1. The Andai ritual – its mythic origins and therapeutic applications

To fully explore and understand the origins of Andai dance, we must identify several mythic stories that underscore its application and treatment of female infertility and psychological illness. The first of these tales also explains some of the guiding principles of Andai dance in its use of ritualised space and song for healing purposes.

The tale called “Uruga Andai” focuses on a girl who, long ago, lived with her father on the Gorlos Hala. One day she suddenly became ill; she would neither eat nor drink and laughed and cried by turns. Her father, burning with anxiety, took his daughter to see many doctors, but they could do nothing for her and there was no sign of her making a recovery. Distraught and helpless, the father had no choice but to place his daughter on a herdsman’s wooden cart and take his daughter to a faraway Mongolian town in the hope that he would find someone who could to cure his daughter of this mysterious malady. However, when they arrived at the town of Kulun, the axle of the cart broke. Seeing that his daughter’s condition had deteriorated, the father could do little except wander around the broken cart, looking up to the sky as he sang a song to express his profound grief. Local people heard his lamentation and joined him as he walked around the cart, weeping and singing. At this point, to everyone’s surprise, the dying daughter rose quietly, got off the cart and joined her father and the townspeople as they moved around the cart singing and swinging their arms. Sweating after her exertions, the girl was miraculously cured.

Later, people began to use Andai as a means of curing similar diseases in young women by dancing around them and singing encouraging sentences.

In another tale, we are told of a newly married woman who became depressed because of her inability to bear children. On hearing the singing of a group of dancers, she felt so happy that she joined their dance until she was dripping with sweat. Soon after this activity she found she had become pregnant. Both of these early stories infer that Andai actually refers to the lovesickness or (absent-minded disease) of unmarried women and the infertility of married women. Specific statistics provided by folk artists indicate that it is women between the ages of 18 and 25 who suffer such debilitating conditions. No examples exist either below or beyond this age range – the age when a woman is at her most fertile.

The “Ada” Andai is a tale that refers to women to being possessed by either ghosts or a devil. Long ago, we are told, far in the northeast, there lived three princesses: Zhalandugui, Wusenhailuoer, and Elegexila. Possessed of magical properties, these three princesses roamed widely, gliding through the air. When their shadows rested on the bodies of girls and women who lived on the ground, those girls and women became ill with unknown diseases that proved difficult to cure. In order to save these earthly women from such suffering, the Buddha Sakyamuni taught the shamans a technique for curing this disease. As each patient sat, beating a drum and a small cymbal, the Suhai shaman and Gadsau (the singer) would sing and dance around her until she had recovered. In the early days, the core emphasis of this Andai cure was primarily vocal – hence the title of “Sing Andai”.

Another ancient tale identifies a similar ailment and couples it even more clearly with a singing cure. Some 1200 years ago, there was a singer named Andaiqin who could, by performing the Sing Andai, attach the Andai ghost to the body of a human being and drive that person insane. Andaiqin could also reverse the process and effect a complete recovery by singing. When Andaiqin died, only the shaman of the Horqin area could cure this kind of disease. This story emphasised that the disease known as Andai came about as a result of ghostly possession; contact with some unknown force from outside the human body led to this disease.

Reading these mythic stories, we can see that the goal of the Andai ritual was and still is to cure various physical and psychological ailments. To this end, the ritual of Andai has been equipped with certain functionality. Dance movements embedded in this Andai ritual are echoed within the culture, individuality and psychological state of the Horqin area and have clearly been explored and utilised as dance/movement therapy.

2. Collective Empathy in Andai Ritual

It is important to begin with an exploration of the structure of Andai ritual. The author has explored the structure of Andai ritual based on both field investigations and literary reviews. The ancient Andai ritual is structured in the following way:

Preparation: on kraft paper, a shaman draws a dog – king of a dog country – holding a giant horse on which three white glede princess are sitting. A pair of shoes is fastened between two trees with strings. Below a house, bundled with straw and paper, a hole is dug.

Praising the whip: the shaman holds the “Five Glede Whip” on each hand with a treasured sword or a single drum, and two people enter the stage. The empress sits on the chair and is served by two persons playing the drum and small cymbal constantly while the singer is singing a song named “praising the whip”.

