‘Treat others the way you want to be treated.’[1] This quote has been re-worded from the New American Bible. What this means to me is that you should treat everything the same way you wish to be treated. I interpreted that this does not only include the person, but also includes the person’s environment and their surroundings.
There are many interpretations of the ‘environment’. After careful analysis of the term environment, I found that it means that the environment surrounds everything; it is everything.
‘The aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences’ [2]
(Definition of ‘environment’, Dictionary.com)
I also recognised the fact that the environment is abused most of the time; from this I concluded that there could be two main causes for this; either faith or the background of the person.
Another area of fascination for me has been dancing and the way a stimulus is portrayed through a dance. Using environment as a major field, I decided to use nature as part of an environment. I decided to fuse the dance with the theory of how faith affects the environment. I aim to find that the religions suggest religion enforces their followers to look after their environment. To ensure the project was extended I had decided to do the dance in a style very different to my own. Also, usually I create dance for dance sake, however, this time to expand the validity of the project I have decided to portray a stimulus through dance.
As with all projects, it was important to do initial research and planning. [See planning page]
I researched different religions and collect findings on what they say about the environment.
Firstly, I compiled lists of religions around the world. This number was too high to do research, as there are around 270 religious groups with 20 of them being major [3]; therefore after receiving feedback from my supervisor, I decided to broaden my research in terms of finding out what the most popular religions around the world are [4]; eventually narrowing them down to the five key significant religions around the world:
• Islam [See Appendix 1]
• Christianity [See Appendix 1]
• Hinduism
• Judaism
• Sikhism [See Appendix 1]
From this I needed to gain knowledge on what the religions state about the environment.
• Islam classes nature as the fundamental foundation of the environment. Islam teaches that everything is the creation of Allah, and He has made it to the benefit of His creation, therefore the first thing to do is to devote to Islam then to the nature created by Allah. No matter what mankind may do, they can never alter the creation of Allah.
‘Devote thyself single-mindedly to the Faith, and thus follow the nature designed by Allah, the nature according to which He has fashioned mankind. There is no altering the creation of Allah.’ [5][Appendix 1]
(Surah 30:30)
• Christianity teaches that the earth and its contents are there to be looked after and ruled upon controllably by mankind.
'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.' [6][Appendix 1]
(Genesis 1:26 and 28)
• Hinduism teaches that if the earth is looked after by a person, then that person should hold prestige in terms of respect as well as the environment of nature that they have been looking after. It suggests that you should treat nature as it was your home or a sacred place to you.
‘If there is but one tree full of flowers and fruit within a village, that place becomes worthy of worship and respect.’ [7]
(Mahabharata)
• Judaism teaches that man has power to rule over the Earth; therefore his image will build if he looks after all the creatures that consist within the Earth.
‘But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
The birds of the air, and they will tell you;
Or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;
And the fish of the sea will declare to you;
Who among all these does not know that the hand
Of the Lord has done this?
In the Lord’s hand is the life of every living thing
And the breath of all humankind.’ [8]
(Job 12:7–10)
• Sikhism teaches that nature holds many positive connotations; it holds prestige in terms of their religion as they believe nature is everything the environment consists of. It also teaches that nature is the Creators and only He commands it.
‘God created night and day, seasons, time, and occasions. So also air, water, fire, and nether regions. Amidst these has God fixed the earth, the place for Righteous Activities.’ [9][Appendix 1]
(Guru Granth Sahib)
The data collection above was successful to a certain extent; however there were some inaccuracies, for example, reducing the number religions from thirty to a minority of five. I was ready to identify how I would portray this research through a dance piece.
I concluded that most people see themselves as being accountable for the world created by God. This allowed me to gain an awareness of the religions in more depth because they were all similar in the behaviour towards the Earth, which was that God created the Earth for mankind, and it was their sole duty to look after it, creating the idea of ‘stewardship’.
‘The responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving’[10]
(Definition of stewardship, Dictionary.com)
This immediately interested me and I disregarded the idea of researching towards the other cause of abuse towards environment which was the background of the person. After close analysis of the research, and task breakdown I found that all the religions told their followers to the same thing in terms of looking after the environment; the religions implied that their followers must look after all of God’s creation, and that they should treat everything the way they would like to be treated; whether it is a fish, a flower or a human. Therefore, I decided to bring all the religious teachings into one idea on how we see the beauty of the environment but neglect it causing a sharp contrast within the dance.
After analysis of the research I began to create movement for my dance piece. The movement suggests how the environment should be treated. I also made a decision to use a contemporary style of dancing as it is much easier to portray a stimulus of this sort. After deciding the movement style, I needed to create motifs. A motif is a sequence of movements that have a recurring meaning behind it. Certain movements were added into the dance piece to suggest different meanings:
Firstly, I researched whether dance was present within religion. I found that ‘dance was present in mythology and religion globally.’ It is seen as an important area in religion through ‘ceremonies, rituals, celebrations and entertainment.’ [11]
I needed ideas from the research, therefore using the research I gathered key terms from each religious teaching. From each religion I gathered either the terms ‘nature’ or ‘earth’ which helped me to understand the idea that costume didn’t need to be extravagant, instead I decided to perform barefoot, with a black t-shirt and black half pants. I chose this colour because black is neutral, and does not imply any distractions away from the movement.
To explore deeply into it; I used the term ‘God’ from the religions, which allowed me to create a gestural movement of ‘praying’. Moreover, I developed this movement into a high release to show a heavenly instinct in the piece and to suggest that ‘God’ is watching over us. The high release movement also implies the ‘birds’ flying in the sky which are prevalent in the Christianity and Judaism teachings.
Furthermore, another sparkling illustration of gestural movement was the ripples of the arms and the body. This helped me to create the idea of flowing water and the sea, in which the ‘fish’ swim; another integral part of the environment of nature prevalent in the teachings of Judaism, Sikhism and Christianity.
After evaluation of my analysis I came to the conclusion that the approach by faith towards the environment is enforced positively. This is because the characteristics present in every religion implicate that God has left the Earth with the mankind to look after, although ‘everything is the creation of God’ [4]. However, this may raise questions in the sense that if God created everything, why doesn’t He look after everything? I evaluated this point to the extent that I found it leads to stewardship; for example, in Christianity, if the person is a good follower and abides by each and every rule and saying of the Bible, then they are very likely to follow these teachings without raising any questions. This links with the idea of stewardship because they will become ‘responsible’ for the ‘protection of something worth caring for’ [10].
The dance explains how the religious teachings are brought together into one idea. It portrays that if we ‘do not follow the teachings of our religion then God will not be happy with us, and we may die a painful death’ [12]. The dance also shows how it is important to incorporate God and His teachings into our life regardless of what religion you follow. Moreover, it suggests that the environment should be considered as a fundamental area of life and we should look after it like it is our own. An example of this in the dance is the reaches forwards and then coming back in to contract and wrap my arms around myself.
Overall, I found that the environment should be considered as though it is a close entity to you. We should incorporate the re-worded quote of the New American Bible, ‘treat others the way you wish to be treated’ [1] into our lives, as others is implicated as everything within
