I’m lucky. I’ve known what a Whirling Dervish was from the time I was just a wee one.
It was not uncommon in my household growing up when we were bounding off the walls on some sugar high to be told to calm down because we were “running around like Whirling Dervishes.” When we got old enough to be curious about what that actually meant, my mother, a fan of self-learning, told us “Go look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls“…also a common phrase in our house.
(Hm, I suppose today my parents would say, “Go look it up on Wikipedia.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it does it?)
So from a very early age I not only knew what I Whirling Dervish was…a member of the ancient Sufi Mevlevi order…I was completely fascinated by them.
I think their whirling…or spinning… practice is nothing short of beautiful. Every time I see it in a film or on television I am completely enthralled and I sit slack jawed mesmerized by their dancing. Which, I suppose, is kind of appropriate since what the dancer is performing is a kind of worshipful meditation and the dance is being given as a gift from God to the watchers.
Today in my feeds I ran across this video that takes Whirling to a place I’ve never seen before. The first dance is really impressive alone…but the dancer, Ibrahim Hassan, blew me away with the surprise animation he created with his whirling skirt around 2:25.
Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!
Thank you to kuriositas for bringing me what I’m sure will be the loveliest thing I see today. 🙂
