Circle Dancing: Celebrating Sacred Dance [Paperback]

The book contains --
- the origins of Circle Dancing;
- symbolism – what is encoded within the steps;
- the energies generated by the dances and the levels on which they work within the indivdual dancer, the circle and the whole of life;
- and the author’s personal experiences with and within the Dance, her stories, memories, and perceptions.

There are sections on body awareness; on different rhythms and how they work on the body; on the energy patterns created with the dances; on working with the powerful light energy generated in the Dance; on the process of choreographing dances; and on the positive changes Circle Dancing creates, for the individuals and for the collective.

It explains the depth of Circle Dance; it explains how individuals come together and in the circle learn to move and be as one, and connect with universal spirit; how some dances bring childlike joy, some a feeling of power, beauty, peace; in ancient warior dances there can be a healthy outlet for anger and a discovering of inner power; in the old planting dances there is a sense rootedness in the earth; and in the slow meditative dances there is the experience of the stillness and completeness of the innermost sacred self.

Circle Dancing is about being together, about community, about reconnection; and the book shows that the dancer meet her/his self in the Dance and how what is learnt there helps daily life; that the movement of the dance leads to stillness, the music to silence; that by circling around the still centre, there is the awareness of both the movement and the sillness; and that once the steps are learnt and completely integrated, there is the glorious feeling, not so much of dancing as of being danced, of BEING the Dance! This awareness teaches the dancer how to be lived by life, indeed how to experience BEING life.

A far-reaching book on many levels, beautifully written and inspirational both for dancers and for all who are seeking their authenticity and their purpose.

June Watts is a leading figure in the Sacred/Circle dance movement. Here she describes every aspect of this growing movement. The people, the places, the dance, the music, all of which come together to create a phenomenon that is growing year by year.

Celebrating the spirit of earth and the spirit of dance!

"An entertaining and inspiring book-deep and informative and full of passion." Dame Judi Dench.

Theatre was my passion from childhood on and remained so until full time parenting took me over. The theatre life suited me just fine; always on the move, changing towns and theatres, roles and work mates. The butterfly’s wings were clipped with motherhood though; no more going where the wind blew.

In the first year of marriage, I trained as a Natural Beauty Therapist, an absorbing experience which opened the door to many alternative realities - natural diet, astrology, acupuncture and energy flow, Ayurvedic body types, palmistry, reincarnation, the Kabbalah and much more; it opened my eyes to a different world view and each of these delights I have followed up during my life.

It also gave a life of my own – as a masseuse; in Warwickshire when the Royal Shakespeare Company was in its Stratford-upon-Avon home, and in Fleet Street (an exhausting succession of beery, stressed journalists with stiff bodies) when it was in London. While loving the role of parent and frequently feeling fulfilled by it there were times of intense longing for theatre as the ultimate creative expression of my soul.

The birth of my first child, a daughter, catalysed a monumental inner crisis, through which I was led to a healing service in a Spiritualist Church and profoundly experienced my soul crying for recognition. I learnt of my purpose here as a woman dedicated to spirit. I was on the move spiritually.

Just after the birth of my second child, a son, I was initiated into Transcendental Meditation which was a life saver and kept me from breaking up under the pressure of two then three small children as a single parent most of the time as their father was wedded to the theatre. This opened the way to exploring my own way of spirituality which eventually took me away from the local C. of E. church in the village outside Stratford and through a time at the Spiritual Community Church of Rudolph Steiner until I was ready to let go and dive into my own limitless spirit.

Some of the most exciting times in my theatre life were the musicals and pantomimes primarily because of the dancing. I Charleston-ed in ‘The Boy Friend’, did top-hat-and-cane ‘high kicks’ in ‘Oh, What a Lovely War’, comic and sweet-young-thing routines in pantomime rep. (provincial repertory theatre), waltzed elegantly on Broadway in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’, and danced full-bloodied rock in Trevor Nunn’s seminal ‘Winter’s Tale’ at Stratford, in Japan and Australia. High times, times when I felt fully alive.

Movement during the motherhood years was racing around keeping up with three small children but with no applause! Then, miraculously, when the smallest child was two, I found myself on a weekend of many kinds of dance; someone rubbed the jar and my creative genie popped out. During a two hour slot of something called ‘Sacred Dance’, I burst into life more fully than ever; this was what I had been waiting for all my life, without knowing it.

Four years ago in search of a simpler life close to the earth, my partner and I moved to a mountain in Spain! Now I am both an international Dance teacher, the other a Spanish peasant. They are dramatically different, in fact diametrically different but it suits someone born a dual ‘Gemini’ subject, and one day – the famous ‘mañana’ day – the two will come together, and dancers will come here to form a sacred dancing circle and soak up the peace and healing of these beautiful mountains.