aspect of Old European spiritual belief. Just as nonverbal mythopoetic images carry multiple meanings, so the Old European Goddess had multiple manifestations and most likely originally did not have one specific name. ⁵³ Her most ancient and primal incarnation, in the embodiment of cycles of life, death and rebirth, was seen as the omnipresent and all-encompassing basis for life itself. ⁵⁴ Because the symbols which stand for the Goddess take the place of a name, the ever-repeating simple steps can be seen a danced symbol, a mantra in movement, a practice of silent affirmation, invocation, or praise.

Neolithic Old Europe and the Indo-Europeans

Marija Gimbutas, the foremost researcher of the Neolithic civilization in which Balkan dances have their roots, concluded that Old European culture was a successful egalitarian society based on agriculture and peaceful trade. The absence of major defensive fortifications and weapons of war show that people lived without constant fear of attack by other tribes. ⁵⁵ Grave goods show gender divisions – female graves contained cult objects such as red ochre, figurines, altar and temple models, for example, while male graves contained tools of crafts and trade – yet wealth is evenly distributed, indicating economic equality. Crucially, there is no sign of gender oppression or any hierarchy of males over females or vice versa. Abundant artistic expression served to celebrate life and express a sense of belonging to a sacred cosmic whole.

According to Gimbutas, this pre-Indo-European culture was settled, agricultural, peaceful, egalitarian, matristic, matrilineal and probably matrilocal society, and revered the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. This belief system found expression in countless female figurines (of the Paleolithic as well as the Neolithic era), most likely representing a powerful primal Goddess who personified the divine mysteries of nature. For this reason Gimbutas termed the Neolithic culture of Old Europe a ‘civilization of the Goddess’. ⁵⁶

In contrast, Indo-European peoples who entered Europe in the period from 4,400 BCE onwards brought with them an entirely different social structure. These tribes from the steppes of Central Asia, whom Gimbutas called Kurgans, were nomadic warriors on horseback with bronze weapons that had not been seen before. Their culture was patriarchal, patrilineal, hierarchical, and warlike, and worshiped a male image of god. Their burials show an unequal distribution of wealth and resources, a social pattern of male dominance, and relative indifference to art. ⁵⁷ Over time, the Indo-European/Kurgan incursions into Europe established an era of patriarchy, the cultural paradigm which Christ defines as an integral system of male dominance based on ‘the control of women, private property, and war’. In this system, male dominance is enforced by violence, and female sexuality is controlled by men to ensure patrilineal descent. ⁵⁸ The patriarchal social system endures in most of the world today. ⁵⁹ Although Gimbutas’s Kurgan hypothesis was disputed by the archaeological establishment in the US and the UK for decades, it has been proved correct by recent DNA research. ⁶⁰

Egalitarian Matriarchal Society

It is important to clarify that the term ‘matriarchy’ does not denote a mirror image of patriarchy. ⁶¹ Matriarchy is not ‘a system of autocratic rule by women with an equivalent suppression of men’, but rather ‘a structure in which the sexes are more or less on equal footing’. ⁶² As Göttner-Abendroth explains, one literal definition of the word matriarchy is ‘the mothers at the beginning’: ‘By virtue of giving birth to…the next generation, and therefore to the society, mothers clearly are the beginning; in matriarchy they have no need to reinforce it by domination’. ⁶³ Matriarchal cultures are gender-egalitarian, while placing women and mothers at the centre of society. As Christ suggests, it is more accurate to use the term ‘egalitarian matriarchy’, ‘to make it clear that we are not talking about women dominating men’. ⁶⁴

Present-day patriarchy presents itself as universal, eternal and inevitable, but this is not the case. There are many modern matriarchal societies in the world today, including the Mosuo people of China and the Minangkabau of West Sumatra (who number more than five million people). ⁶⁵ The concrete example provided by these and other existing egalitarian matriarchies can help us envision the early Neolithic culture of Old Europe. ‘Matriarchal societies honour principles of care, love, and generosity which they associate with motherhood, as models for the behaviour of women and men’. ⁶⁶ The paramount ethic is to protect life and those who are vulnerable, because life is sacred and nurturers have an honoured role. ⁶⁷ These same key principles – care, love, generosity, and connection – are central aspects of the circle dance experience, indicating that Balkan women’s dances which affirm Old European values within patriarchal culture are most likely rooted in pre-patriarchal egalitarian matriarchy.

