Orixa Dance Movement…
Orixa, for the Bahian community became symbols of the cultural structure. Their images, as well as their dances and their rhythms are where many artists find sources of inspiration for the development of their work. The Orixa are the divined nature, sung and danced by people who dedicate themselves to expressing their religiousness through these Yoruba deities. These deities are expressed all the time, around everything and everyone, for they represent the AIR that we breathe, the FIRE that we use to heat, the WATER that we drink, and the EARTH that we walk upon.
These elements are celebrated throughout Brazil when they visit us and they privilege us with their presence. They do so by showing us through the prepared initiates and bodies who are capable of receiving these sacred forces. They show us symbolically through their ancestral songs, rhythms, dances and their garb, gestures and human behavior.
The gestures and interpretation of the dances followed with specific rhythms for each of them, is all that has been extracted from this cultural source in order to give training to the student interested in this lesson - and not ritualistic religious procedure or that which is exclusive to those worshippers of the Candomblé religion who pass through an initiation process once they become devotees.
These dances are shown in the opening ceremonies to the Orixa, called the Xirê. This ceremony is opened to the general public as the Candomblé religion has its doors open. Opened doors - for a ceremony and not a spectacle. Opened doors for the people, and not for a ticket-buying public.
In our cultural development (not necessarily religious), we learn to observe this ceremony with another set of eyes, because we learn a little about each of the deities: Exu (the messenger between the sacred world and the human being), Ogum (he who opens the pathways), Oxossi (the hunter), Ossain (leaves and herbs), Xango (justice, fire), Iansã-Oya (wind and storms), Oxum (beauty and fresh waters), Oba (the warrior), Iemanj´ (motherhood, salt waters), Obaluaê (disease and Illnesses), Nanã (mud, life and death), Oxal´ (fatherhood, peace).
Culturally, we coexist with these symbols, and we learn to respect them as sacred forces and symbols of religious worship. It is necessary to clarify that outside of the sacred space, their movements are simply steps of dances – that, of a certain form, maintain a relation with the dances that may be observed in a terreiro (sacred space where the ceremony happens). Outside of the terreiro, they are not being danced for the Orixa, but rather the movement of these dances are in the form of a dance lesson, and not in the form of a ceremony – in a classroom, and not in a terreiro. The dance teacher is merely a guide, and not a Father or Mother of Saints (priest or priestess), training students who will be able to follow the way of the art and, not that of a Yaô (initiate in the Candomblé religion) who would have obligations and perpetual devotion for their religion.
It is important to recognize the differences between:
dancing the Orixa: by the body manifested with the sacred force.
dancing for the Orixa: a worshipper dancing in a sacred space.
dancing the movements of the Orixa dances: the practice of these movements outside a sacred space and without having to follow religious concepts, rituals or rules.