Academic Papers
The Much Anticipated. . .
The Circle Dance Ritual In the Acts of John: An early Christian Ritual Reconstruction. M.A. Thesis University of Kansas, 2010. This paper combines several of Melody's previous papers. (see abstracts below)
Dance in Ancient Egypt, 2007
Coming Soon
Some dancers have suggested that belly dance has roots in the dances of ancient Egypt, but does belly dance look like this? The evidence presented here indicates that much of what we typically think of as ancient Egyptian dance is actually a 20th century western invention. Ancient Egyptian dance deserves to be studied in its own right and not merely as what we would like it to be. This paper attempts to present Egyptian dance in its own right in terms of its historical development, cultural function, and technical style.
(Although this paper was written in 2007 my electronic was lost in a hard drive crash. I am currently retyping it from hard copy.)
Dance and Primal Unity, 2008
This paper discusses scholarly theories on the sacred origins of dance in prehistory. These theories suggest that dance represents the first art form and that it arose at a stage of human development when our cultural and cognitive functioning tended toward seeing unity in all things. These theorist suggest that the origins of dance in primal unity account for dance's power to unite people of all ages, races, sizes, and genders not to mention dance's power to unite conflicting psychological factors bringing healing to individual.
Women's Dancing and Drumming tradition in Iron Age Israel, 2008
Many people think the only woman who danced in the Bible was Salome, but in truth the Old Testament is full of references to women dancing and drumming for religious reasons. Archaeological evidence confirms that there does appear to be a women's drumming and dance tradition is ancient Israel. This paper presents the evidence for that tradition and speculates as to its significance and purpose. It also discusses the implications of this knowledge for modern gender theory.
Circle Dance and the Gospel of the Savior, 2008
This paper examines the circle dance tradition relayed in the apocryphal text the Acts of John in conjunction with a little known parallel text the Gospel of the Savior. The paper examines the two texts and discusses the probability that these two texts are describing the same early Christian circle dance tradition.
Circle Dance Ritual in Early Christianity, 2009
How would Christianity be different today is this this was the image if its God. A dancing Jesus provides and interesting contrast to the other iconographic traditions concerning Christ. The Acts of John describes such a Jesus along with a circle dance ritual that may have been prevalent in early Christianity. This paper shows that the Circle Dance ritual did not exist in isolation and was strongly influenced by other circle dance traditions, and that it also had a strong impact on later Christianity. Furthermore, this paper also attempts to reconstruct, from textual and contextual sources, the ritual experience of the Circle Dance in early Christianity.