Console: If singing the song of “Hezhulie” is not effective, then the singer should change to other consoling songs such as “Bore”.

Praising the Tea: The singer sings the song of “Praising the Tea” and lets the patient drink the tea.

Climax: After drinking the tea, the patient becomes energetic and dances slightly. The speed of movement begins to accelerate and the mood of the audience lifts. As the dancing and singing move towards the climax, the singer starts to sing the song named “Dulengzhang”.

Harnessing the house: the shaman enters this area after the patient and participants are exhausted with dancing and singing. The patient is led by the shaman and the singer to the front of the paper house to sing the song named “Elengwa” and to harness the house.

Finish: Led by the shaman, the patient throws herself on the paper house, sends the portrayal to the front of the house and burns it together with the paper house.

3. The process of the Andai at the middle stage

Preparation: it is the shaman who, together with the relatives and friends of the patient, decides the time and scale of this ritual. The time chosen is generally between the period of summer hoeing and the autumn harvest. Seven days comprise a short timescale, twenty-one days make up a longer timescale, and forty days may be the longest. Suitable ground is then selected with a measurement of twenty-one double step circumference and to a depth of some three feet. The space is paved with weed or horse dung, covered with wet soil and then trampled for the sake of increasing the elasticity of the ground. Last but not least, an axel is erected at the center of the ground, and set into the ground.

Begin: The patient enters the ground supported by two handsome ephebes (young men) and then sits on the bench beside the axle with her hair covering the front of her face and her palms placed together. She then picks up a joss stick. All the people form a circle while the shaman – together with the singer – enters the ground praising the whip and consoling. The singer switches his right hand with his left hand held akimbo. The patient is given a sign to raise her head or switch her hands simultaneously, tracing a path from outside of the body to the middle of her legs. Meanwhile, the singer examines the lacuna of hairs carefully asking for the source of the disease, keeping singing all the while.

Climax: The patient starts to speak and dance with the movement of the shaman. Meanwhile, the singer keeps singing and an increasing number of people start to join in at various stages, creating antiphonal music with alternate musical phrases. The people stamp and step hand in hand, drawing the patient with them. The singer slips in and out of the crowd following the patient.

Finish: The paper house and paper man are burned. A triangular hole is dug at a three-way intersection and, within that, five cereals and whatever the patient needs are placed within it. (Bai Cuiying, 2005)

Led by the shaman – with people dancing and guiding the patient to dance – the patient is cured. This process can be closely linked to key elements of dance/movement therapy; kinesthesis establishes collective empathy amongst the participants – establishing and developing relationships. In the Andai ritual, it is the shaman who is the leader, and his movement (with its religious roots) produces the stimulus that evokes kinesthetic experiences in both the patient and people surrounding them. People are led by the holy song and by the movement of the shaman’s stamp and dance. The collective empathy of kinesthesia feeds back into the patient’s experience as she joins in the Andai ritual; she becomes gradually infected by the environment of the field dominated by collective consciousness.

As has been mentioned earlier, the Horqin shamanic dance belongs to the non-visualized dance category – the circular organisation of movement echoing a godly presence. The circle is the first spatial concept mastered by early humans prior to codified linear movement. “This circle may use a person or an object as the center that its power either can radiate to the people around or can be reflected from the surrounded people.”(Curt Sachs, 1992) The original shamanic dance was mostly in the form of “poussette” – directly linked to human anthropoidal development. Susanne K Langer believes that the poussette and round dance (the chosen forms of dance) were irrelevant to the spontaneous jump, since they were performing holy functions – that is, distinguishing the holy kingdom from mundane world. Such dance – created and contained within a circular form – centered round a sacrificial altar or other similar construct and within in this magic circle of dance, all vigor and energy could be released. (Susanne K. Langer, 1986) Such directional emphasis of circular movement in a prescribed space guides the energy and motion of the dancers within the circle and increases the gravitational field of direction towards the centre of the circle.

