The Leadership Dance 7:00pm-8:00pm

Emmit Moulton Hancock Why is yoga a form of dance? Why is dance a form of yoga?

Our class will begin just like the old fashioned US Elementary School classroom, except this time we will recite a nondual pledge of allegiance to encourage Multiculturalism. Nondualism can be synonymous with Multiculturalism. The Leadership Dance is an activity to build Human Trust, something that is lacking in most multicultural communities. (Putnam) The Leadership Dance can restore Our Trust in Humanity.

Next we can form a circle to create a dancing group poem. We can take turns to share a word and/or sound with a movement for the rest of the class to repeat. We’ll go through at least three rounds to emphasize how every person has an innate and wonderful idea about the leadership dance. This is an opportunity to define the dance in a personal and group community way!

Then we get to dance to three different songs with a brief intro as to why these particular songs have been chosen while we practice favorite Yoga asanas. After each song we will have an opportunity to discuss in asana or movement our experience(s). The first song is Vogue by Madonna. The second song is Human Nature by Michael Jackson. And the third song is the Star Wars theme by John Williams (there will be plenty of light sabers for everyone to dance with).

We will then practice group silence and stillness as a form of meditation and/or prayer. This is to join the supposed division of church and state. Multicultural dance education can only be provided in a place that allows the sacred. Here we get to claim the arts and sciences as sacred too. We will conclude by reading another poem about the Leadership Dance to experience the spirituality in poetry too.

Electronic Sama--An Exploratory Design Of Technosacred Space In Sufism--The Affective Aesthetics Of The Electronic Spiritual Concert 8:00pm-9:00pm

Amir Aziz Ghahary, (Simon Fraser University), Dr. Diane Gromala, (Canada Research Chair, School of Interactive Arts + Technology, Simon Fraser University) In the culture of Persian Sufism, the spiritual music concert of sama often represents an entry point into the consciousness of non-duality - a doorway to being liberated from the self. The ritual and aesthetic dimensions of the occasion have historically been an expression of a cultural interaction: a nuanced ritual within a spatial aesthetic and acoustic environment under the orienting guidance of the murshid, or Sufi master. Within many traditions, the breadth of outward observances is often less emphasized than the depth of mystical experience - the experience of non-duality being the essential Subject. To this end, spiritual cultures have always fashioned tools and instruments which were

meant for affectation of the experiential state of practitioners, and just as the sacred musical instrument of the Kurdish ‘Ahl-e Haqq’ - the tanbur - was once intended as a contemporary technology, today electronic and digital media environments can potentially be designed and arranged to affect spiritual experiences of sincere seekers. By exploring the implications of ritual, aesthetics, and technology in the intersection of the spiritual and technological cultures, it will possible to propose the syncretic initiative of the electronic sama, or the electronic spiritual music concert. Through exploratory research in design, it will therefore be possible to discover how technologically-mediated aesthetics can be used within sacred space to create affect in sacred experience within Sufism. The design of affective technosacred space in this way will present a platform for sacred experience within Sufism, which can simultaneously express the ritual and aesthetics dimensions of the Sufi sama as well as the ‘technophagic’ repertoire of electronic music and interactive digital art. Ultimately by studying the phenomenological properties of the system, and their relationship to the aesthetic dimensions of design, it will be possible to contribute to the contemporary discourse pertaining to the implications of technology for spiritual practice, and specifically to an understanding of how modern technology can meaningfully augment the experiential access to religious states of non-duality, specifically within the Sufi practice of sama.