The Circle

Meri Rizzi

The Circle is not only one of the oldest geometric symbols, but also a universal symbol with extensive meanings. It represents the wholeness, the eternity, the infinite….

Look at the Cosmos. Everything moves in circles without beginning or end….growth isn’t linear and every day we change along the cycles of time.

Circle dance is probably the oldest known dance, an ancient tradition common to many cultures…… …….is the breath of the universe …. particles vibrate and galaxies move, everything fluctuates in a movement that is energy and life.

If the dance stops there will be entropy and therefore the death of the universe.

Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, painted circles in a huge range of variations. He wrote that his fascination with circles was their resemblance to the planets floating in the cosmos. In “Several Circles” he painted a series of brightly colored circles against a deep dark backdrop, while the largest, darkest circle near the center is surrounded by a ghostly halo of white light, suggesting unseen ethereal forces.

Several Circles

The Circle Dance in the World

In the circle dance the dancers can describe a circular (closed circle) or semicircular (open circle) trajectory typical of many folk dances and many sacred dances. There is a contact made by hand -to- hand, the support of the hands on the shoulders and arms of the neighbors,but these trajectories can be delineated also without contact.

Nicholas Poussin was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style.

Dance to the Music of Time.

Four figures holding hands dance in a circle, while time plays a lyre on their right. The scene is set in the morning,as Aurora precedes Apollo’s solar chariot. The Hours accompany the Sun God who holds a ring that symbolizes the Zodiac.

Vintage Indian Clothing

Rajasthan, 19th-century painting.

The circle dance of Krishna and Radha and the Gopis. Gopis is a Sanskrit feminine noun that in religions and poetic literature of Hinduism indicate a group of young milkmaids that dance the Raslila with the God and Radha. Many traditions and scriptures accord Radha the status of the eternal consort and wife of Krishna, the female counterpart and the internal potency of the God and she accompany Krishna in all his incarnations.

Georges Lilanga – di – Nyama

Dance

Born into the Makonde tribe in the Masai district of southern Tanzania, he moved to Dar es Salaam in the early 1970’s

and was influenced by the abstracted story-telling of the Tingatinga School of Painting. He produced canvases covered with swarming figures, both animal and human or just simple abstracted shapes…. ….all adding up to a representative, cultural or mythological tale of his people. The traditions of Mapico, masquerade dances performed to celebrate male and female initiation rites, are included in his art but in a caricatured way.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957)

Diego Rivera was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped to establish the mural movement in Mexican and international art and celebrated the country’s Indigenous culture and the working class. In this oil on canvas he used bright colors to create a festive mood in social life on Mexican people.

Celtic Full Moon Dance

Is the moon, the light that rules the night, that has captured the Celtic imagination in stories of magic? Associated with the feminine, she has its own monthly cycle that influences the bodies and the tides. Each month appear the three faces of the Goddess Moon: the “waxing” moon, linked with youthful, vigor and growth, the “fool moon” of blossoming motherhood and the “waning” moon of wisdom and entering rest.