Dancing

 

Dancing is a form of prayer

• While there many kinds of dances the focus here will be on the two main ones: powwows and rounddances

• There are two popular types of Pow-Wows today: Competition and Traditional

• The main difference is that the competition Pow-Wow is a competitive event for money and the Traditional Pow-Wow is for healing, grieving and celebrations (Tea Dance, Horse Dance, Ghost Dance and Deer Dance… etc.)

• Rounddances are public dances that everybody can participate without the need for regalia

• Rounddances can be for birthdays, memorials, celebrations of achievements, naming…etc

 

• The seven Dances highlighted today are:

  • Jingle Dress

  • Fancy Shawl

  • Traditional Buckskin Dance Men/women

  • Chicken Dance

  • Grass Dance

  • Men’s Fancy

• Hoop dancing (solo dance by mens and ladies)

• Rounddancing (community dance no regalia)

 

• Jingle Dress Dance came about from an Ojibwe father, who dreamt that with this dance people can heal. It was Maggie White who was sick and gave no signs of recovering, so her father searched for a vision.  That vision of a dress and a dance came to him in a dream.  He constructed the dress and put it on his sick daughter.  He instructed her from his vision how to perform the dance, and as she did she was cured.

• Women’s Fancy Shawl is a derivative of Men’s Fancy Dance, that is done to appease spectators and mimic the flight of a butterfly. It is a recent dance.

• Traditional Dance is a revision of the old war dance that had been banned in Canada in 1884. This dance is performed by both men and women in specific regalia. The women dance and sway in a stationary position around the dance area. While the men dance wearing eagle feathers and holding weaponry in preparation for war or celebration of victory.

• Chicken Dance was one of the original dances that mimics the mating dance of the Prairie Chicken and is danced by men alone.

• Grass Dance is another one of the original dances that was performed to level out the grass in new camps. If you watch the movements of the dance you can see that it is the motion needed to mat down grass.

• Men’s Fancy is another one of the new dances that is done to appease the crowd because of its demanding physical requirements and the ultra fancy regalia with two bussels.

• Hoop Dance

 

Many tribal groups across North America used the hoop in traditional healing ceremonies, and the hoop’s significance enhances the embodiment of healing ceremonies. Tribal healers and holy men have long regarded the hoop as sacred and many have used it in their ceremonies. Visions and ailments were seen through some of these hoops by tribal holy men and women.

 

Many tribes lay claim to the Hoop Dance. It wasn’t until the 1930s that a young man named Tony White Cloud, Jemez Pueblo, played an instrumental role in its evolution and began using multiple hoops in a stylized version as ”founder of the modern Hoop Dance.”

 

The Moving Slowly Dance came from the south. A woman of the Mud House People, (one of the village tribes of the Missouri, probably the Mandans) had four adopted children. She made feather bonnets for them and showed them how to dance. A different woman would wear the bonnet for each song. That is what I heard when I visited the Rocky Boy Reserve in Montana. The Moving Slowly Dance, as we do it now, (without a bonneted leader), was first danced by the Nakoda Sioux (Stoney, Assiniboine) people. This was at the time of the Rebellion (1885). They captured one of our men. That is how we got it.

 

The dance was held during times of sickness; however, it was also deemed as a social dance, and began with a Pipe Ceremony. The music followed a, "One-two", beat of the drum. Dancers formed a circle, and stepped in a clockwise shuffle.