A loud music with an incredibly quick rhythm is ringing through my ears and we are jumping, jumping, jumping! My breath gets shorter and sweat drips down my T-shirt but I don’t want to stop. The ground is being beaten, beaten, beaten like a drum beneath our feet. Everything begins to look different to me. With every second, I feel stronger as I sense my body more and more connected to earth and I am full of joy. No, I am not at a punk or hip-hop party. This is the first time I practice Horon—a traditional chain dance from the Black Sea Region of Turkey.
If you were ever to ask about transcendence and dance in the Turkish context, it would probably be the Sufi ritual of Sema– known to the West as the “whirling dervish dance”—that would first come to mind. People visit Turkey from all over the world to attend this solemn ritual so that they can connect and be unified with God. But for me, when talking about transcendence, I choose to speak about Horon.
The memory of my first encounter with Horon must have penetrated deeply into my body since, two years later, I find myself here, at the top of a Black Sea Mountain conducting field research on this enthralling movement practice. We are over 2000 meters above sea level. Standing on a cliff on a hot summer day, I am overlooking the scene: a great big circle of over a hundred people standing together practicing the Horon, arm in arm, jumping, stomping, clapping their hands and shouting with glee. They are jumping in unison on the high plateau grass and jumping goes on for hours and hours under the brutal sun. A mist shades the scene from time to time, partly hiding and partly revealing the incessant movement of the circle of people in front of me. I realize that I am at the very place where the Horon was born.
Is Horon a ritualistic dance? No, not really. It is a dance that is practiced in social gatherings like summer feasts, festivals, weddings and so on. But sometimes, the very pious people of the region associate this group dance with the “demonic.” This attitude has contributed to the ill reputation of dance in the Islamic context. A better way to understand it would be to look at the etymology. The word used to denote traditional dance practices in the Turkish language does not exactly mean “dance,” but rather, translates more accurately as “play.” In other words, when you practice Horon, you play Horon like a child playing a game.
But the rules are idiosyncratic. When you play the Horon, you grab on tightly to the arms of the people standing at either of your sides—it doesn’t matter if you know them or not, if you like them or not—and all together, you form a firm circle. This connection leads you to move with the others as if you were one great body. Moving as part of this interlinked chain, you are not a free individual anymore. The experience is of constantly being pulled and pushed by the others and your main goal is to jump and stomp all together, all at once, continuously and in unison with everyone else in the chain. It is as if you are beating the earth, playing it like a drum.
You might find yourself—who listens to these earthy beats?—as your body begins to shake from head to toe. This is a shaking that is not only very strong, but also extremely contagious! As each individual body within the chain starts to shake, the collective shaking gets stronger and faster. The high-speed rhythm of the Horon music is perfect sustenance for realizing this hard labor. Jumping, stomping and shaking produce a lot of sweat! After a while, it also begins to lead to an unusual state of consciousness; a state of “collective trance.”
At this moment, the faces begin to transform. For each of the Horon practitioners, there starts to emerge a wild ecstatic smile, and it gradually gets stronger and bigger. Euphoric and full of abundance, the people within the chain experience something utterly different from their daily lives—a wave of collective connection and energetic playfulness that is beyond their individual selves.
At that moment, they are no longer teachers, police officers, farmers, housewives, students, mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons or daughters. They are no longer any of these. Stomping and jumping under the merciless sun and the mysterious mist, they almost dissolve in the great Horon circle and become an inseparable part of the fascinating landscape. Less and less connected to the worldly issues and more and more connected to earth, they TRANSCEND.
When sunset approaches, the Horon comes to an end. A man walking next to me looks suddenly sorrowful. He has waited the whole year for this summer feast. He has danced the whole day through. And now, it was over. He is in a melancholic mood as he wonders out loud whether or not he will be alive next year to join the feast again.
As we descend the mountains, such short reflections on death seem transient and are swiftly forgotten as thoughts about daily matters start to return. However, the resonance of the experience remains remembered deep inside our bodies for all of us who were there that day and played the Horon.
The secret seems to lie in the act of moving and the wide-open connection with nature. Given the sedentary habits of our modern lifestyles, we have forgotten how to move. In fact, we are probably capable of much more vigorous movement than we think or imagine.
Another secret is in the playfulness. It made me realize that it was not only through solemnity and devotion—as experienced in the Sema Sufi tradition, for example—that we can be lead us beyond daily consciousness, but also through boisterous joy. As in fact, Sufi master Rumi teaches us: “Stamp and dance (play), maybe the foot of holiness touches your foot and begins to dance (play) with you.” And as contemporary dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch warns us: “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.”
Şebnem Sözer – Actress and performing arts theorist from Türkiye with dance training in Japan and special interest in traditional Asian performing arts. She holds an MA in Dance Anthropology, and a PhD in Theatre.