Values of the Goddess

The essential difference between the value systems of Old European versus Indo-European societies is one of power, not gender. Old European civilization emphasized linking rather than ranking, in Marija Gimbutas’s terms; Riane Eisler names it a culture of partnership rather than domination; Carol Lee Flinders says it is based on belonging rather than competition, and Starhawk speaks of a society which cultivates power-from-within instead of power-over. ⁶⁸

Women today can experience the positive values of Old European partnership culture, and of egalitarian matriarchy, directly in the dance. Women’s ritual dances are cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian, and woman-centred, showing respect for life, mothers and the mother principle. In the way they honour women’s connection to the life-giving powers of nature, teach each woman to be a leader and encourage each woman to stand tall in a ‘posture of power’, the dances provide an image of the divine feminine in which women can see themselves reflected. ⁶⁹

This is important. As Christ explains, ‘religious symbol systems focused around exclusively male images of divinity create the impression that female power can never be fully legitimate or wholly beneficent’, and therefore ‘the simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power’. ⁷⁰ Women’s ritual dances which transmit symbols and values of the Goddess offer an embodied experience of legitimate female power which is validated by others in their society, within a safe and sacred space. ⁷¹

Women Dancing Today

So far we have looked at three types of Balkan dance: Balkan dance as taught in Sacred Dance groups, Balkan dance as taught in international folk dance groups, and Balkan dance in the Balkans, both in Neolithic times and in the present day, with a focus on women’s ritual dances. Now I would like to look at Balkan dance in my women’s groups, which specifically focus on Balkan women’s ritual dances. I have made this my life’s work for over 30 years, and have witnessed how women all over the world, of all different ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds, respond to the simple steps of the ancient circle. The dances offer women a profound sense of belonging, within a safe and sacred space which is the basis for the inherently therapeutic quality of the dances. ⁷²

Traditional women’s ritual dances naturally provide a container and a context ‘for women to affirm and transmit pre-patriarchal values, such as the importance of community, mutual support, and shared leadership, within a circular, not a hierarchical structure’. ⁷³ Because dances can only be learned by doing them, women’s ritual dances of the Balkans have been passed on for millennia through direct experiential transmission, and thus provide a living link to ancient cultures that honoured the Goddess.

We have seen that Neolithic peoples used visual art to celebrate the cosmic whole of which humans are a part, and to express reverence for the sacred dimension of life, personified in the image of the Goddess. The same messages are transmitted in a direct and unmediated way through women’s embodied experience of the dances today. To illustrate this process, I would like to invite my students to speak for themselves:

The dance creates “a sense of compassion for the women of other times and the women in my life” and “a strong sense of community and common destiny”. ⁷⁴

The dances help us ‘plug in to our deeper rhythms and to our experience of birth and death in a way that can never be out of date’. ⁷⁵

[Dancing] helps me remember that those before us have come through many cycles: ups, downs, surges, reverses, waxing and waning. Whatever happens, we are not on this journey alone. ⁷⁶

To dance in a circle of joined hands is to be present and responsive to others, sharing a common space, each person one of the parts of the whole. ⁷⁷

In the dancing circle of women I feel the connection to the powerful energy of life, the source of the source, from which everything flows and into which everything flows, in which everything has a place. ⁷⁸

When we touch this source through the shared experience of forms and rhythms that have existed for thousands of years, we…find new, powerful and gentle possibilities for ourselves, our relationships and our tasks in life. ⁷⁹

In these responses, we can see how Balkan women’s circle dances enable women to experience the positive values of the Goddess, and to practice skills which can help create a more cooperative and equitable society.

What Does the Language Say?

