Танець як складова культової обрядодії
Dance as a part of the religious rites

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the dance as an ancient form of the artistic person, originally associated with the historical and cultural tradition of the religious rites and ritual practice of the rhythmic movement of the humanity. The dance at the same time becomes the first art form of conscious human communication. Emotional involvement in the art of dance to the sacred content of its images reflects the mentality of each nation, particularly its vocabulary, specificity of its performance. The uncertainty of the primitive people about the result of the production activity, the imperfection of the real resources that can ensure the continued success of the hunting, fishing, and other labour actions, was one of the main reasons that prompted those people to use the illusory and symbolic game means of the practical impact. The rites depicting the dance of the hunting animals are known in the many nations and have been described by ethnographers. The hunting and labor dancing of the primitive people were characterized by its own rhythm and melody. They had the imitation character, considering the gender differentiation in the labor between the men and the women. The women of the tribe could not participate in the hunting dances because they were not engaged in the hunting. Their duties included the household work, so the specifics of the cooking, tailoring and embroidery, which also occupied a niche in the content of the dances of the primitive peoples, were reproduced in the women's dances. The human history has repeatedly noted the impact of the group of rhythmic body movements towards the cultivation of the mystical feeling of the kinship. So the traditional dances of the many nations are based on the principles of the circle, the symbol of God and eternity to show that there is no beginning and no end in the dance. Theround dance is popular among the Ukrainians from the pre-Christian times. During its performance the dancers are arranged in the chains, in the form of the closed or opened curve. Holding in the dance tight by the hand, the participants were recruited the forces for the joint experience of the different conflicts of everyday life. The totemic dance rituals were practiced to restore the supernatural blood links of the certain clan or a tribe with the certain objects of the nature. Totem-progenitors were primarily as the objects of the nature, which had the importance for the human traits: strength, fecundity, agility and etc. The ancients realized their military ritual dances in the great rhythmical forms. They were built on the integration of the participants and spectators of the dance action in a single rhythm, which released a significant amount of the energy needed for the training by the military affairs. The military Greek pyrrhic dance with the weapons in the arms of the dancers imitated the real military exercises. The dance by its nature unites the reality and the mythology. In the ancient Greece, the Greek warriors’ militant dance was performed in the valuable decorated armor with helmets, shields, spears and swords. Dance with a sword, but without clothes and special equipment was regarded by the Greeks and Romans as a sign of the German savagery and barbarism. If participation in the ritual dances in the primitive society was spontaneously, in ancient Greece there was a differentiation of their participants and spectators. The high ethos (the tranquil moral and aesthetic character, alternative to deplorable pathos and marked by a high level of the spiritual perfection) provided the classic antique dances a cult value. The man of antiquity felt the harmony of the divine and the earthly and wanted comprehensively and fully to realize themselves. Actually the dance as a wonderful gift of the Olympian gods, according to the requirements kalokagathia, became the unity of the spiritual and physical beauty. The gods occasionally descended to earth to join the dance of the people. Along with the growing power and wealth of the Imperial Rome the Roman nobility spread the desire for the luxury and licentiousness. The art of the dance is deprived of its original aesthetic purity, it is increasingly distorted by the animal lust and debauchery. The sacred ancient Greek celebrations in the honor of Dionysus are transformed into the unbridled orgies, in which mostly salaried dancers and jesters-gistrions were involved. Thus, the beginning of a ritual dance as a spiritual phenomenon is gradually replaced by a purely entertaining elements, inevitably vulgarizing. There were obscene mysteries – "Bacchanalia" (from the Latin Bacchanalia), followed by a riotous feast of the drunkenness and meaningless, then prohibited by the Roman Senate. The former traditional sacred dances, such as belly dancing, losing its deeper mystical meaning, gained psychological opposite direction as vulgar exciting spectacle.

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