Awe

The idea that dance symbolized the themes of our social living, including the wonders of life, may seem foreign nowadays. That is because in the West, religious powers and the upper classes of European societies extricated dance from our social lives. They did so to constrain and tame its symbolic power, aware of how dance could express passion, freedom, and desire, and not infrequently lead to waves of protest against the ruling classes. Today dance revolutionaries like Radha Agrawal are bringing back this wonder of life, enabling us to move our bodies the way they were meant to move.

How might dance allow us to express awe? A sophisticated answer to this question is found in the Natyashastra, a 2,300-year-old text thought to have been written by Hindu sage Bharata Muni in the second century BCE. With the precision you might find in a manual for putting together an IKEA shelving unit, the Natyashastra details how we are to move our feet, hands, fingers, arms, torsos, heads, facial muscles, knees, and hips to express rasas, or emotions, in dance.

Thus, the Natyashastra details that we express anger and rage in dance with a crouch, poised body, clenched hands and arms, tightened mouth and jaw, and fixed gaze (like the haka dance led by Upu of the men in blue).

For love, the Natyashastra recommends that we are to relax our bodies, tilt our heads, open our arms and hands, smile, and mirror the gaze of the beloved (think Gene Kelly in his iconic “Singin’ in the Rain” dance.)

For awe, we are to widen our eyes and mouth, look up, and open our arms, shoulders, chest, and hands, the very behaviors we found that express awe in different cultures from around the world. One can see such awe-filled dance today when Pentecostal Christians are moved by the holy spirit or revelers are rolling at a rave.

Dance transforms us in the ways of awe. In a study from Brazil, high school students engaged in dance-like movements, either in sync with others to the beat of a metronome or out of sync with those nearby. Those who “danced” with others, in particular when making more vigorous movements, felt more interconnected. They could also tolerate more pain, a sign of elevated natural opioids, which accompany feelings of merging. Even twelve-month-old babies will help an experimenter pick up dropped pens if the babies have bounced in synchronized rhythm to music with the experimenter.

Over the thousands of years of its evolution, dance, like sports, music, art, and religion, became a way to document awe. In dance, we recognize in a symbolic language what is wonderful (and horrifying) about life. In one relevant study, a classically trained dancer in the Hindu tradition made four- to ten-second videos of her Natyashastra-inspired performances of ten emotions, or rasas. Western Europeans had no trouble discerning the emotions expressed in these brief performances, including those of wonder. When moving in unison through dance, we communicate with others about the sublime.

When we watch the expression of rasas in dance, the Natyashastra continues, we as spectators feel aesthetic emotions known as bhavas. These aesthetic emotions are different from the emotions of our mundane lives, or rasas; we feel bhavas in the realm of the imagination, where we are momentarily and delightfully free of the concerns of our quotidian lives.

How does this work? Current thinking holds that when we see others dance, we instinctively start to mimic their actions, which you may sense in your foot tapping or body swaying. These bodily movements then lead our embodied minds to bring to consciousness ideas, images, or memories related to the actions expressed in the dance. A dancer’s portrayal of awe, for example, might lead you to open your body ever so slightly and shift your gaze upward. You may recall past encounters with a wonder of life or imagine possible wonders you might enjoy. All of this, it merits noting, takes place in the realm of the imagination, where we are free to consider what is possible.

When dancing together, we share the delights of moving our bodies. And we experience flights of our imagination in seeing others dance. This all can bring about a porous intermingling of bodies and minds we experience as collective effervescence. No wonder dance is so transporting, and so often borders, like the collective effervescence of sports, on the spiritual.

SIX WILD AWE How Nature Becomes Spiritual and Heals Bodies and Minds

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

• RACHEL CARSON