+Piercing Is the Most Important Part+

So..as a starving artist you find yourself working jobs of the menial, ridiculous, and - if you're lucky - amazingly unique nature. I've been a waitress at many a burrito stand and coffee shop, worked both the sales and sweatshop sides of an "alternative" retail chain, sold gastric bypass products over the phone, and taught tiny tots to silver sneakers how to ... shake their groove thang.

Fortunately, I've been recently lucky enough to fall into working as a pseudo-personal assistant for whom most would consider a madman. Pompous and intense and quite possibly a secret genius a la' Hagbard Celine of the Illuminatus Trilogy - my employer has for the past few months rambled at great length of mystics, 2012, and meaning -- not the meaning of life, no - he could never be so cliche - but MEANING; the meaning of a look or gesture, the significance attached to a symbol or network, and all the muddled and not-so-muddled in-betweens. He mentioned something to me quite some time ago about a Lakota Indian ritual he was preparing himself for. He was brief and I assumed it was for the purposes of secrecy and reverence. Maybe it was. However, I'd soon come to find my research on dance practices and their connection to the "ALL ONE" or ever-evolving, interconnecting spirit self quickly hurtling towards the details he originally failed to extend to me.

Wikipedia describes the Sun Dance Ritual: "The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced by a number of Native Americans. Each tribe has its own distinct rituals and methods of performing the dance, but many of the ceremonies have features in common, including dancing, singing, praying, drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and in some cases piercing of the chest or back. Most notable for early Western observers was the piercing many young men endure as part of the ritual.

Frederick Schwatka wrote about a Sioux Sun Dance he witnessed in the late 1800s:

Each one of the young men presented himself to a medicine-man, who took between his thumb and forefinger a fold of the loose skin of the breast—and then ran a very narrow-bladed or sharp knife through the skin—a stronger skewer of bone, about the size of a carpenter's pencil was inserted. This was tied to a long skin rope fastened, at its other extremity, to the top of the sun-pole in the center of the arena. The whole object of the devotee is to break loose from these fetters. To liberate himself he must tear the skewers through the skin, a horrible task that even with the most resolute may require many hours of torture.

In fact, the object of being pierced is to sacrifice one's self to the Great Spirit, and to pray while connected to the Tree of Life, a direct connection to the Great Spirit. Breaking from the piercing is done in one moment, as the man runs backwards from the tree at a time specified by the leader of the dance. A common explanation, in context with the intent of the dancer, is that a flesh offering, or piercing, is given as part of prayer and offering for the improvement of one's family and community..."

Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it! I'm wondering right now - where the magic has gone...and moreover, are there folks in NYC currently out there - actively trying to find it? I know Santa Cruz is home of Dance Church.

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If anyone is aware of anything going on on the East Coast that is similar - please, come out, come out cave dwellers! Let me know! [BODY JERK finds spirituality in nyc dance. hip-hop dance can become something viable too. nyc hip-hop dance can be taken back. nyc hip-hop dance can be a method of radical communication. nyc hip-hop dance can be therapeutic. nyc hip-hop dance can make your soul light up. dance is my religion. I am a hip-hop dance activist. You can be an nyc hip-hop dance activist too. We use dance as a mode of radical communication. Like urban gypsies, we flood the streets, sampling culture . nyc Hip-Hop was born of soul and sample. Become an nyc hip-hop dance student. Become an nyc hip-hop dance educator. Become an nyc hip-hop dance activist. hip-hop urban gypsy. hip-hop dance evolution. revolution. ]