Circle Dance

Young, smart and beautiful with everything figured out - or so they thought. Born into a prosperous Greek American family, sisters Nicole and Theodora have achieved the perfect balance between the old world rich in Greek tradition and the freedom of life in America. Headstrong and independent, Nicole plunges into life head-first, too often ignoring the risks. Her talent and astute business acumen make her the perfect heir to her father's empire, but his old-world attitudes prevent him from giving the top spot to a woman. Nicole's world spins out of control when she falls for a married senator who shares her heritage and her dreams. While struggling to navigate previously uncharted moral waters, she uncovers treachery and corruption that will break both her sister's and her father's heart. The decisions she makes will affect the happiness of those closest to her and will define the woman she is to become. The young and conventional Theodora weds and quickly learns that marriage is not the paradise she envisioned. She must soon confront the growing suspicion that her husband is not the man he seems. Forced to endure the constant disdain and disapproval of her patrician mother-in-law, she resigns herself to the fact that she will always be considered an outsider. As she struggles to succeed at her marriage, she seeks the wisdom and council of her beloved Greek grandmother who has been happily married for over half a century. Ultimately she must come to terms with the reality of her own life and take responsibility for the role she has played in deceiving herself. As the dramatic plot unfolds, the two young women must confront deceit and betrayal and their own shortcomings - while they struggle to preserve the values they cherish. Set in Baltimore, Annapolis and the tiny island of Ikaria, Greece, Circle Dance provides a view into the lives of a dynamic family that has successfully achieved the American dream without abandoning the customs and traditions handed down through their Greek heritage. Artfully intertwined plots bring generations together in a dance of rejoicing and mourning, loss and healing that will keep readers enthralled until the last page.

"Circle Dance: The Art of John T. Scott is a celebration of this renowned artist's work in printmaking, sculpture, collage, and painting produced over the course of a nearly forty-year career. Published in conjunction with an exhibit of the same name at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Circle Dance features 100 color photographs of Scott's art, from his earliest productions in cast bronze, welded steel, and printmaking, to his most recent forays into site-specific public art and mammoth works on paper."--Jacket.

The world is asked to believe that, while the Planetary Angels of the Church are divine Beings, the genuine Seraphim, these very same angels under identical names and planets are the “false” Gods of the Ancients. The circle dance of the planets, prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries, is called “lascivious” when performed by the Pagans, but not King David’s reprehensible dance, during which he uncovered himself before his maid-servants in a public thoroughfare. It was David who introduced Jehovistic worship into Judæa, after sojourning so long among the Tyrians and Philistines, where these rites were common. Having borrowed Osiris from the Egyptians, the Church Fathers thought little of helping themselves to his brother Typhon. The seven-branched chandelier of the Israelites, as well as the “wanderers” of the Greeks, had a far more natural meaning, a purely astrological one to begin with. But, symbol for symbol, we prefer the sun to a candlestick. One can understand how the latter came to represent the sun and planets, but no one can admire the chosen symbol. There is poetry and grandeur in the sun when it is made to symbolise the Eye of Ormuzd, or of Osiris. One must forever fail to perceive that any particular glory is rendered to Christ by assigning to him the trunk of a candlestick in a Jewish synagogue. The chandelier represented the motion of the seven luminaries, describing their astral revolution. To the right and the left of that candelabrum projected six branches, each of which had its lamp, because the Sun placed as a candelabrum in the middle of other planets distributes light to them. There are two suns, a sun adored and a sun adoring. There are seven series of Cosmocratores, which are double: the higher ones are commissioned to support and guide the superior world; the lower ones, the inferior world. The Zoroastrians, Mazdeans, and Persians borrowed their conceptions from India; the Jews borrowed their theory of angels from Persia; the Christians borrowed theirs from the Jews. The Zoroastrian Aryans transformed the Devas, the bright Gods of India, into daevas or devils. It was their Karma that, in their turn, the Christians should vindicate on this point the Hindus. Then Ormuzd and Mithra became the daevas of Christ and Mikael, the dark lining and aspect of the Saviour and Angel. The day of the Karma of Christian theology will come in its turn. Hence, the latest interpretation by Churches that the seven-branched candlestick represents the seven Churches of Asia, and the seven planets which are the angels of those Churches. And yet, in the face of all this evidence, sun, moon, planets, are shown as being demoniacal before, and divine only after, the appearance of Christ. Then Jehovah then is made to be the Sun, and thence also the Christ of the Roman Church. The only point of difference between the exotericism of the Latin Church and that of the old Astrolators lies in the entirely arbitrary interpretation of emblems, symbols, allegories, and even names which have been shown to be identical in both.

Senegal has played a central role in contemporary dance due to its rich performing traditions, as well as strong state patronage of the arts, first under French colonialism and later in the postcolonial era. In the 1980s, when the Senegalese economy was in decline and state fundingwithdrawn, European agencies used the performing arts as a tool in diplomacy. This had a profound impact on choreographic production and arts markets throughout Africa. In Senegal, choreographic performers have taken to contemporary dance, while continuing to engage with neo-traditional performance, regional genres like the sabar, and the popular dances they grew up with. A historically informed ethnography of creativity, agency, and the fashioning of selves through the different life stages in urban Senegal, this book explores the significance of this multiple engagement with dance in a context of economic uncertainty and rising concerns over morality in the public space.

Feeling initially aimless and out of place in rural Nepal where she accompanied her anthropologist husband for a year of fieldwork, Katharine Bjork Guneratne turned to writing to make sense of her sojourn in the shadow of the Himalaya. The resulting book is both an acute portrait of a village and an intimate account of her struggles to adapt to a different way of life. Like the best cultural travel narratives, In the Circle of the Dance draws on the author's experiences to illuminate both exterior and interior worlds. Bjork's book is in many ways a primer on the realities of fieldwork, from setting up house to participating in the work of the village women to finding ways to communicate across cultural divides. It describes how this outsider achieved a gradual and provisional inclusion in the community, an inclusion represented by her participation in a traditional women's circle dance. The book also depicts the effects of modernization and tourism on a society that remained closed to the West well into this century, while offering comparative insights about wider South Asian cultures. The author's lyrical, frequently moving descriptions of everyday life guide her readers through the stages of her cultural apprenticeship. In the end, as Bjork joins the circle dance, she is a stranger to the community still, but a familiar and welcome one.

A description of every aspect of the Sacred/Circle dance movement.

The vibrant and regional styles of native African dance are examined in this book.

The Divine Dance has become a classic for fans of Richard Rohr and an important book on Christian mysticism, it provides a fresh perspective for anyone studying or teaching the trinity. The Trinity is the central doctrine of Christianity, but it is still widely considered a mystery we won't ever fully understand. Should we still try to understand it, even so? If we could, how would it transform our relationship with God? In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, internationally recognised teacher Richard Rohr explores the nature of God and the paradoxical idea of the Holy Trinity as both three and one. With clear, surefooted wisdom, he encourages us to build on the early Christian understanding of the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit as a flow and dance - a Divine Dance - that we are invited to join in. An engaging, accessible look at the nature of God, The Divine Dance will challenge the way you think about the Trinity and give you a much fuller understanding of the triune relationship that is at the heart of Christian doctrine. It will leave you with a faith that is renewed and strengthened, and show you how you can engage more deeply in your relationship with God and the world through the Trinity.