Artist Statement

Mandala--sanskrit for "sacred circle"

Mandalas are dances which place emphasis on the mandala as a medium for meditation while still maintaining a formal choreographic structure. Synthesizing contemporary dance and meditation, Mandalas occupy a place between prayer and performance. They focus on achieving and transmitting trance-like states through repetition, intricate variations and kaleidoscopic changes. Each dance resonates a subtle energy based on the specific shape and/or rhythm being created; for example, Mandala 1 is based on intersecting triangles, while Mandala 4 explores overlapping figure-8s, or infinity signs.

I began creating Mandalas in 1997. In my meditations, I had seen patterns swirling and intersecting in space, and, with the help of my dancers, I wanted to translate these visions into dance. In the process of working, I realized that I had already used sacred geometric patterns in two previous works. Crossings (1984) was the first work in which I let go of the story line or dance theater and created a work in an X pattern. Arms and hand gestures were broken up, retrograded and recombined and placed on top of differing rhythmic patterns in the feet and legs. Crossings, for five dancers and forty-five minutes long, became my first meditation in movement. It was reviewed in Dance View as having, "a ruthless, formal beauty," and Dance News commented, "the reiterative theme changed organically from a dignified processional to a level just short of bravura intoxication."

Ten years later, in 1994, I created Blue Ring, with video artist, Andrea Hull. The choreographic perspective of this piece was from the center of a circle. Art in America reviewed it saying, "Blue Ring ultimately took on religious overtones. The semi-darkness, the enveloping sound, the quasi-ritual absorption of the dancers, the yoga-like alignment and attunement required of the viewer/participant, were altogether closer to sacred than secular experience."

Minimalist and ethereal, Mandalas make no reference to any specific culture although they share similarities with several other dance and meditation disciplines. Both sitting meditations and Mandalas emphasize the focusing and emptying of the mind, but sitting meditation is non-moving and solitary, even when practiced in the company of others. Martial arts (tai chi, etc.) are, like Mandalas, moving meditations, but martial arts imply an opponent. Like Mandalas, folk and ritual dances use circular choreographic forms, but folk and ritual dances are designed to re-enforce specific social, cultural, and political communities, i.e. Greek and Jewish celebrations. Modern dance shapes much of the physical vocabulary of Mandalas, such as hops and turns, but does not have meditation as its priority. And while ballet shares the formality of Mandalas, its thrust is to defy gravity while Mandalas find their harmony in relationship to gravity.

Many influences have helped shape Mandalas including modern dance and ballet, performance, tai chi, yoga, reiki, TM, Gurdjieff's The Work: The Movements, and the movement section of Peter Brooks' film, "Meetings with Remarkable Men." Less directly, several language-based systems have informed me--Roger Woolger's Past Life teachings, Helen Palmer's Intuitive Learning, Oscar Ichazo's, Arica, and Neurolinguistic Programming.

Murray Spalding
Artistic Director

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