A doorway back to the body, to the earth, and to each other.
Ecstatic dance is a practice of free, improvised movement, done barefoot, without alcohol, without talking, and without performance. There are no steps to follow, no choreography to master, no pressure to look a certain way. The body leads. The music guides. The mind loosens. The nervous system unwinds.
At its heart, ecstatic dance is a return — a return to instinct, community, rhythm, and the honesty of the moving body.
Gabrielle Roth’s Vision (5Rhythms)
Modern global ecstatic dance draws heavily from the work of Gabrielle Roth, who described movement as “the fastest, most direct route to the truth.”Her 5Rhythms practice — flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, stillness — showed that dance is not entertainment but a map of the human psyche, a way to move through emotional landscapes and into deeper presence.
Roth taught that “a dancing body is a feeling, thinking, healing body.”Ecstatic dance today inherits this understanding.
Movement Medicine (Ya’Acov & Susannah Darling Khan)
The founders of Movement Medicine, Ya’Acov and Susannah Darling Khan, expanded Roth’s lineage with an emphasis on ecology, shamanic awareness, trauma integration, and relationship with the living world. They describe dance as “a medicine wheel of embodiment” — a practice that reconnects people with their bodies, communities, ancestors, and the wider web of nature.
This perspective is central to our work at Greenhouse: movement as healing, movement as remembrance, movement as activism.
But the roots go far deeper. Ecstatic dance is not a modern Western invention. It is a continuation of the oldest rituals on Earth.
Long before the language of “ecstatic dance,” “5Rhythms,” or “conscious movement,” African indigenous communities used dance as their primary tool for healing trauma, resolving conflict, bonding the tribe, entering trance, restoring trust, communicating with ancestors, and celebrating cycles of moon.
Among them, the San people — one of the oldest continuous cultures on Earth — hold an extraordinary lineage of trance dance and New Moon dance rituals.
San Trance Dance
The San used rhythmic movement, breath, clapping, and song to activate n/um — the healing energy that rises through the spine and radiates through the community. The dance was always practiced outside, under starlight, with fire.
The Indigenous New Moon Dance
Traditionally held under the open sky, it was a ceremony of renewal, emotional release, communal regulation, and reconnection with the unseen worlds. The dances lasted for 24-36h and were alcohol free, despite the fact that alcohol was already introduced to them. The tribe would gather together and cocreate complex rythmes - through clapping, stomping, playing an instrument, or singing. In many African languages the local word that is usually translated as “dance” actually refers to music and dance together — not just movement. The reasoning is conceptual: in these cultures, music and movement are inseparable parts of a communal ritual or social event, that does not separate performer and the audience, but includes everyone's collaboration of movement and sound.
This musicdance is the spiritual ancestor of everything we now call “ecstatic dance.”
