February 16, 2003
The Contemporary Lovers of Mevlana

The Whirling Dervishes have always fascinated me. I don't remember when I first discovered this peculiar sect of Islam whose primary form of worship involves twirling in place for very long spells. I do remember finding this one very short Flash clip on the internet one day at work. The clip showed a Whirling Dervish spinning again and again, with a rough little seam in the middle of the file where his revolution ended and began. I watched that thing for about ten minutes, and was so spellbound by it that I almost drooled on the keyboard.

Well, last week, at Agnes Scott University, Tom and I got to see the Whirling Dervishes in Real Life, and it was just as mysterious and magical as I hoped it would be.

(A note to my local Atlanta readers — are you aware of the great cultural events available to you through Agnes Scott? They offer all kinds of interesting events on their campus on the outskirts of Decatur — poetry readings, lectures from noted authors, plays, musical events, and, of course, Whirling Dervishes! The events are often free, which is even more wonderful. Click here for their events calendar — and bookmark it. I think they're winding down for the academic year now, but I bet they will get fired up again in the fall.)

The organization responsible for the event last week calls itself "the Contemporary Lovers of Mevlana." Mevlana, of course, is the Turkish poet of the 13th century, Rumi, the mystic poet hero. I believe that the whole turning movement started with Rumi. According to legend, he would reach religious ecstasy by spinning and spinning, and poetry would fly out of his mouth, and his followers would catch the words as they came, and write them down as quickly as they could. (Perhaps one of the earliest forms of performance art.)

Today's sema ritual (or turning ritual) of the Whirling Dervishes is apparently much unchanged since then — except there is no Rumi spouting lyrical verse during the spinning.

The Mevlana consider the dance a way to express and experience the Divine. And when I think about that, I think two things:

(a) "You know, deep down, that idea actually makes a lot of sense."

(b) "Wait, no it doesn't."

The service on Thursday started with an hour-long concert of Sufi music. Lots of lutes and primitive flutes and zithers and hand-drums and low, repetitive, guttural vocals. The sold-out crowd was uneasy from the start; we were ready for fireworks, not homework. The music was all very minor-key and sort of wobbly and not very tuneful. I am sure you get used to it after being around it for a while, but it was hard to plug into it for an hour.

But in the second hour, we got to the real heart of things. The Whirling Dervishes.

The sema ritual itself is really lovely, and if you ever have a chance to see one, I hope you will.

As you might expect, there's an elaborate ritual to be performed as you begin the dance. You don't just pirouette out on the floor like a butterfly and twirl until you fall down.

First the participants (dancers? I don't know what to call them) slowly step out onto the stage, shrouded in black. After a lengthy series of slow, deliberate steps across the stage, they bow to their dede (spiritual father), and wait, kneeling on the floor. The low, guttural Sufi music is playing this entire time. If you're part of an American audience watching this process, it feels like there's a lot of dead time. You're waiting. And a little anxious. I found myself leaning forward a lot in my chair. But it is a period of preparation for the religious ceremony. It makes sense.

Finally, after a lot of slow pacing, and waiting, and kneeling, the dancers cast off their robes, and line up, and bow once more to the dede, and step forward, and begin to turn. It almost seems that they are taking flight.


It is at this point that you finally realize that this is not Riverdance. There is no jumping and kicking and clapping and shouting. It is all deeply solemn. The dancers are entirely soundless. I suppose that the only noise being made — beside the music their peers are playing — is the sound of the air rushing between the full skirts of their costumes.

The dancers' eyes are closed. One hand faces up, and one hand is turned down. The head is tilted at a slight angle toward the right shoulder. They turn again and again, until the music cues them, and they all stop, and their skirts swish around them as they stop turning, and they quietly step into their place in the line of dancers.


(I apologize for the poor photos. I was on the 15th row and a long way from the stage. But when the ceremony began, it seemed terribly irreverent to do anything besides gingerly point the digital camera between the heads of the people in front of me, and hope for the best.)


When they first begin the turning, the dancers' arms are crossed over their chest, like a body laid in a grave. But gradually as they begin to spin, they unfold their arms, and reach briefly skyward, in a movement that somehow suggests a flower reaching for the sun. I tried to catch it in the photo above. It is one of the loveliest things I have ever witnessed.

I found this wonderful review online of a sema dance, which says it so much better than I could:

"Only rarely do most of us encounter dance as a private act of surrender to the divine. And so the Islamic ceremony of sema... demands a shift in aesthetic sensibility. The seemingly endless rotations of its dancers are intended not for us but for Allah. Twirling 20 to 30 times a minute, with the right hand turned heavenward to receive God's grace and the left turned down to convey that grace to Earth, the nine dervishes, their eyes half-closed, seemed oblivious... after a time their movements also seemed to melt into one another. The mild tedium of watching the dervishes gradually turned into meditation. Their dance became a prayer, and we were all part of it."— David O'Reilly, excerpted on sufism.org

I suppose the reason I am drawn to the dance is because it suggests so many different giant gorgeous ideas all at once. The revolution of the earth around the sun. The transition from childhood to adulthood and then to the grave. The moments of being aware of the divine in you, of being briefly filled with light, of knowing, for one little shining transcendent moment, that you are created in the image of God.