A Brief Dance History
The Dances of Universal Peace were first presented to the world in the late 1960’s by Samuel L. Lewis (1896-1971), a Sufi Murshid (teacher) and Rinzai Zen Master, who also studied deeply in the mystical traditions of Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity. Lewis was deeply influenced by his contact and spiritual apprenticeship with two people: Hazrat Inayat Khan, who first brought the message of universal Sufism to the West in 1910, and Ruth St. Denis, a feminist pioneer in the modern dance movement in America and Europe.
The Dances have spread throughout the world, touching more than a half million people in North and South America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, Japan, India, Pakistan, Israel, Australia, Africa and New Zealand. New grass-roots Dance circles are continually springing up around the globe, with hundreds of circles meeting weekly or monthly in North America alone.
In addition to the Dance circles that meet regularly, the Dances of Universal Peace continue to evolve and expand to more areas: these Dances are led in schools, spiritual centers, churches, therapy groups, prisons, hospice houses, drug rehabilitation centers, homes for the developmentally disabled, retirement villages, holistic health centers, psychological conventions, weddings, other personal celebrations, peace gatherings and ecumenical worship celebrations. They have been presented at the Olympics, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, and other ecumenical gatherings and conferences around the world.