Worldview foundations of Yakut ritual dance “bitii”

Angelina Lukina

Angelina Lukina Department of Choreography Arctic State Institute of Arts and Culture Honored art worker of the Russian Federation Yakutsk, Russia

Keywords: Worldview, religion, spirituality, three worlds, folklore, ideas, rite, ritual, traditions, creativity, dance, image, myth, idea, concept, cult, deities, shaman, blessing, sacred action, movement, structure, semantics

Abstract

The article analyses a ritual dance called “bitii” in the context of mythical, ritual, and worldview ideas of the Yakut people. It studies the semantic of the ritual dance, the symbolic meaning of movements, postures, ritual gestures, all of which are parts a unique language based in the worldview foundations of the people. The article considers the “bitii” dance in its ethnographic and semantic aspects as an inherent part of the ritual complex, and examines the meaning of this dance in the life of the Yakut people. This paper uncovers how a ritual dance is embedded into the inner works of mythological thinking and how this corresponds with religious ideas and worldviews of Eurasian nomads. The topic is relevant as it is necessary to preserve archaic examples of the dance folklore of the Yakut, people with a complex multi-ethnic origin and known as the northernmost Turkic people, for future studies and posterity. The article presents a ritual dance as a specific form of plastic and dance manifestations of spiritual legacy of the ethnos.

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Author Biography

Angelina Lukina, Department of Choreography Arctic State Institute of Arts and Culture Honored art worker of the Russian Federation Yakutsk, Russia

Doctor of Art History, Professor of the Department of Choreography Arctic State Institute of Arts and Culture Honored art worker of the Russian Federation Yakutsk, Russia

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