Abstract
This article is a brief, first person account reflecting on the dance Six Reasons Why My Dance Card Isn’t Full performed for the Performance and Mindfulness Symposium at the University of Huddersfield in July 2016. For this presentation, I performed the solo dance and then guided audience members through a process that involves both individual and group reflection. This guided contemplative process is based on a Sufi practice of considering the presence of Divine Names and qualities within all of creation. The process reveals not just how performance can exist as an introspective practice for the dancer but also how it may inherently function as such for an audience, whether or not they initially intended for watching to be an act of contemplation.
Keywords
Dance, audience engagement, Sufism, contemplative practice
How to Cite
Salyers, C., (2017) “Three Insights from Six Reasons: Reflections on a Sufi Mindfulness Practice in Performance”, Performance and Mindfulness 1(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.5920/pam.2017.04
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