MOTIVATION FOR A BENEFIT DANCE FOR NESKAYA
Neskaya has been a generous home to Sacred Circle Dance for as long as we’ve been dancing, write Hope and Sylvie, thanks to Jenny Deupree’s generosity and Neskaya’s staff and volunteers. Neskaya wants to become self-sustaining to survive and thrive and needs our financial support to do so.
For Mother’s Day we are dancing to honor the wisdom qualities of the Great Goddess inherent within each one of us. Be as generous as the Goddess! Thank you for your heartfelt contributions, and your unwavering love and support. We need our beloved Neskaya as much as Neskaya needs us!
Hope Jinishian has been a lover of Sacred Circle Dance since she walked in a blizzard to Ellen Kennedy’s circle in Newburyport. MA in 1989 and soon after hopped on a plane with 11 new friends to Gwyn Peterdi’s Mexico Circle Dance Camp which she has since returned to many times. She is a long time student of Laura Shannon’s Women’s Ritual Dance Program. In 2015 while volunteering at a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Woodstock, NY, Hope learned the Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises to Tara, created by Prema Dasara, Founder of Tara Dhatu, a practice blessed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and based on a Tibetan Buddhist practice to Tara. Since then Hope has been guiding these profound meditative dance practices to children and adults in the U.S. and Mexico. These dances were a life-saver for her during the pandemic, serving to alleviate her fears and offer protection from the mind’s wanderings.
Working as a social worker with women for the past 25 years in Québec, Canada, Sylvie-Guylaine has also led and participated in women’s circles honouring the Great Goddess with different rituals for as many years. She likes to include rituals in her dance sessions, another way of touching the Sacred aspect of the Goddess. To teach Sacred Circle Dances is a special moment for her when she’s directly in contact with her femininity. She says: ‘’Sometimes, it feels like I danced those dances for centuries and I’m just remembering them! ‘’ For the past two years, following the phases of the moon and the seasons of nature, Sylvie-Guylaine has led us online from Canada in beautiful meditative and inspirational dances of her own creation, while also transmitting some she learned from other teachers.