Star Paths and Traces of Dance. From Plato to the Pilgrim Swirl

The work was originally published by the Slovenian Ethnological Society in 2021 under the title Zvezdne poti in plesne sledi: Od Platona do romarskega vrtca. Through systematically designed chapters, the author equips the reader with the knowledge necessary to situate the phenomenon in cultural-historical spaces. He draws the reader's attention to the changing philosophical, moral, ethical, religious and other predispositions that have influenced and continue to influence the phenomena highlighted in the study. In order to answer the question posed, the author sets a broad historical space, ranging from the understanding of ancient traditions and key ancient philosophical paradigms, through early Christianity, to the philosophical and religious dogmas of the Middle Ages and the modern period. It considers those key thought premises that have characterised contemporary understandings of dance knowledge in relation to concepts such as sacred space, sacred content, the body, movement... The monograph offers the reader hitherto unknown and uninterpreted reference literature, sources and data, and places them within a broad framework of multidisciplinary interpretations of the phenomena. The author has extended his interest from the field of his home disciplines, ethnology and cultural anthropology, to general history, dance history, philosophy, music and church history, theology and mythology. It is a lucid, critical, theoretical, methodological and scientifically grounded work on the history of placing movement/dance in the context of the sacred.