One of the Oldest Forms of Ritual

By Laura Bleiberg - The Orange County Register
Friday, November 16, 2007

The Whirling Dervishes take a spin through Orange County: Turkish troupe brings its country's 800-year-old ritualistic dance to the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Tuesday, November 20

If we could turn the clock back a millennium or two, we would find men and women dancing as part of their daily lives. Its purpose, though, might come as a surprise.

Dancing used to be a primary method of religious expression, one of the oldest forms of ritual. Today, however, you'd have to look long and hard to find a religion that incorporated dancing as a normal part of religious practices, at least in this country.

What was once viewed as an exemplary way to express spiritual devotion because it involved the body in motion, is viewed today with suspicion for the very same reason. We have done a 180-degree turnabout, from body "good," to body "bad."

The Whirling Dervishes of Turkey, however, have had no such turning away from their past, excuse the pun. The 800-year-old, ritual-as-performance is as popular as ever, both inside and outside Turkey.

A company of Whirling Dervishes from the Mevlana Cultural Center in Konya, Turkey, is touring the country and will be at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Nov. 20 for a single show.

The first thing that company manager Cenk Erdem wanted to point out during a recent phone interview was that this is not a performance in the usual sense. It is a religious ceremony.

"We call this ritual Sema, and Sema follows holy Quran," Erdem said. "It starts with the reading of verses from the Quran and (continues with) traditional musicians and ritual dancers. But it's not a dance performance. We never tailor the ritual for any stage or for any show because it's a kind of belief."

The revered Sufi poet and philosopher Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi (1207-1273) is credited with creating the dance of non-stop spinning. Some stories suggest that he began turning while walking through a marketplace, hearing the name of God in the musical sounds of hammers clanging against metal pots. But a 22 {+n}{+d}generation descendant of Rumi, who is traveling with the troupe, could not confirm this tale.

"It came out of the blue. He just discovered it as a natural trance," said Esin Celebi, 58, who learned the dance when she was 9. "As the world turns, the dervish turns."

Rumi was born into a family of theologians in present-day Afghanistan. The family traveled widely to escape the Mongol invasion, visiting Mecca and Medina. In 1228, the Sultan of the Seljuks invited the family to Konya, on the Anatolian steppes about 300 miles southeast of Istanbul.

Rumi became a prominent scholar, writing epic poems in Persian, and revered for his spiritual devotion. Groups of Mevlevi followers spread throughout Asia, and into Europe, and the dervishes continued their ceremonial dancing for centuries.

The schools were closed and suppressed for a 30-year period beginning in the 1920s, but the ritual was never entirely destroyed.

Nearly everything about the Sema ritual is symbolic, and is intended to express specific beliefs, such as the majesty of God and love of all creations. Escaping from one's own ego figures prominently in the dance.

The dervishes wear a stove-pipe shaped, camel-hair hat, which represents the ego's tombstone. The adherents' white skirts – which flair as the dancer turns – is meant to symbolize the ego's shroud.

After removing a long black coat, which, it is believed, allows the dancer to be reborn spiritually, the dancer starts the ritual with arms folded across the body. That position represents the number one, or God's unity.

The dancers eventually spread their arms wide, with the right hand raised toward the sky and the left directed toward the earth, a gesture to convey a readiness to receive God's beneficence.

"What is so crucial, is Mevlani (Rumi) talks about leaving our ego," Erdem said. "They use the left foot to crash the ego. Every movement of the hands, the feet, everything refers to something. It's also the spiritual training ."

The musical instruments, too, have been specially selected because of their symbolic power. A small double drum called a kudum begins the ceremony and is meant to suggest the beginning of the universe. An end-blown flute, known as a ney, also has a prominent musical part, as it is a representative of the "divine breath of God," Erdem said.

The performers from Konya have gone through a rigorous, multiyear training that encompasses both spiritual and physical schooling. Not everyone succeeds in becoming a dervish.

The company members on this tour range from 22 to 78 years old. The training is open to both women and men, but only men are in the ensemble that will be at the Barclay.

"In ancient times, when we talk about Sema, women and men used to do the ritual together, but after some necessities of Islamic culture, they started to do the ritual separately," Celebi said.

"And what is important, it's about our souls and we don't regard our souls discriminate like males or females. We come from the spiritual world and we are the same without gender."