Story of Native American dance

Glen Sovian

Issue date: 4/16/07 Section: News

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Media Credit: Glen Sovian

Dorayne Breedlove, Native American master dance class teacher, and her husband, Michael Poklikuha, play instruments in the Commons Courtyard.

In its natural form, Native American dance transcends the definition of a modern dance, as participants at the Native American master dance class discovered on April 4 at Brookhaven College.

With the beaten drum and melodic chant, the Native American dance is a spiritual ceremony to vent emotions and make connections to the community and nature.

The students learned the dances are rich in symbolism. The dances can signify triumph, peace, war, love, desire, healing or acts to appease the spirits.

Dorayne Breedlove, the master class teacher, explained how dancing plays a major role in the traditional Native American culture.

She said American Indians view their dances not just as performing art but as a shared experience with a spiritual purpose.

"All the dances are sacred and have ceremonial meaning," Breedlove said. "Dancing is their prayer."

Breedlove combined storytelling with different types of dances.

Storytelling is an oral tradition handed down for generations to teach wisdom and moral lessons.

"I really like how she engaged us in the stories and acted them out," Maquan Moore, dance freshman, said. "The stories were the reasons behind the dances."

After a story about a little girl lost in the forest, Breedlove introduced the Ghost Dance, a ceremonial dance to honor the ancestors.

During the dance, some participants sensed connections to their deceased family members when calling out their names.

"When I talked about my grandfather, I actually had tears in my eyes," Natasha Charania, education freshman, said of her grandfather who passed away seven years ago. "There was a lot of meaning behind it and I felt connected to the group."

Breedlove and the students also performed the rain and peace dances.

According to Breedlove, the rain dance was very important to the traditional American Indian community who relied on agriculture.

Meanwhile, the peace dance is popular as a means to connect to each other as one group while uniquely celebrating each individual.

Both Moore and Charania have years of dance background. Moore has performed ballet, jazz, modern and hip-hop dances for more than five years with the Mahogany Dance Theater of Texas, while Charania has a background in hip-hop and classical dances from India.

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