The main messages of the women’s dance language are simple: everyone is welcome in the circle; you are never too old to dance; leadership must be shared; the body is the home of joy; connection with others is essential. The dances help us develop patience, awareness, stamina, balance, and support, while the visual and kinesthetic unity of the circle replaces competition and discord with cooperation and harmony. They teach us when to conserve energy and when to release it, when to yield and when to make a stand. ⁸⁰

Communal dance supports the well-being of each member and the group as a whole. Each dance circle serves as a temporary community, based on values of community, belonging, partnership, and peace. In the horizontal rather than hierarchical structure of the circle, dancers feel connected to the earth and to each other. Everyone is equally welcome and is equally valued. Circle dances help women discover their own power and dignity, and practice new and healthier ways of thinking and being. In this way, the collective embodied experience of these values provides an antidote to the misogyny, hierarchy, and disconnection embedded in the patriarchal paradigm.

The emphasis on shared leadership is vital. Because Balkan dances almost always take the form of an open circle, each woman must know how to lead the dance when it is her turn. Each woman is therefore encouraged to develop leadership in the dance, which requires reponsibility, initiative and will. As Christ describes,

In a Goddess-centered context…[a] woman is encouraged to know her will, to believe that her will is valid, and to believe that her will can be achieved in the world, three powers traditionally denied to her in patriarchy…. In the Goddess framework, will can be achieved only when it is exercised in harmony with the energies and wills of other beings. ⁸¹

This last point illustrates the difference between a culture of partnership and culture of domination. The dance leader of the moment activates her individual will not in a self-serving, autocratic or tyrannical way, but in the service of the well-being of the community. She expresses her leadership in harmony with the existing trajectory of the circle. As Maria-Gabriele Wosien writes, ‘[b]y following the projected path in a ritual situation the dancer joins the act of creation: the dancing steps enhance the flow of life-energy’. The dancer thus aligns her will with the sacred cycles of the cosmos and the highest good of all beings. ⁸²

Generosity and hospitality are sacred in Eastern European culture, as anyone who has travelled there knows, and the dance circle itself is a source of generosity, giving its blessings freely to all. The more people experience the joy and togetherness of the dance, the more these positive qualities are strengthened and increased for everyone present. These key qualities can be seen as gifts from the ancient ‘partnership’ culture, characteristic of egalitarian matriarchies and a feminist gift-giving economy. ⁸³ They are precisely the values which humanity needs to cultivate now if we are to build a peaceful and sustainable future. In our time, Balkan women’s circle dances offer an embodied experience of this ancient ethic, as a valuable alternative to the dominant modern paradigm based on competition, hierarchy, and inequality.

Conclusion

Women’s ritual dances of the Balkans encode a living spirituality, emphasizing community, sustainability, shared leadership, mutual support, creativity and peace. These are precisely the values of the Goddess-reverent cultures of Old Europe, and they can be directly accessed by dancers today.

Images and symbols of the Goddess, encoded in dance patterns, song texts and textile motifs, have been passed down from Neolithic times into the present day. These symbols serve as a nonverbal language which honours the natural cycles of life, death, and regeneration. The image of the divine feminine in female form is emphasized repeatedly, first in thousands of Goddess figures revealed in the archaeological finds of Paleolithic and Neolithic times, again in the steps, songs, and costumes of traditional women’s dances, and finally in the values of the Goddess which are transmitted directly and experientially in the dance.

Because Balkan women’s ritual dances were seen as a way to communicate with the divine, and served to transmit knowledge, ethics, and an understanding of the human place within the cosmos, I suggest the dances can be seen as an experiential, embodied theology, whose central tenet is reverence for the source of life, death, and regeneration. The core values of this theology are communicated in a nonverbal way, through danced experience and the symbolic language of the Goddess. Balkan women’s ritual dances can be said to offer a specifically feminist theology, because of the way they empower women, enable women’s artistic expression and put women back at the centre of their society. Clearly based on Neolithic concepts of the Goddess, they have roots in the egalitarian matriarchies of the past, reveal a potent capacity for healing in the present, and carry valuable messages for the future.

Lisa Isherwood has asked: ‘Is there such a thing as theological legacy which is not destructive?’ ⁸⁴ I believe these ancient dances, and the life-affirming worldview they embody, may offer one answer to this question.