sun dance

Английский Язык - Английский Язык

Определение sun dance в Английский Язык Английский Язык словарь: a ceremonial dance performed by Amerindians at the summer solstice; A religious ceremony widely practiced among Native American peoples of the Great Plains, typically marked by several days of fasting and group dancing and sometimes including ritual self-torture, as in penance or to induce a trance or vision. Most spectacular and important religious ceremony of the 19th-century Plains Indians. Ordinarily held by each tribe once a year in early summer, it was an occasion for purification and strengthening and an opportunity to reaffirm basic beliefs about the universe and the supernatural through rituals. The ceremony, which originated with the Lakota, was most highly developed among the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, and the Oglala division of the Lakota Sioux. The central rite involved male dancers who, to fulfill a vow or seek "power" (spiritual energy and insight), danced for several days without stopping for food, drink, or sleep, their ordeal ending in frenzy and exhaustion. Among some tribes, piercing and sun gazing were practiced

sun dance