The importance of the circle as a functioning space for the Andai ritual has clear application in the field of dance/movement therapy. Marian Chace, the pioneer and founder of dance/movement therapy, believes in the idea of “dance for communication” and explains how non-verbal body movement can be effectively used in the treatment of patients with psychiatric illnesses. (Fran Levy, 2005) In her “Chace Technique”, she recommends that healers should form circles during both the warm-up and close-out stage of treatment. She sees this as an effective way of establishing a coherent structure within groups and believes that each individual within such a circle (including the therapist) gains feelings of trust and of both giving and receiving support. Circular dance can also create a strong sense of collective empathy and group sharing. Within the Andai ritual, it is the shaman who plays a dominant part within the circle, controlling the rhythms and emotional expressions of the entire ritual. He uses a belled whip to lead people in dance, and those who follow the shaman’s motions share their own repeated movements with others as they sing pulsating folk songs. An empathetic response to such rhythmic movement and song becomes a therapeutic combination in itself; such a powerful collective dance can effectively create emotional experiences in patients who are the focus of such activity and treatment.

Such a field of trust is established through a sense of collective empathy and, with an infective unified rhythm and the support of safe props such as shawls and long-sleeved garments, the Andai ritual transfers and dispatches unhealthy and harmful emotions through the circle and beyond its circumference. There are several hierarchical circles within this Andai ritual: with the patient at the very core of the activity, the shaman dances around them in order to drive away the devil from their bodies whilst additional participants dance around the shaman in order to increase his power and effect a full recovery for the patient.

4. Movement Metaphor in the Andai Ritual

“A metaphor is a symbolic representation. A bodily metaphor is a symbolic representative expressed in the form of bodily posture or movement.” (Linni J, 1985) In dance/movement therapy, the relationship between movement and psychology runs deep; movement often reflects personality. Such changes in aspects of movement, therefore, can influence the function as a whole, and so movement takes on a symbolic function in indicating subconscious processes. (Li Weixiao, 2014)

Physical movement can be perceived as the externalized expression of inner psychological processes, so both the observation and experience of bodily movement are direct and effective ways to communicate with psychological states. The acknowledgement and application of movement as metaphor allows us to facilitate the improvement of original psychological states based on such information as an individual’s own pattern of movement and their physical responses to those around them. Movement metaphor is one of the essential tools of dance/movement therapy.

Professor Shaun McNiff explains in “The Arts and Psychotherapy” that the expressive art therapist is one who treats the characteristics of his clients and their art work not as intellectually defined perceivable properties of body, voice, and behavior and art but as a product of expressive manifestations of the person’s state of mind. (Shaun McNiff, 1979) We find an entirely harmonious and complementary view expressed within LMA; the movements of human body contain the themes of duality – of function and expression. It is expressive movement that reveals both the human body's intrinsic impulsion and reason of movement.

Movement metaphors have obvious applications in both the fields of primitive and religious art where movement becomes not only a perceived action but the symbolic language of primitive thought. The relationship between a fantasy expressed in symbolic form and a true object is both direct and identical. Such duality is expressed in the shamanic dance at the heart of the Andai ritual – a ritual clearly influenced by the primitive religion of the Horqin. The author has selected an example of a dance movement with a fixed pattern that regularly occurs within the Andai ritual.

5. Integrative treatment in the Andai ritual

6. Conclusion

In the cultural ecology of Chinese dance, minority folk dances similar to Andai – with their lengthy ethnic and cultural connotations and a striking combination of artistic expression and functionality (the treatment of specific diseases) – have brought dynamism and vigor to various ethic groupings. The ethnic Mongolian art of Andai, with its profound cultural connotations and its gradual metamorphosis over past centuries, has impressed the author with its energetic life vigor. The change from ancient to modern coda, from belief to truth, has deeply influenced the art of Andai, which, itself, has now moved from a mysterious religious ceremony to a popular form of entertainment in both rural and urban areas, When we observe minority folk dances (including the Mongolian Andai in China) from the perspective of dance therapy, we understand that the investigation of the art of dance allows us to further explore the ethnic and cultural connotations behind such an ancient ceremony. Additionally, using the growing science of dance therapy – which adopts the cultural contexts and body movement patterns identified by the Chinese – enables us to combine the therapeutic dance ceremony of Chinese ethnic minorities with western principles and methods of dance therapy.