Movements (Sacred Dances)

   

Sacred dances have a special place in the teaching of Gurdjieff. He recognized that human beings are creatures of habit and that it is difficult to realize, without special conditions, the extent to which we act automatically. The special conditions created by the properly guided study of his Sacred Dances, or Movements can allow us to see ourselves more fully, and can provide a direct experience of possibilities within ourselves beyond those to which we have become habituated. After some time of study, the Movements, together with other forms of work, may support a quite extraordinary search within.

 

The Movements are a means of developing the mind and the feelings as well as the body. The dances contain knowledge and constitute an expression of the ideas in another form. They are spiritual exercises, to be encountered along with a study of the application of the ideas in the context of work with a group. Without that support, the Movements lose much, if not all, of their meaning.

 

Mr. Gurdjieff introduced these dances first to a group of people studying with him in Tiflis in 1919, and taught them until his car accident in 1924. Later, in the 1930's he again started teaching these dances and introduced many new movements. Great care is now taken to transmit them as they were given without embellishment or distortions.

 

The only publicly available demonstration of Movements is in a film made by the acclaimed theatre and film director, Peter Brook, entitled "Meetings with Remarkable Men", a film based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name by Gurdjieff.