Gurdjieff movements
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The Gurdjieff movements are the name given to the collective body of sacred dances that were collected or authored by G. I. Gurdjieff and taught to his students as part of the work of self observation and elf study.
The movements are based upon traditional dances that Gurdjieff was taught as he traveled throughout Central Asia and Africa where he encountered various Sufi Orders, Buddhist centers, and other sources of traditional culture and learning. There were literally thousands of movements collected and taught by Gurdjieff throughout his teaching career. The music for the movements was written by Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann.
An example of Gurdjieff's later series of movements (The 39 series) are:
- 1. The Automat.
- 2. Prayer in Four Parts.
- 3. Three Tableaux.
- 4. Prayer for Instruction.
- 5. Pointing Dervish.
- 6. Movement in canon
- 7. Esoteric
- 8. Triads in Pairs. Complexity in Simplicity.
- 9. 'Olbogmek'. Double Multiplication
- 10. (A light dance with counting in canon)
- 11. Lord Have Mercy.
- 12. Halleluia
- 13. (A prayer movement)
- 14. Reading from a Sacred Book
- 15. (Tibetan) Days of the Week.
- 16. -- 17. Multiplication of Enneagram
- 18. -- 19. Stop Exercise. 'Frightened'
- 20. Six Displacements. Dervish exercise.
- 21. Remorse of Conscience
- 22. of Mesoteric series
- 23. -- 24. Chadze Vadze (Lord, Mercy!)
- 25. Black and White Magic.
- 26. (A multiplication)
- 27. (A canon)
- 28. -- 29. -- 30. Canon of Six Measures. A 'cosmic' dance.
- 31. Fifteen Rythmns. Getting up and Down
- 32. Automaton.
- 33. Premier exercise apri le retour d'Amerique
- 34. (A continuous multiplication)
- 35. -- 36. Dervish Movement. People scattered about
- 37. -- 38. (A canon)
- 39. (Thinking, Feeling, Sensing)
The famous "movements," often done to music Gurdjieff had composed himself, were dances based on those Gurdjieff had observed and participated in, notably among sufis and dervishes, and in ancient hidden monasteries. Gurdjieff taught that the movements were not merely calisthenics, exercises in concentration, and displays of bodily coordination and aesthetic sensibility: on the contrary, in the movements was embedded real, concrete knowledge, passed from generation to generation of initiates - each posture and gesture representing some cosmic truth that the informed observer could read like a book.
