engleski

Catholicism and dance: ritual, pleasure, bans, and morality

Fieldwork on the Island of Krk in Croatia during research on tanac dances showed how religion is important in the life of communities on the Island. All major communal and individuals festivities are very much connected with religious life, the Catholic calendar and the Church. Secular and ecclesiastical protocols refer to such relations of honour given to those who took precedence in the community, the ones who went before, who stood before others, who led as those to whom honour was accorded. Their high placement in the social hierarchy gave the parish priests the right to take part in the Carnival dances. An honour which the parish priest, as well as the mayor, were obliged to fulfil was to dance a unique dance on Shrove Tuesday. This was not only an honour for the man, but also for the girls chosen by him. Priests and nuns dancing was not at all unusual during Mediaeval times along the entire Dalmatian coast and the Littoral, although the Church tried to ban the practice through the bishops’ edicts or those issued at the synods. Drastic prohibitions reveal the very lively nature of the activities being banned. More discussions about the morality and “ new dances” went on during the first part of the 20th century in the work of Ivan Merz, Catholic laic, theologist. On these examples I will discuss the questions of when can dance be seen to be and embodied manifestation of religion accepted by Catholic Church, how official religious concepts of moral and ethical in dance are developed and how much publicly were/are they accepted.

catholicism; dance; religion; ethnochoreology; ritual; etics

nije evidentirano