A description of “Me-e-Raj Darvishan II: The Moment of Awakening,” danced by the Ballet Afsaneh and choreographed by Miriam Peretz, with music by the Neydavood Ensemble. 

 Upon an empty stage

the women stand, in white

from scarf to flared out skirt

and modest longpants, barefoot.

The music begins to play

a subtly changing melody,

perpetually rebegun,

and one of the women in white

begins a languorous spin.

Another picks it up,

another, then another,

their heads lean to the right,

their arms are outstretched like

a ballerina doll’s;

they slowly spin, their skirts

rising like a bell

around their turning bodies.

Their arms begin a slow

dancing of their own:

like trees beneath a wind,

like seaweed in the ocean,

like cloud trails in the sky,

blown by the wind of their dancing.

Now they start to rotate

around a central dancer

like moons around a planet,

and then their spinning quickens,

the pace grows fast and faster,

their skirts flare out around them

like waves upon the ocean,

a lapping of the swells,

a leaping of gazelles,

a whirling of the wind

of love for the Deity.

Faster yet, and faster,

swifter yet, and faster,

the music and the dancing

is drunk and pale and dizzy

with worship of the Master,

with adoration, dancing,

devotion to the godhead,

the fountainhead of being,

and it is all the world,

it is the universe,

here, dancing, whirling, spinning,

drunk on music, dancing,

the wild whirl of being,

white flowers and white clouds,

white waves of foam and sea,

a pattern of all flowering

shadowed on their whiteness,

faster yet, and faster,

swifter, drunk on swiftness,

blind and blurred and drunken,

drunk on love and worship . . .

A Star

leaps to the heart of the dancing,

thrashing, flashing, banners,

streams of light in splendor,

bathing the white blurred dancers

with the gold of being,

blinding, yet revealing,

astonishing, yet loving,

turning the world and dancers,

the drunken universe,

into an infinite dancing

with no end or beginning.

And from the women’s dancing

strikes ecstasy. Like lightning.