People have been dancing into ecstasy since the dawn of humankind.

We danced to connect, to heal, to transcend, and to celebrate. All over the world, people created sacred spaces where they danced to the beat of a drum. These dance journeys helped to give birth to art, theatre, healing, and religion. Trance and ecstasy are core to our human experience. They break the spell of narrow identities and social hierarchies, and weave us back into the great mystery. For these very reasons, religious authorities in the west have long suppressed ecstatic dancing. It was deemed sinful and was stripped from its sacred dimensions. Ecstasy, however, has a way of finding us through the cracks of our system. In the last century, pioneers like Isadora Duncan, Gabrielle Roth, and Anna Halprin have been paving the way for a growing Ecstatic and Conscious Dance revival. Once more people are dancing under a full moon, reinventing rituals and ceremonies for these chaotic times. In doing so, we are reclaiming our place as human animals among the community of life, and rediscovering the body as a temple for divine energies.

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Our mission at Heart of the Dance is to support the re-awakening of Ecstatic and Conscious Dance.

In our rapidly changing world, Conscious Dance has the ability to ground us, break barriers, and build communities. We know, because dance has done all these things for us. As ecstatic dancing grows in popularity, it is in danger of being co-opted by the omnipresent marketplace. These tempting commercial forces try to tame the dance with trademarks and 'consumer friendly' versions that are more about packaging than about content. We therefore feel moved to share what lies at the heart of the dance: its deep roots; the guiding principles; the creation of a brave and sacred space; and the art and craft of facilitating a dance journey, both in movement and music. We share this know-how as longtime teachers, DJ's, and, most of all, as students of the field.

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